Abi's Deep Dive

I have been in Mexico for a month! Finally after all the sickness and holidays, we have the full staff team back on base, and four of us back in the house.

Hours are intense: Monday- Friday we leave for work at 7.30 and normally get home at about 7pm (unless you are working on turtles then you’re on night shifts and early mornings), a member of staff is always on duty so we have 48 hours a week on duty on 24 hour shifts, and we use Saturday for the new intakes arrival training too. Covering sickness and holidays, which meant doing the turtle shifts as well as my day job, then having no time off work for a stinking cold has meant my only weekend off was spent in bed recovering from work not a heavy weekend!! One day in the office it all got a bit too much, I wasn’t really being given anything to do and felt more like a spare part than a manager. Everyone was diving apart from me and I felt pretty useless on the back of being ill and tired. I had a proper chin wobble and had to go and sit on the back steps with an iguana to dry my eyes and get some perspective. There are animals that would be more affectionate in these circumstances but the stony glare definitely distracted me. This weekend I am off work on Friday, Saturday and Saturday, I’ve got so much time to swim and just explore, I cannot wait!!!!!!!

I have had a lot of admin to learn including: accounting, finding my way around the GVI Google Drive, and the Mexican tax system (which includes downloading a ¨Factura¨ for every purchase you make which is long). I’ve even started to organise our team drive as there are so many versions of the same things. I went to a webinar that was set up by coral experts from around the world this week. The world is currently experiencing a bleaching event, here we visit the same dive sites and the bleaching gets worse daily. The coral is dying and the scientists in the field are desperate to save the coral they can and prevent this from getting worse and from happening again. I am keen for our base, which has an excellent reputation locally to get involved with more organisations both locally and worldwide and Miguel has approved this networking. I’m now feeling much more confident driving the truck too so getting out and about is easier, next to try is a drive to the crazy roads of Cancun. Rules of the road seem to be: biggest vehicle gets priority, mad fools trump them, don’t use indicators, get hazards and brake lights wired together and use them and your horn a lot.

The weather is HOT! It’s up in the mid 30´s, but the humidity means it feels like it’s in the 40´s. I like the heat, although I am a sweaty mess a lot of the time, but a lot of the participants are seeking out air conditioning as it gets too much for them. The base is quite shaded so we sit outside for meals and get to catch up with all of the participants and learn a bit more about them. Meals on base are basic and vary in nutritional value. Sometimes we get salad and veg, other times we get grilled chicken with vegetables and rice. I love the black beans and spiced rice that we get sometimes, the potato in a roll not so much. Staples on base are definitely carrots, courgettes, rice and tortilla, mainly veggie meals and for me Lira of a local chilli sauce which I keep in my desk, it’s delicious!

Many of the participants, particularly the fair skinned, get devoured by mosquitos. Several girls have got legs covered in swollen lumps that they often scratch in their sleep or on the sargassum wading through it to get on the boat. They get used to bloody bites until an infection sets in, then they can go to a little Cuban clinic close to the participants house which gives excellent advice at a reasonable cost. The tiny little black ants seem to like me more than the mosquitos do, and for me those bites are fierce. It’s like having chicken pox and the little bites itch for about 10 days. I’d forgotten how painful they are, but am very grateful that the taste of me does not appeal to a mosquito.

By the time we get home, the sun is low in the sky and if we go just down the road we see the most beautiful sunsets, the deep orange and red spreads across the sky, and it’s so flat here, if you can get onto the top floor to see the show it’s breathtaking. If I am out with the turtles I also see the sunrise, otherwise it happens as I am getting ready for work.

I sleep in a bedroom downstairs, there are a couple of pieces of furniture and I have bought a bedside lamp and a fairy light clip string to put up some photographs I brought from home so it feels much more like my room now. At the moment I am sleeping on 2 single mattresses stacked on the floor but It has been mentioned that I might get a double bed at some point, I keep hoping and dropping hints!! We are given two white sheets and white pillow cases and pillows, so although I have a really lovely scarf with turtles on it to put on my drawers so I would really like some art fa matching duvet set, a rug and a throw (hoping to visit a Mexican market soon). When I asked the boss where I could get an authentic Mexican blanket he looked at me like I’d gone mad and said “Mexicans here don’t use blankets it’s too hot, are you cold?!” Explaining blankets for decoration was a step too far for him!

You can get most things you need here, especially if American food is your thing (I have never seen peanut butter with so much sugar added, or so many flavours of Oreo!) but there are things that you can’t get or are hugely expensive in comparison to the price in the UK, so look out if you’re planning a visit! Amazon Mexico doesn’t let you filter for free postage so it’s easier to spend more on that than your shopping list, and in Miguel’s words Amazon Prime means nothing more than you pay more to wait the same time for your items. Next day delivery is definitely not a thing!

Living with the people you work with can feel a lot at times. There’s nowhere to hide, apart from your bedroom with noise cancelling headphones, and living with the very different personalities has overwhelmed me at times. I miss my friends so much, and love getting messages from home to remind me that I am missed too. I’m hoping that as my Spanish improves and I get some time off I can go and meet other people and expand my network here.

Miguel, the boss, and I get on well, he started to hand over the reigns a bit this week. He’s going to be working at a few other bases as well as Puerto Morelos and so I’ve got to be able to manage without him. I enjoy the time we get when we aren’t talking about work too, he’s Mexican so is a great source of knowledge for places to visit, Mexican history, and local culture. He is known for his embellishments to scare new participants but is very straight faced so we never quite know if he’s being serious. The under 18 projects finished last week so he took the team out for dinner. We went to a fabulous Italian restaurant that has a courtyard with all of the tables, and is surrounded with trees and shrubs and warm lights. It was wonderful. We drank margaritas and had a cheese board to start. The cheese was wonderfully warm and soft and the restaurant had provided different fruit jams and caramelised nuts chopped up. For my main course I had filet mignon. After 4 weeks of a mainly vegetarian diet it was heavenly. Perfectly cooked, and accompanied with a large Malbec I savoured every mouthful.

I’ll write about diving in a different post, but I got my first trip in the boat last week and my first dive this week, so moving forward I’m looking forward to getting back to physical training to help my mind and my sleep, diving more regularly to get my divemaster, networking and building new relationships both for our base and me personally and improving my Spanish. Now, I’m going to sleep before a 6am snorkel with the turtle crew.
Buenas noches amiguitos 😘