October 15, 2006

8:49—About the job, well, the diving's not bad. The water is actually really warm for a lake at this altitude - it's 23C at the moment and doesn't dip much below 20C year round. Thank the volcanoes for that. There aren't many fish—about six species or so, including the black bass that was introduced in the '70s as a sport fish and nearly decimated much of the local populations. Never really worked well as a sport fish, either—but the crabs are plenty and there are spectacular rock formations and plunging volcanic walls. Old Mayan pottery has been found throughout the lake, and there are some petrifying trees close to shore, testament to the water's rise and fall over the last millenium.









Probably one of the most interesting features of the lake are the geothermal hotspots. Apparently the only other place in the world where you could dive in such an area is Hawaii, and the fact that our diveable hotspots are also at altitude makes us pretty unique. In the place where we dive, you can see the fault line coming down the side of the mountain into the lake.


I usually finish the dive here, looking for the telltale microbubbles that form on the sand in the hottest areas. You can dig your hands about six inches down into the silt before it gets too hot to touch. Great way to warm up at the end of a dive.

But it's still low season (the end of the wet) so I only dive every other day or so. The rest of the time I drink too much and hang out with hot backpackers. And try to get some work done around the place.

My divemaster left for home less than a week after I arrived, so I'm now the only dive staff here. Which is pretty cool—the owners let me run the show. But I need to put a lot of time into getting the place organized and running the way I want. Which means cleaning up and servicing a lot of the equipment (seems no one bothered even to rinse the equipment after dives in the past, which is standard practice, by the way, and now everything is grimy and gungy—I've already spent a couple of afternoons taking apart masks and snorkels, scrubbing them with brillo pads and putting them back together again), inventorying everything, cleaning the dive centre from head to toe, getting my classroom set up (it used to be an internet room but hasn't been used in months and consequently was filled with cobwebs and dust), etc. It's a great opportunity for anyone who wants to get some management experience but there's lots of work to do and I desperately need a divemaster trainee just for the sake of having an extra set of hands to help me get through it all in the next four months. If I do manage to get through all the necessary stuff I've also got my own little side projects that I'd like to work on—developing a little field guide to the fish and other animals in the lake, and a little flyer on the lake's natural history. But I don't have time to research any of that yet.

We're short-staffed on the hostel side of things at the moment so I also help out in the kitchen with the evening meals regulargly. And, since I don't get paid a salary (yet—though the business plan around here is about to change and I'll be pushing for a wage when it does), just commission off dives and courses, I've got an interest in seeing this place be full of potential divers. So I've been working on posters to market both the hostel and the dive centre, plus new diving price lists and a poster for a biweekly lake-wide scavenger hunt that we hope will become a big draw. Which explains my absence here.

Anyway, I've got two dives this morning (if my diver isn't too hung over from last night's barbecue party, which is a distinct possibility), and there's a coffee with my name on it somewhere.