DIVEMASTER!!!

This is the view when I step outside my room....   not bad eh?

So...   It has been quite a while since I posted anything last.   Been having a great time diving almost every day.   Took me quite a while, but finally finished my Dive Master's course.   I am now a PADI professional!  Celebrated my completion with a snorkel test....   kind of a horrible right of passage amongst the diving community.   Basically entails donning a mask and snorkel and affixing a plastic liter bottle to the top of the snorkel and pouring down anything handy....  tequila, rum, eggs, tabasco, the usual.   I also had to demonstrate how to clear a mask full of beer to the group of onlookers. Not my best moment, but good fun.  Not sure what my plans are at the moment, but going to stick around the island for a while and work in the shop I completed my course with - Deep Blue Divers.

View of Deep Blue's deck.

Gear Room

Taking Rob's little sailboat out for a morning dive.   Not a lot of wind, but good fun.

Tanks tanks and more tanks!

HALLOWEEN

Was a little worried that they wouldn't celebrate Halloween here, but the divers came out in full force.   LN, an Instructor here went as Life and I went as Death.   It was good fun scaring the local kids on the streets.

 

 Me as death walking down the main street.

 Nico, my instructor, as a mime and Warren, the divemaster here, as the Joker.

Painting the boys.

 

 LIONFISH DERBY II

Utila held its second Lionfish Derby last weekend!   

Lionfish are an invasive species here in the Caribbean.  They are normally found in the Pacific, Indonesia and thereabouts. Three were accidentally introduced to Florida in the 90's when a hurricane destroyed an aquarium. They have since spread all the way south to Columbia in only twenty years!  They are actually quite beautiful fish and are amazing to view; however, they are ferocious eaters and have been decimating the local reef fish.  They have no real predators here and their numbers are exploding out of control. For more info, check out this site.  That's were the derby comes in.   

All the dives shops set aside a day to go out and hunt lionfish to help keep their numbers under control. There were prizes for most fish per dive center, most fish per team, largest fish and smallest fish.     Here in Utila, spear guns are banned to help prevent over fishing.   Instead, the divers here use Hawaiian slings, which is basically a three pronged spear with a rubber band at the end....  quite nifty little things. One has to be very careful handling or really not handling lionfish because they are very poisonous.  One sting can cause immense swelling, fever and nausea.  For this reason we used tubes constructed from pipes to contain them whilst diving.   

Out dive center did VERY well.  We won most fish, largest fish at 30cm and smallest fish at 8 cm.   All and all there were over 300 lionfish slain that day. 

Not sure what my plans are at the moment, but going to stick around the island for a while and work in the shop I completed my course with - Deep Blue Divers. 

Diving Utila!

Through an unexpected turn of events I have found myself on an island.   Yes, an island that takes about 30 minutes to ride a bicycle around.   Not the best place for a cyclists, but one of the best places in the world to get my Dive Masters Scuba Certification.   

For non-divers, it is the necessary course needed to take paying customers out on chartered diving boats.  I have already completed my Emergency First Responder and Rescue Diver courses this past week and am looking forward to the next 2 months or so becoming more familiar with diving and working in a dive shop.  Utila is a small island in the once British Bay of Islands off the coast of Honduras.   It is well known for it's amazing diving, snorkeling and whale shark sightings.   Already I've seen dolphins, eagle rays and an abundance of tropical fish and corals.   The ocean water temperature is a warmer than most of the 'showers' on the island at a bathtub like temperature of 30C.   No wetsuits needed here!   Will post some photos later this week!

¡Me Voy!

I´m Off!   Have had a rocky start to the trip but all is going well so far.   For those of you who knew that my ankle wasn´t doing too hot - biking has been great and the only thing that is really bothering me is my ass!

So....  to start off...  TSA  ripped apart my bike box at the airport because they said it smelt like fuel....   well that would be my used stove.  They neraly confiscated my $100 stove!   It was horrifying watching them ´unpack´and my bike box.    Those that have ever put their bike in a box will understand.   All my carefully packed stuff was scattered all over!   Nearly missed my plane because of the whole ordeal, and I didn´t get to repack my stuff because they said it would be a breach of security!  

After all that I arrived in Cancun on Monday, but my bicycle did not.  The airlines said it might be there tomorrow....  all I could do was wait. I decided to take the bus to Puerto Morelos, a town suggested to me by my family, where I could await the arrival of my bike.    But then the bus broke down in the terminal... I wasn´t getting off to a great start.

