6 months later...

Well, it's been quite a long time since I wrote a new post. Mainly because, my internship was the same thing everyday, so no need to write a post about the same thing. 
I have now completed my divemaster internship and... Am a divemaster!which is the first step into professional diving. It was an interesting experience, but overall a great one. I love my fellow interns, and really enjoyed our little mahahual family. Good luck to all of you in what you do, and I hope we all can reunite again!! 
After the internship was over, Jamie and I went to Tulum for a couple days. Tulum is a really cute town, kind of like a mini bellingham but with less to do. During our time there, we rented snorkel gear and went snorkeling with our buddies Risky and Sven. Akumal is famous for it's beautiful beaches but most importantly because of the sea turtles coming back to their natal beach to lay their eggs every year! One trip out, we saw four turtles. I'm not talking about during a span of thirty minutes, but literally in one area. There were three big ones and one little guy. They are such beautiful creatures and they didn't even pay any attention to us. Too busy munching on seagrass. 
After tulum, we spent the rest of our week in Playa del Carmen. Where we all started our journey six months ago. Lots of lounging around, beaching, pool, and beers/mojitos. It was an amazing final week in Mexico, and it was just what I needed. It's amazing how Mexico has really come to feel like home. (minus I still can't speak Spanish, oops!!)

Today marks the end of my Mexican journey, and I couldn't have asked for a better time. This has been the best six months of my life, and I've learned and experienced so much. This is a time in my life that I'll always treasure. Thanks to all the great friendships I've made here, I love you guys and I hope we all can be together again!
Remember, if things don't work out, we can always be treasure hunters! ;)

Divemaster Training

It's been a little over three and a half weeks since the first day of my divemaster training. It's been a lot of hard work, but it's been a great learning experience.

I'm currently living in a little town called Casitas, about 5 minutes walk from Mahajual. There are 6 fellow divemaster trainees all from Punta Gruesa as well. The dive shop we work at, Dreamtime Dive Resort, is full of great staff that are full of great knowledge and a lot of staff who are actually ex-GVI's.

Most of the customers that come to Dreamtime are all cruiseship goers. We are given about four hours to bring the divers to the shop, get them out on their 2 dives (if they are certifed divers), and then take them back to the cruiseship. When they are at the dive shop, things are crazy for about 15 minutes until they go out to the boat. Other than certified divers, the other cruiseship customers choose to do a DIscover Scuba Diving experience. This isn't a certification for the divers, it's basically just a chance for people who've never dove before to try it out! It's definitely interesting watching first time divers... dive for the first time. We only go to about 15 ft or so, so they aren't that far down. When we assist the instructors, we help the divers with their buoyancy, since they are either really positively buoyant (on the surface) or negatively buoyant (touching the seafloor). Soon we'll start actually showing the divers some of the skills that they have to perform. I havent been on a DSD where the divers have really freaked out, but my friends have been on some where people are just hysteric.

Other than certifed divers and DSDs, I've also gone on an Open Water course with our main instructor David. It was a lot of fun watching someone who was in my position three months ago. It was a girl from the states, who was visiting Mahajual with her boyfriend, who was already certifed. One crazy thing that happened was the girls weights dropped about 40 feet down. David was in the front, then the two divers, and then me. I saw this long skinny thing suddenly go down into the reef and I thought it was an eel going back into its hole. I looked up at the girl and she was frantic, ascending to the surface really fast. I quickly swam to her, grabbed her and deflated my BCD all the way so we would sink. David quickly came and we sorted out her weight belt and everything was okay again, but boy, was the a scary experience.


This is just a little glimmer of the life I'm living. I can't believe there is currently a snowstorm back at home and I'm sitting out in front of my house with my friends in shorts and a tanktop. I also can't believe that I've been here for almost four months! Wow has time really gone fast. We should be certifed Divemasters in about 4 weeks. I might have another update before then, or maybe I'll update after I'm certifed. Either way, heres what I'm up to!

Feliz Navidad!

So, today marked the first day of my divemaster internship. Overall, it was a great and busy first day.

But before I talk about that, let me back track to the past two weeks.

