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!