More sun and beach, anyone?

Well I'm glad to report that Rob wasn't suffering from decompression sickness, but he's going up to Playa del Carmen tonight for more tests. Unfortunately, he hasn't been able to do any fun stuff at all since the fit, but of course that's to be expected.

Meanwhile, I've completed the first of 2 coral tests - the next is underwater spot testing, which basically means that a member of staff takes me down, points to a coral, and I have to get it right... and I have to pass without error. And we've been given more coral to learn. And we're doing Emergency First Response training. And I'm thinking of starting my rescue/dive master training.

On today's dive, we saw a whale shark, albeit from the surface (we were in the boat heading to our dive site) but it was right on the surface! Amazing site. At the end of the dive, we saw a small green turtle - it was popping it's head up for air when it spotted us, and as soon as he did, dove back down with a big splash: really cute! The dive itself was pretty cool - I saw some intersting grow patterns of agaricia agaricites, a nice mycetophyllia lamarckiana... really big colpophyllia natans. Excellent. Yes, I'm a coral nerd. Hah - you should hear the fish geeks!

Daily life starts at 6.30am, and you're assigned to one of three camp duty job groups:
1) Ground (raking the sand to prevent sand fly larvae from hatching and to make the place look neat)
2) Boat (kitting and unkitting the boat; making sure that the rinse tanks are clean)
3) Kitchen (cooking breakfast lunch and dinner for 18 people)

It's not too bad, as there are 4 or 5 people in each of the 3 groups, which rotates duty daily. It's kinda fun, in a totally nerdy way. Oh, there's also compressor duty (filling up tanks) which is quite boring, but it's free time to read or study. And today is my lucky day: I'm on bathroom duty, so I've got to clean out the 2 bathrooms, top to bottom. Mmmmm.

You very quickly get used to the constant dampness - and 2 minutes after a shower (or more often a bucket shower) you're already dirty in some way. And the same clothes are worn day in, day out (I only brought 3 pairs shorts, 4 tshirts, jeans and 2 shirts, which are more for NYC than Mahahual) but most of the time during the day I'm in boardies anyway. I've attempted hand-washing once, and I think I'm going to find an alternative solution for the bed sheets; washing all that fabric in a small plastic bucket couldn't be too much fun.

The town is very much a frontier town. It's one, sandy road with ramshackle bars and restaurants, and many tsirt and souvenir stalls to cater to the cruise ship tourists. There are 2 cruise ships a day, and they want to increase it to 4, and in conjunction with a 250% increase in the number of hotel rooms, this town is going to change radically in the next year. On top of that, they're building a road through the mangroves just behind us, which will not only facilitate the 'Cancunization' of the area but will degrade the ecosystem. (We had a lecture yesterday on how mangroves prevent errosion and how it scrubs the water clean - something like that. Hey, it was at the end of a long, tiring, hot day!)

All in all, I'm loving the expedition and the people in the group. There are always laughs to be had, stories to be told - but given the duties and the length of the day, there are moments of blank stares around the dinner table or at a briefing.

Right, best be off back to camp to clean out the loos! What fun!