Sarahara: Week two in Mahuhal

Me outside my cabaña. This sleeps 6 but we are only 4 at the moment. There are more people arriving at the 5 weeks point so it will be a bit of a squeeze.

Well i have survived week two. I am slowly being eaten alive by the sandflies but just got a handy tip from my Mum, cover myself in cooking oil! If it works i will give it a go but with the 30 plus degrees i could end up deep fried.

Last week was Earth Week in Mahual. We were working with the local school, which was a lot of fun. We started with a dive to clean the reef, we went down with a sack and i was really suprised and what we came back with. We then taught them about recyling and got artistic. We made papier mache fish, reef in a box and reef mobiles. We disected squid, which was very interesting, and extremely messy!

Hannah and Sara with their sack of rubbish collected from the reef clean

Squid disection

This week we start teaching English to the adults and children in Mahuhal. This town was detroyed by a huracain last summer and they are in the process of rebuilding. Land and property are big business at the moment, because it is so cheap.

In ten years time, if i were to return, i am sure that i would not recognise the place. Mahuhal is on the Mesoamerican reef, the second largest reef in the world. The big hotels will slowly go up and there will be a dive shop on every corner. The local people need English for tourism and so as part of our community work we teach them for free and at the same time try to educate them on environmental issues.

I have now passed the underwater coral test and am now learning about algae and diseases and then hopefully we will start the monitoring this week sometime. I am really enjoying it, i can just spend ages looking at one patch of coral, there is so much life in and around it. Lots of tiny little creatures that i have never really noticed before. Coral is classed as a living creature. It is from the same family as the jelly fish. The polyp builds the calcium carbonate shell around itself.

Me, at the office having a hard day!

Our dive team, just passed my underwater coral test

Viki, Sara and Jo, on her Birthday

Diploria labrynthiformis, totally amazing

Diploria Strigosa, with Christmas tree worms

Nudibranc - this is about 2 cms so you have to look hard to find them

Evil looking Moray eel, he was massive

Life on the base - As i mentioned in the last blog, it is very very isollated in Punta Gruesa. We all take a big part in the running of the base.

The daily chores include:

Kitchen - cooking for 25 people. Breakfast, lunch and dinner, all vegitarian and most of it dried so a little prior preparation is always good.

Grounds - This envolves putting your Ipod on and racking the sand, which is actually quite a lot given that we live on a beach. This helps keep the sandfly numbers down and destroys any nests.

Boats - checking the saftey equipment and preparing the boats for the day.

Communal - toilets, floors, shower. It is actually the easiest so i don´t mind it to much

Compressor - filling up the tanks as they come back from the dives

Radio - sitting on the radio communicating with the boats whilst they are out. The saftey here is just brilliant, they are really very professional.

I am also part of the community team and photography. We will be putting together a CD for everyone at the end of the course, which will be pretty cool.

I amaze myself with how much i get done in a day. By 9.30am i have already been running for 40mins, completed my chores had breakfast and had my first dive of the day. It is very satisfying.

So that is it for this week. Here are some photos from the welcome party........