Abi's Deep Dive

This year is going so quickly!! We have had low numbers of participants on base, but I have had lots to do: El jefe, Miguel, took a couple of weeks holiday which meant I was in charge. Normally when he is off work he sends lots of messages and emails or calls, but this time we made him promise to take a well deserved break. It was good for me to have to do everything, both for my confidence (I managed everything needed, and the participants and staff were happy) and for his peace of mind (base was still standing when he came back). We were both glad that during his time off, all necessary payments were made, we only had one incident, which was with a participants mother and I reported it appropriately and dealt with her professionally, and despite some bad weather (which meant days when we couldn’t dive) all participants were entertained and content with their experience while I was in charge. Big sigh of relief!!

The best thing about my January was that two friends came over on holiday!! I had the best time with them. I took a few days off work so that we could catch up, and I could show them around, and we also spent a day exploring some cenotes. I will tell you more about cenotes later in this post! Leaving the people I love has definitely been the hardest thing about living here, and it’s not a quick or cheap journey to Mexico, so when people do make it here it really is so special!! I appreciate it more than I can articulate. After my time here as a volunteer in 2022 I bored everyone with photos and stories of my trip, but it isn’t the same as introducing you to the people, sounds, smells and tastes of the area. We drank cocktails, mexican beer and some of us too much tequila! We laughed, swam, talked, and danced. I even spent some time in a swanky hotel which felt like such a luxury. I loved all of it!

Cenotes are created when cave passageways get big enough that the roof collapses. It is thought that the Yucatan was once a shallow coral reef system and then 66 million years ago a meteor hit. It is thought that the meteor was 10kms wide, and it made a crater more than 180kms in diameter and 20 kms in depth. This impact shattered the limestone rock and created numerous cracks. The dust cloud it created caused the change in temperature that started the the Ice Age. Vast ice sheets would have expanded and contracted, and the sea level risen and fallen, and this created the largest underground cave system in the world here, in the Yucatan peninsula. Cenotes are filled with fresh water so are considerably cooler than the sea temperature here, although warmer that the sea at home in Devon!! We saw four different cenotes; two were open so you could swim in them with the sun above, and two still had roofs creating cathedral like acoustics and dim light. The water when the light hits is clear and blue or green, and the cenotes can have fossils and stalactites and stalagmites in them. Sometimes, there is a mixing of saltwater and freshwater which causes a halocline a word I had never heard until visiting a cenote. In 2022 I went in a group to dive in some cenotes near Playa del Carmen, and seeing a halocline was fascinating! If the layers of water aren’t disturbed you very clearly see the two distinct layers. When you are in the salt water and look up it looks like the surface when it is just actually the fresh water layer above you. When mixed the water goes almost cloudy and visibility instantly reduces, a disorientating effect when you are in it! The temperature is also different in the two layers, a strange sensation as you travel slowly through them. There is a cenote a bit further away from here that has a tree that fell into the water when the roof collapsed. The tree is wedged at 30 meters underwater. Apparently it is absolutely beautiful and I would love to see for myself the tree underwater as if it reaching towards the light! I have only seen a tiny portion of the ones that are in the area, everyone of them has been different. Some are for technical divers as they have smaller spaces to get through, and no daylight seeping in, but for me the magic is the beautiful colours in the water as the sunlight gets through. The reflections around the walls with the light bouncing around, and swimming through beams of light in a spectrum of blues and greens surrounded by ancient fossils and speleothem preserved until the seas rise again (as long as humans don’t damage them when exploring) reminds me how incredible the earth is, and how lucky we all are to have the opportunity to experience these magical places.

7 months into my work here I am missing having my own space. Options needed to be investigated! This is a job you do for love rather than financial reward, so renting somewhere is not an option, which meant thinking outside the box. I n Puerto Morelos there are lots of people who buy houses then live here through the winter, returning home to avoid the high summer heat. Humidity also goes up in the summer which can cause problems with damp and I have seen a few people asking on Facebook for house sitters when they return to Canada/ the US, so thought I would put some feelers out. I put a post on Facebook offering to look after houses or pets and waited to see what happened. There were a few offers of “alternative living arrangements”, upside down pineapples illustrated the suggestion, but also some genuine messages. I have met a lovely family who divide their year between Germany and Mexico and it may work out so that I can stay in their house when they go home. It is a bit further away from base and the town than the staff house, but that just means more exercise for me so I’m definitely interested! I will of course keep you posted, so please keep your fingers crossed.

It has been great to see some rugby!! The 6 Nations is on and I have been able to watch nearly all of the games. A local bar was also persuaded to open early one day so that a group of us could go to watch England v Wales. Don’t forget at the moment we are 5 hours behind here, so the games are all morning kick offs for me. The atmosphere wasn’t quite the same as watching it in a rugby club or pub at home, but I had the best day!! Our participants and I went down to town together and a couple of Mexican friends joined me too. Rugby isn’t really a thing here, so there were lots of questions and comparisons with American football, but we all enjoyed a few beers and some time together. After the game I headed to the beach with Sarai and her younger brother and we swam in the sea and made Isaac into a triton. (I said merman but was quickly corrected!)

The numbers of participants on base starts to increase now, we get a new intake every two weeks and over the next few intakes we have people arriving from the UK, USA, Saudi, Germany, Australia and South Africa., so we really will be a diverse bunch which is exciting. I am hoping to get my DM finished while numbers are still low, but if something happens on base or accommodations my dive is the first thing to be dropped from the schedule as doing my job takes priority. An example of this is when the plumbing malfunctioned and the participants woke to a flooded ground floor: I then spent the morning in the house with the plumbers clearing drains and repairing pipes, rather than completing my search and recovery dive. My poor instructor is so good at planning to get my course dives fitted in but this time I ended up in the wrong kind of water! I am avoiding hot water though, so I will be patient with completing my Divemaster, and make the most of the extra time to practice the skill circuit. (if you want to see what this entails youtube have some great videos! “Divemaster skill circuit neutrally buoyant”)

Thank you for reading 🙂