Pez Maya, Mexico

So, it is now the middle of week three of my time with GVI. (No I am not mad, I know it is Sunday but GVI weeks run Wednesday to Thursday, I do not know why).

It has been an exciting week this week, both in good and in bad ways. During the week I did more fish spots and did my first practise transit, I also got to go to Tulum and visit the GVI Teaching Project officially. Sadly, whilst I was in Tulum, Kate - one of my freinds from the project - swam up too fast during a dive and then had to be taken to a decompression chamber (she is ok now!!). Lastly, to end the week on a good note, we spent the weekend in Playa del Carmen partying and doing fun dives (Kate even managed to party with us for a bit!!).

So, to start at the beging of my narrative, we all know what fish spots are becasue I have told you about them before (this week I saw sting ray on two separate dives - they were amazing to see!!). A transit, however, is something new, it is a type of monitoring technique where we lay out a thirty meter tape and note down all the fish we see whilst swimming along that line. You have to swim really slowly and note down fish in a cirtain vecinity. You do it will two people, person one notes down the adult fish and person two lays down the tape, then you wait 5 minutes (for the fish to settle down again) and then you swim back and person two notes down the baby fish and person one reals in the tape. It is actually quite hard to swim slowly, in a straight line and at a good distance from the bottom and write down fish all at the same time. We are still only getting one dive everyday at the moment becasue of all the problems around base (the compressor and the engin on one of the boats being broken) but hopefully by next week things should speed up if we manage to get two dives a day. Meaning I will be out monitoring (doing what I came here to do) soon!!

On Wednesday (mine and Jons two year anniversary) I got to go into Tulum (the near by town) and experience a day in the life of the GVI teaching project. We went to a TEFL session in then morning, which was really cool, we joined their EMs for a lesson in how to teach English. We then had a load of free time so we went to the internet and got nice food (I ate far too much). In the afternoon we went to a spanish lesson (which was way to advanced and went right over my head), helped with a little of their lesson planning and then went and watched them teach a lesson, which was pretty cool.

We arrived back at base really late on Wednesday night but one of our instructors picked us up in the car and told us on the way home about Kate. Whist out on a dive earlier in the day she surfaced too fast and had a pain in her chest whilst she was comeing up. Ohand, the staff member who picked us up, was also the staff member who was on the boat when Kate surfaced and he said he had never driven the boat so fast in his life. Kate was given oxygen as soon as she was on the boat and was driven straight to Playa del Carmen and taken to a decompression chamber, she is fine now but she cannot do anyhting strenuous for the next two weeks and she can never dive again, which is very sad becasue like all the people at Pez she loves it. Just incase you are worried I would like to assure everyone that my dive computer beeps furiously when I go up too fast, I keep a close eye on it and I tend to be one of the last people to surface. Everyone is different and there are never any garentees though, diving is a dangerous sport and insidents like this make you undersatdn that more and understand why we have the rules that we do.

So, to cheer us up after a week with half the number of dives than usual and the insident with Kate we all went to Playa Del Carmen for the weekend. A group of us went for the dive on Saturday with a dive center in Playa, which was really cool and then we went out drinking Saturday night. Sunday was spent with a loing lie-in womething impossible in Pez even on a Sunday becasue the huts get so hot, it was lovely having a fan in the room.

The dives we went on on Saturday were amazing. We went on two dives, both very different to anything I have done with GVI. We did a drift dive, meaning we just drift along in the current, which was awesome. It was so cool to not have to do any work but at the same time it was kind scary to not really be able to go where you wanted - if you tried to swim into the current you would get no-where fast. We saw loads of fish, but more impressively we saw loads of turtles, something we generally don`t see in Pez. It really was amazing. And then at the end of the 40min dive, when we surfaced, the sun was setting overhead and making the horizon a beautiful orange whilst we were floating in the water, it was so pretty. We then got back into the boat and froze our arses of going to the next site, the site for our night dive. The night dive was also pretty cool. We saw laods of fish, though it was difficult to tell what they were becasue of the light, we also saw a sting ray and an octopus. The Octopus was brilliant and facinated us for ages, it was constantly moving and changing colour (it really looked like it was the inspiration for alien, Ed even said he felt like it was going to just on someones mask at any second). It was really strange not being able to see very far, and only being able to see the others on your dive from where there tourches are shinning, but it was very very cool.

After the dives we went back to the dive center and had a BBQ which was very very yummy, loads of chicken wings and some really good fish and some really good veggies and bread too, I was starving (as I am sure you can imagine). I shared a bottle of white wine with one of the guys, Tim, which was quite a luxury. At about 9pm we headed back to the hotle where I had my first shower in 3 weeks (don`t worry i had been washing with a bucket, well once a week anyways). But the shower was heaven, warm powerful and relaxing. When we had all showered and changed we had a drink in the hotel bar (another glass of wine for me) and then moved onto a sports bar down the rd where we drank some more and chattered away (I drank 2 Capirinha`s, not as good as the ones in Brazil by a long way but they were passable). I decided that was probably a little too much alcohol for me as we made our way to a place we could dance so I didn`t drink anymore, and a good thing two coz I have a cracking hangover this morning (or I should say this afternoon now!!) I was meant to be getting up early and doing christmas shopping today, thought I would say that was lready out of the window after the wine!! But it was a good night and a very good day yesterday.