Update from Riviera Maya

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Ok, a little status update. I've been in Playa del Carmen for about 6-7 weeks now, although it feels a lot shorter. It took me almost two weeks to find a job and at the end I had almost given up on Mexico. But eventually I got lucky and walked into a dive shop the day after one of their instructors had quit. So I got a job freelancing in this relatively small dive shop, Diversity Diving, owned by a dutchman, Carlos. Being low season, there wasn't too much to do, only working every other day, on average, which isn't quite enough to make a living. However, things picked up in Semana Santa, a few days of me working 12 hour days which is good for the wallet. And an American family tipping me 220 USD for a three day course didn't hurt either. Afterwards, things have slowed down and I have actually had three days off, which is a bit frustrating... I get restless. I'm not really the kind of person to sit on a beach doing nothing, so I tend to spend my days off reading or hanging at bar Ranita, talking to people I know. Ranita is the bar where a lot of the divers go, so I've made a few friends and contacts here. The bar staff knows me too, so well that they have my beer ready for me before I even get to the bar, not sure if that is a bad or a good thing... Well, hopefully things will pick up soon and I'll be busier. The plan is to make enough money to pay for the plane ticket to Oz and then get a job on the great barrier reef. Well, that's the plan anyway, so we'll see, a few more months in Mexico maybe...

The diving here is good, but not great... Quite a lot of fish, but not so much corals. A couple of really good dive spots though, one called Tortugas, where you can see a dozen turtles on a single day if you're lucky. It's quite different from Honduras, where you have a lot of colorful corals, sponges, walls and cool features, but there is more, and bigger, fish here, big schools of grunts, tarpons, quite a few morays and stingrays, not too bad. There are sharks here as well, nurse sharks and bull sharks, but so far I've only seen one nurse shark (and that was in Cozumel). I'd really like to see some bull sharks before I leave... So, fingers crossed.

To those who are wondering when I'll be heading back home... I still don't know...

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