The next afternoon when my box finally arrived it was in shreds.   The TSA agent put my bike in right side up, which means upside down....   the whole while it was resting on the back derailleur - which should make any cyclists cringe.   The bike itself didn´t suffer too much but it definitely needs some tuning!   At the end of the day TSA took nothing from me; however,  I ended up loosing the parts that I packed carelessly inside of my pot: the wind screen and the part I NEED to clean my stove which will render it useless after a few uses with Mexican gasoline.... my fault.

The ride south from Puerto Morelos to Tulum was fantastic!   The bike felt great and the ankle is doing fine.   Stopped at Cenote Choc Mool for a refreshing dip.

Camped at the same site that Eric and I camped last year on the ocean near Tulum.   Only this time I woke up screaming because there was a man outside my tent in the middle of the night!    It turned out to be the tourist police telling me I cannot camp there.   In my sleepy confusion I tried to explain that I had camped there before and that I was sorry and tired.   Instead I told them that I was sad....   I think they had sympathy for me because they let me pass the night there if I would promise to leave before the tourists arrive.  I thought I was a tourist?   Fair enough.    

The sunrise was well worth the scare the night before! 

 The Tulum ruins rest on the Caribbean shores and are spectacular! 

 There were heaps of gigantic lizards that call this place home and they can be seen everywhere!  The next two days ride were grueling in the heat and humidity.   Lucky enough there are plenty of shady bus stops to pass the mid afternoon heat! 

I passed the next night in Buena Vista located on the Laguna de Bacalar - the lake of seven colors.   You can see the different shades of green and blue throughout the day.

Went for an amazing kayak along the lake and met some locals from Chetumal that spoke English.   We chatted for a while about how safe Mexico really is and how the media creates fear in the people.  In reality, most of the country is filled with kind people.   While we were having this chat I was actually robbed.   Funny enough.  I left my tent with my things in the swimming area that was supposedly secure and watched by the tennants....  but one of the neighborhood kids managed to sneak in and rummage through my stuff.   He or she ran off with my bicycle pump, my day wallet, an Mp3 player, and a bag full of computer stuff - memory cards, chargers ext.   Lucky for me they didn´t take my real wallet nor my passport!   The community came together and went looking for the theif.   They searched the area and called the police.   Everyone came out to help.   It was quite the spectacle.  Three young men went searching and came back with everything except the Mp3 player.  I seem to have horrible luck with those things....  in the past year I´ve gone through 3 already:   one was broken while working in the pot room in Antarctica, another went on the fritz after it got disconnected during its first upload during the earthquake in Christchurch, NZ and this one got ripped off in Mexico....   All in all I came off very lucky given what could have passed.  Biking will be silent for a while, but it is better than not biking at all.   Hopefully I will learn a lesson from all this.    

Tomorrow I will depart Mexico for Belize.   It has great to get my legs back with an easy, flatish 350 km from Puerto Morelos to the border.   I enjoyed visiting Mexico again am looking forward to exploring more of Belize!

2009-10 Trip Recap

Calexico, California to Lago de Atitlan, Guatemala 

My friend Eric and I set out on bicycles from Calexico, CA in the hopes of reaching Tierra del Fuego - the southern tip of Chile.  For six months between 2009-2010 we cycled across Mexico and Belize before finally ending our trip at Lago de Atitlan, Guatemala.    Eric did an amazing job documenting our trip - he's an incredible photographer and writer.  You can view Eric's Blog for a full recap of our adventures or visit our route with google maps.  I would like to include a few pictures from the previous bicycle tour:

Starting off in Baja California.

Valle de Ciros

Cactus Decor

Yuccas burn very well.

Eric riding south of Los Barriles

Sand dunes near Guerrero Negro

Cathedral in San Ignacio

 Sunset in Mulege

Beach in La Paz - last day in Baja. 

This pine tree in really covered in Monarchs.   They come here by the billions to mate.   The males will then die and the females will fly back north to the Great Lakes region.   The journey takes seven life cycles.

The crazy steep and narrow streets of Taxco - famous for its silver mines.

Lost in the highlands of Oaxaca.

Inside a traditional Temezcal steam chamber.

Tikal - Guatemala

Lago Peten Itza

Sumec Champey

Market day

Atop the tallest peak in Central America - Volcan Tajumulco - 4220m/13845ft.

Decked out chicken bus.

Lago de Atitlan