Pez Maya, Mexico

I`ll be home tommorow so this will proably be my last entry, though I will try and remember to let you know I got home safely. It has been a busy couple of weeks since I last wrote and there have been lots of goings on. We haven`t had a lot of diving becasue there has been bad weather but I have added to our monitoring effort, had a few more fun dives and taken a few more pictures, I have completed my caverner course and visited three cenotes, one of our boats capsized, and we had our exciting final party.

With regards to the monitoring I really haven`t contributed nearly as much as I hoped to in my time here and if I did something like this again (wehich I would very much like to do) I think I would have to do it for longer than 5 weeks as it is just not enought time, what with all the potential problems (e.g. engines and compressors breaking). I have managed to do 5 or 6 transit monitors (the ones I explained before) and one rover (where we swim in an expanding square and note down everythign we see). The staff did however say I was the quickest person there to start monitoring which is pretty cool, and many of the other five weekers either did one monitor or none at all.

The fun dives have been plentiful recently, when the waves are too rough to allow us to do the shallow monitoring sites (we have sites at 5m, 10m and 20m and we only have the 5m ones left now). There are some really nice places to go diving around our base, and the places we go monitoring are not always the nicests ones (becasue they are the ones that need monitoring!!) so the fun dives are a real treat. In total I have seen about 5 sting ray, and a Barracuda (which was chasing its potential dinner at the time). Haven`t actually managed to have my camera on any of those occasions though as we are only allowed cameras on fun dives and we are usually monitoring or planning to monitor.

The caverner course was amazing, it was done in the Two Eye Cenote (Dos Ojos, it sounds better in spanish) we did 3 dives as part of the Caverner Course and learnt to tie of lines - which was pretty cool, and to floow lines really fast with our eyes shut (in case our torches don`t work). We are now cirtified to dive in caverns with just a Buddy and no instructor though I think it would be pretty scary and I wouldn`t try it before having more experience!! But it was amazing down there, it looked like something out of a film, it was creapy and wonderful at the same time and it was like nothing I have ever seen before, it was soooo beautiful. I will definitly be going cavern diving again, thought they say that there is no where else in the world where you can go cenote diving - only Mexico, only in the Ycatan Peninsula. That is why 4 of us decided to pay for an etra cenote dive at the weekend, with one of the local dive shops in Tulum. We actually went on these dives before the caverner course (and I am glad we did as Dos Ojos was more impressive and it was nice to do them in that order). Car Wash Cenote and Grand Cenote were the two we went to on a weekend and they were both very different, Car Wash was a deeper dive and Grand Cenote was beautiful and perhaps more like Dos Ojos. All three were awesome and in amazing settings.

With everything I have done here I will be coming home a fairly quailified diver!! My dive cards with include PDAI Open Water, PADI Advanced Open Water, PADI Cavern Diver and PADI Coral Reef Specialist. Pretty impressive collection for 6 weeks!!

So, last in the excitment, the boat. Nothing to be worried about, I wasn`t on the boat at the time it sank and none of the people who were were hurt but, it was kinda scary not hearing from them and waiting to see what our rescue effort came to. Basically a huge wave came into the boat and the boat sank due to taking on too much water. The captain and passengers (bar one) were thrown out of the boat when the wave struck, the one guy (Luke), who managed to stay in the boat whilst it was sinking, saved the radio and most of the dive gear. The radio did not work as they were out of range and therefore it was two hours before the rescue boat arrived (we waited an hour for them to potentially be driving back and then it took the rescue boat an hour to travel the 14km to where they were). The guys who were on the boat were still swimming to shore when the rescue boat arrived, as with the kit and with the waves and the current it was a long swim. The guys were exhausted, some (those who salvaged their flippers) made it to land just as the rescuers were arriving and they were taken back in the car, the others were picked up by the rescue boat. But everyone was fine and GVI is now going to reevaluate the idea of allowing boats out of radio contact!!

So, an exciting couple of weeks, the final party was on Saturday (lots of alcohol all round) and since then we have been sad becasue we know we are leaving :( - and becasue we have been clearing up!! I have had an amazing time here and met a lot of really cool people and am actually really sad to be leaving. This is the first time in my travells that I do not feel ready to go home, I really wish I had more time to spend in this place with these people doing the work we are doing.

But hey, that is not to say I am not looking forward to seeing all you lovely people at home!! And will hopefully be seeing you sooner rather than later. Am flighing home tommorow and will be back early Friday morning.

Hope to see you guys soon,
Be in touch.
xx