A little over two weeks ago marked the end of the first half of my internship. Or, marked the internship portion that I originally came to Mexico to complete. It was a sad day for all, but I think I can say that all of us were ready to leave PG. We were the last phase, but I think a good phase to end with. We collected a fair amount of coral, fish, birding, and seagrass data. Not to mention a few less lionfish in the Caribbean and incidental sightings data on marine mammals, rays, and turtles!

My two week break started with a trip to xcalak, where we took a private dive boat to San Pedro, Belize! San Pedro turned out to be a sketchy place, but I had the best pizza yet while I've been gone, so I guess it was worth it.

The next day we took a boat to Caye Caulker where we stayed for three nights. One of the days we dove the Blue Hole, along with two other dives. The blue hole was incredible! 42m down. And we saw a reef shark. So breathtaking. I felt like I was In the little mermaid.

The last day we took a sailboat down the coast of Belize. I think the captain said we traveled 3/4 of the reef. During the trip we fished, snorkeled, and enjoyed the free punch. We stayed in really two really small islands where you could walk around in 5 and 10 minutes.

The trip ended in Placencia, which was a really cute and less touristy place in Belize. Do to complications with the sailing company we had to take the buses back to Playa del Carmen, Mexico. I don't think you know how far that is, but let me just say it was a 24 hour long, tiring journey. Not to mention we went through Belize city, which was pretty sketchy.

When we made it up to Playa, we pretty much hung around for a week. But it was still great, and just what I wanted. I did end up doing two Cozumel dives, and also two more cenote dives! One of which I went to 100ft. So cool, but kind of creepy because of how dark it is and the halocline.

So that was my two week break, very fun and consisted of fun dives. :)

First day of DMT was tiring, but really cool. It's awesome to be on the other side of things. We did our first dive, and it wasn't as plentiful on the reef like I'd expected, but it was still really cool. We saw two turtles, and three barracudas. One of which was huge!!

Anyway, the next few months are going to be tiring, but they'll also be an incredible experience.

Let's go!

Mahajual

So, after much drama over placements for our internship, I finally can happily
say that I'll be in majahual for the next three months! I'll be interning with
four of my really good friends and couldn't be more excited for the next chapter
in my life. Which reminds me! If anyone would like to send me a care package, I
would love it!!

In other news, we have less than two weeks left in punta
gruesa and it's a little bitter sweet. We found out last week that GVI Punta
Gruesa will no longer be after this phase. It's pretty much because, although my
phase is one of the biggest yet, not many people are signing up for GVI Mexico.
It sucks a lot. They're thinking about making a program in Belize, but I'm sure
that program will be twice as much as in Mexico. We're all trying to make the
most of the next few weeks.

After PG, im planning on traveling to Belize and diving the Blue Hole, then going to Guatemala and hopefully skydiving! After that I'm going to go back to Playa del Carmen and hang out. :)Last night was the night when staff cooks and we requested a Thanksgiving dinner. Pretty funny considering there is a really small amount of Americans on base. The dinner was a little different from real Thanksgiving, but it was still delicious! It was 3 hours late, just like normal Thanksgiving dinner though. Haha. Well this marks probably the last update until I leave PG. Hope you all are doing great!

PS. I was walking in the shallows yesterday, and some how managed to get stung by a jellyfish. I didnt see it, but it must have been huge because it´s tentacle wrapped around my calf. Pretty gnarly!

March

So, it´s been awhile since I´ve updated you all. I´m not really sure what the last thing I wrote about was, but here is what I´ve been up to recently.

We had our four day weekend last weekend and it was probably the best weekend yet! We got to leave early on Thursday, due to bad conditions on the water, but it worked out to our benefit. We spent our first night in Tulum, which was a blast. I´m hoping to go back soon, because Tulum is supposed to have one of the most beautiful beaches in the world. We all stayed in a cute little hostel that made us breakfast in the morning, and then went off to go dive the cenotes. For those of you who don´t know what a cenote is, well it´s basically a cavern. We did two cavern dives, and they were INCREDIBLE. So much fun. The last dive we did was called the temple of doom, and to enter we had to walk a little ways in the jungle and then jump 10 feet down into a hole of water. It was so much fun. What made this dive the best though, was going through a halocline. It was a little freaky, because you can´t really see anything do to the mixing of salt and fresh water, but it was still a really cool experience.

