I don´t even know where to begin to explain how my life has been in Puenta Gruesa. Here is my best attempt at explaining this amazing adventure I´m having.
There are 9 staff and 26 volunteers on base, from 12 different countries. Mostly England and Australia. Everyone´s accents are starting to blend a little bit together, and it´s been pretty funny listening to the different pronounciations of words and different usages of words. I´m 1 of 3 American volunteers, and the only one representating the Pacific Northwest! Woo! The people are absolutely wonderful. I can´t believe I get to spend so much time with such like-minded free spirits.
Every morning we get up around 6 o´clock and start our "duties". This varies with what group you are in, but it´s either boat duty, communal (cleaning the palapa, the toilets, etc), grounds (raking the sand so sand flies can´t multiply!), or kitchen duty. Kitchen duty is by far the hardest, considering you are cooking a meal for 35 people using really basic ingredients. The food has been pretty good so far, but as you can imagine, sometimes the portions are a little smaller than you´d like.
We´ve had a thunderstorm pretty much everyday. But the rain is refreshing and really reminds me of home. I´ve already taken two rain showers and had my two military showers. Did I mention we shower once every four days? Since we dive pretty much everyday, and have copious amounts of sunscreen/BUG REPELLANT on, I´m sure you´re realizing what kind of state were all in. But it´s okay, we´re all in it together and loving it.
After duties, we have breakfast and then kit up (get ready to dive). There are normally three waves (2 groups of divers at a time) which normally take about 5 hours. Since I completed my Advanced Open water, we´ve been busy doing our skills. The dives that we did are Peak Performance Buoyancy, Naturalist, Navigation, and finally the Deep water dive. That was probably my favorite, then the Navigation. For the deep water dive, we were under for about 16 minutes and were at 96 feet. We saw numerous lion fish (which are invasive!) and a barracuda. We also played a bunch of games underwater, and even brought an egg down and had some fun with that. Diving has been awesome. And with every dive I´m seeing my skills improve and am feeling more and more comfortable in the water.
After diving, we either work the compressor, the radio, or have been studying for our fish and coral ID tests. I´m on the coral team, and have about 50 scientific names I need to have memorized relatively soon. Bleh. After all of that, we have dinner, have a debrief and usually go chill out on the beach if the weather is good. This last week it´s been really windy and stormy, so it´s been really refreshing to go out and have a beer on the beach with everyone.
We did a beach clean up on friday, and found a disgusting amount of debris on the beach. You wouldn´t believe the amount of garbage that´s floating around in the Caribbean. We have a half day on friday and have a full day off on saturday. Most likely you guys will get an update from me on saturdays. On base, we have no internet, no phones, and are 45 minutes away from town. We basically live in the boonies and are surrounded by mangroves aka breeding grounds for thousands of mosquitos. All of the volunteers and staff have a ridiculous amount of bites on our bodies from numerous types of bugs. It sucks, and there suuuper itchy. Probably the only thing I dislike about this trip. I´m even almost all out of the bugspray I brought from home!
Well, that´s just a summation of my trip so far. There are so many more details to give, but not enough time. Basically all you need to know is I´m having a great time and you´ll hear from me on saturdays!
Oh! and I forgot to say, thanks for the birthday wishes! My program started on my birthday and although it was definitely a different kind of birthday, it was great. After dinner, the staff turned out the lights and brought out a cake and everyone sang happy birthday to me. Definitely one of the best birthdays yet.
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