Mahahual, Mexico WEEK 3

We´re into our third week of food in Mahahual. Our food was divided into five weeks at the start, so if we eat too much one week, we do without. I don´t think that applies to the pasta and rice though. We get a lot of that.

January in Mexico does have its sun, but it also has lots of wind, at least for January 2007. We´ve been spotting our fish in the water in preparation for being tested on them in the water. We have to get 100% to do the surveying. We learned the survey technique today, so it shouldn´t be too much longer for we´re doing it for real. We´ve dived about half the time due to the winds and sometimes rain. Last night was cool enough to want a blanket, so I may be buying a Mexican blanket soon.

Our days start before 6 a.m. with doing chores, then breakfast, then diving starts. We have time to study/read inbetween the diving and learning the GVI way of teaching English as a foreign language. I´ve been trying to prep for the swimming tests for the dive master program. We have to swim 400 meters, snorket for 800 meteres, tow someone for 100 meters and tread water for 15 minutes sans fins with the last 2 minutes having our hands out of the water. These are all timed, so we have to push to make the number of necessary points needed to qualify to be a dive master. In addition, I´m studying the manual and encylopedia to prep for the written test. I should have paid attention to all the chemistry and physics this is making me learn. These are not my favorite subjects.

We´re about a fifteen to twenty minute bike ride to the Internet. We get here via some 4-month old bikes that look ancient, complements of the sea and saltwater and potholed roads here. It really is a trip to get here. First you must go over all the speed bumps, which are merely huge ropes, probably from the cruise ships or old fishing boats. They do work well. Then there the potholes, then a highway. We get to pass the shops along the way, so are able to pick up fruit!

I did make a cheese cake last week, so had a bit of comfort food. Someone else was hoping for mac and cheese, but wasn´t so fortunate. We did have ¨chips¨ last night though!

It´s looking pretty dark outside. It is getting to be that time, so more next time.

Cenote Diving in Tulum, Mexico

The wind is great for sailing, but not always good when you want to go scuba diving outside the reef. I´ve been in Mahahual almost two weeks now with the GVI marine conservation research project. We got into the water immediately to do a review dive of 16 skills, then the winds started, keeping us out of the water for several days, to the point where they were going to let us go traveling because the forecast wasn´t looking any better. And guess what, they died that night so we dived instead of traveled. That meant the boat sent out five times a day, so two dives daily for the advanced divers! We started spotting the fish we´d been studying, both adults and juveniles. They can look dramatically different, but guess you could say that for some adults when looking back at their baby pictures.

Our spot on the south side of the Ka¨an Siam Reserve is nice. It´s a 15-minute walk to a very small village, so small most if not all of the electricity runs on a generator. We have our own generator so lights go out at 10:00 if not before. We´re up at 6:00am so that´s not a problem. We head to the kitchen to make porrage if we´re on kitchen duty, to the kit room for boat gear if we´re on boat duty as well as to the barrels which need to be filled with water for rinsing our gear, or to the kit room for rakes, shovels and the wheelbarrow to clean the grounds. The beach is raked daily of all the seaweed and trash. I never realized it but raking the sand cuts down on sand flies. I always thought it was just the swanky hotels looking as polished as they could. There really is a reason for this.

Yesterday morning the boat went out and came right back in because the winds had picked up again, so while there were cleaning chores to be done, four of us packed very hurriedly and headed for the bus station to get the 8:30am bus to Tulum. We´d heard about cenote diving in this area and off we were. Cenote diving is going through fresh water sometimes to salt water to look at underground caverns. It must be like seeing the mines in Lake Superior, with stalagtites and stalagmites. One cenote had a layer of sulpher dioxide in it so we went through about 1-2 meters of fog. That was a bit eerie. It also made me think of Minnesota because some parts looked like a fall day with a dusting of snow on the barren ground. No leave on the trees either. We even took a picture of us sitting on a log. How Minnesotan is that?

We´re going to have another Mexican meal without a ton of rice before headng back to Mahahual this afternoon. We get lots of starch at the base so this is a real treat. I even had an ice cream today, my first in a long time. And it was fun to check email today, and have lots of communication with you all back home. Life is good.

Again, please excuse any typos. I still haven´t figured out the Spanish word for spell check.

End of Week 1 in Mahahual, Q. Roos, Mexico

Hello from Mahahual.

I´ve just finished my first week with Global Vision´s Marine Conservation Expedition. By this time in the Seychelles, I was doing my advanced diving training, emergency first responder and studying fish. Down here, I´ve already passed my written fish tests (for adult and juvenile fish), am going through the emergency first responder course again just because I don´t think you can ever do this too many times, and because I want to know what to do when someone has an epileptic attack (which I can´t even spell) right in front of me as happened in Costa Rica. We´re finally in the water after being shorebound due to high winds, maybe too high even for sailboats, though I don´t get daily weather reports to know how high they were. I just know they were too high for us to get beyond the reef and back into the lagoon without turning over the dive boat. We´ve been told this has happened. That would be bad news for future diving. I´m studying for my dive master´s certification, which I plan to do after I finish my five weeks of fish monitoring. Who know´s what I might do with this!

The diving down here has been great. Out of our first five dives, one, my 100th, was at 12 feet. We practiced 16 skills, which was a great review. That shows you how dive safety conscious GVI is. The other dives have been to spot fish, to prepare us for our in-water testing. We have to be exact on this one, not just 95% as the written tests. Today we saw a sea turtle in the distance and a five-foot Southern Stingray very close up. Mother Nature has truely blessed us.