After the dives, we made our way to Playa del Carmen and hung out there for a night. Playa is a growing city, that is estimated to one day be as big as Cancun. Playa is definitely one of my favorite places, full of good food and entertainment.

The next day we took a ferry to Cozumel. We didn´t dive, unfortunately, but one day I´ll be back to dive it. Its supposed to be one of the best dives in the world. Cozumel is a cute little island, but it´s ridiculously touristy. It´s unfortunate that the Caribbean islands have to be like that. It seems like every second someone was haggling me for my money. :/

After Cozumel, we made our way back to Playa, and then back to the grind of base camp. I dove 5 times this week, and it feels great to finally be back in the diving routine. The reef out here is incredible, and it seems like every dive I do, I see something better and better. One of the dives this week, I got to watch one of the staff members kill a lionfish. That was awesome! We even did a lionfish dissection. You all know I loved that. :)

In more exciting news, dun dun dunnnnn, I´m staying in Mexico for another 3 months! I´ll be working in a dive shop to get my Dive Masters. Yup, that´s right. You won´t see me until March. I can´t believe this is happening, but I couldn´t be more excited! It´s such a great opportunity that I couldn´t let pass me by for anything. I´ll either be in Mahajual (the closest town to me now) Cozumel, or another city I can´t spell at all (sounds like ish-ka-lack).

Seems like my life couldn´t get any better :)

Hurricane Rina and much more

You all are probably confused on why I´m updating on a Thursday. Well, let me break it down for you. Last night we all stayed in a hotel in one of the little towns waiting for the storm to pass. Before we arrived in Casitas, we packed all of our belongings into the dive shop, put the boats on shore, borded up anything that could fly away, etc. The waves passed the lagoon were enormous, but so gorgeous. After we arrived in town, we settled in our hotel rooms, ate, and pretty much chilled the rest of the evening. The hurricane is currently downgraded back to category 1 and is now just a tropical storm. Sounds scary but basically all that I have noticed was a lot of wind, some rain (although it apparently rained heavily early in the morning) and an increase in humidity. Not exactly what I was imagining for a hurricane but I´m happy this is all we got. We´re leaving for Punta Gruesa in a couple hours, where we have to unpack everything that we did yesterday. Bust. But oh well, it was good to leave for a little bit and have a REAL bed and a hot shower. We´re going to have a full day tomorrow and half day on saturday, so hopefully I´ll be able to talk to some of you saturday afternoon/sunday. We´re trying to see if we can do something for the Day of the Dead. I don´t really know what they do here for it, but either way I want to be apart of it.


Other then the random hurricane warning and evacuation, life on base has been good. Still enjoying myself to the fullest. Although, October 24 made for the best day of my life. I dove first wave with 3 other volunteers and one of the staff members. And as we were going through our PI (point intercept invertebrate species list) IDing different organisms we heard sonar. And then the boat moving around above us. We knew that dolphins were near us. We all were looking around in circles, but the visibility wasn´t too good so it was hard to see where they were. Finally, the lighting was just right and I saw my first wild dolphin. Even better was the fact that I was scuba diving while seeing it. I saw two more while we were down there, and we basically cut the dive short with what we were doing and were looking for dolphins. It was mezmerizing watching them. I started screaming underwater and even got a little teary eyed in my mask. It was so surreal. After we surfaced, we quickly took off our scuba gear and put our snorkels in. We met up with the other boat, who were already in the water waiting for the dolphins. The two boats were circling all of us, creating a wake that the dolphins like to play in. We waited for about 10 minutes and finally the dolphins came back to us. They were really active and playful with us. It was so much fun just swimming with them. There were six of them that hung out with us, but apparently there were 10 others hanging around the boat. We saw bottlenose and spotted dolphins. It was incredible, and I still can´t believe it happened!

Life on the Yucatan

I have officially completed my third week of my internship. Not too much to update yet, we basically do the same thing everyday. But everyday is always a good day on the Yucatan Peninsula! We dive everyday, sometimes twice a day if you're lucky. One wave even got to see 18 dolphins ! So far I've seen 11 barracuda, two turtles, huge lobsters, shrimp, and numerous species of fish and coral. It's an incredible feeling seeing these amazing organisms in their natural environment. It's even more amazing being in this environment with people who love it just as much as you do.

This is going to be super short, seeing how I really don't have much to update you all on. Basically, this is the life.