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So, with everyone telling me that its been raining back in Blighty and the stockmarket is collapsing, its a good job that the World Cup is about to start and Wayne Rooney is fit to lead us to glory in the Fuhrer's back yard!
Games over here kick off at 7am, 10am and 1pm local time. I have therefore used my crystal ball and forecasted many an all day drink-athon, which is helpfully aided by the lack of licensing laws here, and the local bars willingness to open for 6.30am.........
Could get messy, VERRRRRRY messy!
To make it better, I've moved out of my last place, Tina's, (The roof leaked when it rained) into a flat with a German guy called Jurg who's doing his divemaster on the island too. Whilst he's got the double bed and I've got the single, I have managed to hang my England shirt under the TV, though he did draw the line at kissing the badge! God I hope we do well, and they are rubbish!!
Anyway, days here have taken on a routine: Up at 7.30, don my shorts and t-shirt and stroll over the soccer pitch to the dive
shop for 8am. The boat leaves at 9.30am for one of the dive sites around the islands. We do 2 dives and usually get back around 2-3pm-ish. We then clean the gear and thats it for the day! The rest of the day is spent playing backgammon, sleeping, having dinner, and heading to the beach for drinks before bed calls and it all starts again!
Diving has been awesome. Done so many different things! Highlights include:
Diving the Great Blue hole: Made famous by Jacques Cousteau in 1971. Check out the pictures:
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/photography/galleries/belize/photo2.html
You dive to 130ft (40 metres), where there is an overhang with lots of stalactites. You weave in and out of them as you are shadowed by about a dozen reef sharks. They try to intimidate you by swimming directly at you before veering off down into the deep! Quite spooky to think that they know you are there WAAAY before they allow you to see them! We then headed to Booby Island for lunch! Needless to say I took lots of pictures of boobies and will be posting them here shortly. Apparently Boobies are very rare in Europe!?!
Another highlight is guiding my first group yesterday. I was leading a group of 5 customers on 2 wall dives at about 70ft. Was there swimming around the coral wishing we saw something big when a huge loggerhead turtle swam right in front of me! Saw a gorgeous spotted Eagle ray on the second dive too, so was well chuffed!
On the way back from another dive last week, the boat came into a pod of about 100 dolphins, which was really cool! They kept following the boat, and swimming as fast as they could alongside it before jumping out of the water right in front of it! They were even doing twirls and all sorts - little show offs!
Saw a big manatee on a dive the other day too........
Also been helping out with students, and did my first bit of teaching today - teaching students how to do skills under water - mask removal, regulator recovery, bcd removal etc. Really good fun!
One not so fun incident, however, was when I was doing one of my Dive Master exercises. Myself and an instructor are 20m underwater, and whilst sharing one regulator, you have to swap all your gear (mask, fins, and bcd). The thing is that you both have to remove your mask at the same time. So I took a big breath from the regulator, passed it over to the instructor, and we both took off our masks. Only problem was that my breath then ran out, so I'm 20m underwater with no regulator and neither of us having a mask on to see where each other was! I had to take a massive gulp of seawater before I got the regulator back! My god did I breathe!! Fortunatley managed to carry on and complete it, but was a bit hairy for a moment...........
Well thats about it for the moment. Got about a week left here, before heading to Tikal in Guatemala, via San Ignacio. Met lots of nice people, some who are travelling, and others who are just on holiday and have to go back to work! ;0) Must admit I don't miss sitting in an office whilst the aircon plays havoc with my sinuses (haven't had any probs at all)!
Hope you are all well, and missing you all lots. Write soon, and let me know whats going on and what you're all up to!
Come on England!!
Tim
p.s. COME ON ENGLAND!!
p.p.s COME ON ENGLAND!!
p.p.s. No really, COME ON ENGLAND!!
Oh, and don't forget Costa Rica on Friday!
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Chundy
non-member comment
Sounds great
Good to see your having fun, and that timezones won't interfere with traditional World Cup watching techniques!!