I´m going to be forced into learning Spanish down here, which I´m looking forward to. I have to if I´m going to use computers down here. They´re all in Spanish. Since I don´t know the Spanish words for spell check, who knows what this read like, and then there´s the matter of different keyboards. You never know where or how to get to the @ symbol.

The volunteers and staff here are great. There´s a big age range, and maybe a bit older than usual, from what I´m told. We have people from Sweden, Germany, the UK, South Africa and the US. In fact, one of the interns is from the Minnesota/South Dakota/Iowa area. She makes me feel a little at home here and practices Minnesota-nice. The head of the expedition here, Richard reminds me of Johnny Dep from Pirates of the Caribbean.

Mahahual is a very small village that´s expanding almost daily. A year or so ago, few had heard of it. Since Cancun is so busy now, the cruise ships are heading south and you can see how it´s adapting to the tourists. We can have a massage right on the beach if we´d like. I though maybe my new career could be the ear waxing. It´s a Chinese custom I think. You light a cone of some material, place the non-lit end in your ear and it draws out the wax in your ear. Several people are having issues with their ears, which made me think of this new business idea. Maybe I´ll talk with my dive master instructor about it. He´s Mexican, but believe it or not, he´s spent a lot of time diving in Lake Michigan. I think he´s going to try to convince me to dive in cold water. It´s cold enough here, so he´s got a lot of convincing to do.

On base, we do have our daily duties. We either have to clean up the grounds, load and unload the boat and scuba gear tubs, or prepare the meals for 19 people with rice, pasta and veggies mainly. One of the women in our group must eat similarly to me, cuz it seems like we prepare meals with the least amount of pasta, but then we also have made bread twice. We´re also into plate presenatation, which probably no one else cares about. Anyway, it makes us feel good.

Speaking of kitchen duty, I will sign off now so my mates don´t think I´ve forgotten about them.

Hope all is well in the Winter Wonderland north of here.

From Playa Buena Vista to Playa del Carmen

I´m back in Alajuela for the evening to get an early start for Mexico tomorrow.

Olive Ridley´s

It was sad to leave the sea turtles that I´d been with for the past two weeks in Playa Buena Vista. What a wonderful, rewarding experience. I was there on behalf of ASVO, an conservation organization, which in this instance is working to preserve Olive Ridley, Green and Leatherback turtles. I helped release Olive Ridley babies for the most part and one nest of Green turtles. The largest number of hatchlings I released was 111. The program we worked with says that about 60% of the eggs that get into the hatchery make it to sea. The other 40% are either not fertilized eggs or they just don´t make it to the surface for any number of reasons during the dry season. In the wet season, about 80% of the eggs yield turtles going to sea. They´re instincts are so strong, it´s amazing. Just think about hatching your way out of a shell, having to crawl your way out of a hole about a foot or two deep, then having to crawl to the ocean about 25 meters away, then be swept into the ocean or maybe tossed back up the shoreline any number of times before the current wisks you into the ocean. It´s a tough life for these little guys.

Being right on the ocean was such a luxury except for our accommodations, though even they started feeling like home. Maybe that was because of the people I was with. They were from all walks of life. Many of them young, yet with a good sense of themselves, the environment and the world we live in. All were hard workers and really pitched in. We had to haul in our food and water, clear paths, do beach sweeps and tend to the turtles 24/7. Overnight we took two hour shifts or did beach patrol, which is when I saw the two turtles laying eggs.

We were a 45-minute walk into Samara, which we did almost daily--mainly to surf. Yes, that was part of the package. I´m in a way happy to say this sport isn´t one that I´m tempted to pick up. Body surfing is more fun. I did ride some waves into shore, but never did much more. There is some exhilaration when you catch one just right, but more often, it was an exercise of jumping up only to see the wave go past you or loosing your balance, which was most of the time. Guess I have to do more balance work on the bosu. I wonder what would have happened had I not been taking bosu classes at the health club.

Driving in Costa Rica

As I was being driven back to Alajuela, I was remembering our drive up to Monte Verde two weeks ago. Costa Rica has two main highways, one lane each way. You can imagine the trucks. They do slow things down. On the way back today, we were going a cool 30 KPH, or about 20 MPH. Sometimes the police pull all the trucks over to let the cars pass, but not today.

There are lots of hearts on the roads here with what look like halos on top. These are markings for people who died in an accident at that spot. What a constant reminder to drive safe.

I´m off the Mexico tomorrow, to Mahahual for fish research. More from there.

Buenas Dias from Buena Vista, Costa Rica

I´m on the Pacific coast on a small beach call Playa Buena Vista, a few kilometers outside Samana. This is a volunteer program through ASVO, a Costa Rican sea turtle conservation program. We live right on the beach in an A-frame type building. There is running water, a flush toilet and shower, all of which is outdoors. It is remote.

The sea turtle nests are just between us and the beach. It´s the end of the Oakley Ridley and Greeturtlele season here. The eggs we are harvesting are from mid to late November, with a 45-day incubation period. When the turtles come up, it´s in mass. Sometimes over 100 turtles per nest. They are so cute. We transfer them to a bucket of sand and deliver them to the beach, where they miraculously crawl to the water. Then, they´ll come back here to lay eggs of their own. Amazing. We have to watch out for racoons and other wild life that can harm them, but once they´re in the ocean, they´re on their own.

The other volunteers are from all over--Sweden, Germany, Holland, Finland and more. Even a few Americans. It´s been fun and fulfilling. Lots of pictures to come.

More from Mexico.