Dolphins, turtles and tests

Today, one of the boat groups swam with a pod of 10 dolphins... wow! That reminded me of my swim with dolphins - I can't believe I forgot to mention it a couple of weeks ago! We had just finished a monitoring dive and were heading back to base, when a pod of 6 dolphins crested and started playing in the bow wave. Our boat is only about 4m long, so seeing them right there was just amazing. What made it even better was that the captain stopped the boat so we could jump in and swim with them! There were 2 adults with 2, um, babies (what do you call them - pups?) and 2 adolescents and they were pretty curious about us; swimming around and below us, checking us out. We spent 45 minutes with them, after which they figured out that we weren't as interesting as all that!

A group just came back from a turtle nesting project. They were about 4 hours north by road, and for 4 nights from 9pm till 4am, they relocated eggs that were laid too close to the sea and surveyed the turtle species (there were green, loggerhead and hawksbill) and the number of eggs laid, which is done by putting your hand right under the turtle as she's laying.

We've seen a lot of turtles in the water lately, which is great because for a period of about 3 weeks, we hadn't had one sighting. The other day on my photo specialty dive, one of the staff members videoed a turtle that was 3 feet from us. It doesn't matter how many times you see one; they are amazing.

The Dive Master training has been pretty tough, though I passed all my written exams. Now, I have some underwater skills left and the swimming stamina/speed tests which are a bit scary. I haven't swum 400m since high school, and i have to now do it in 11 minutes or under, without a mask or flippers. This may not sound difficult, but in the sea, where there are waves waiting to flood your every breath, it's 2 and a half minutes that I have to cut off my current time. I also have to shave 3 minutes from my 21 for the 800m snorkel (with fins). Anyway, we've been getting up at 6am for the last 3 days in an effort to get fit enough to pass. The next test is next week sometime.

If the swimming were not enough to deal with, the mosquitos now at this time are just scary. They swarm on you as soon as you step outside. The sea is only 10m from our dorm, but in that distance you'll gather at least 50 hungry mosquitos. Even when we kit up for diving and we have wet suits on, they still manage to bite through a 3mm and needless to say, any exposed skin is just covered. And this isn't even the worst it gets!

Not related to the Mexico experience at all, i have a request from Australia for a custom onebean cartoon for corporate use! I'm still finding out what the details are, but that could be exciting! Gabrielle, the lady who made the request said she came across it "just from surfing around" - it's amazing how these things happen.