Wednesday, January 17, 2007: FREEDOM!!!!

It's the end of an era. After one final night on the piss to fete the end of the Iguana Red Team...




...not to mention some giggly goodbyes to the chicas in the kitchen...


...I finally broke free. I'm leaving the lake! I'm leaving the laaaake!!! For a week, anyway. After a couple of failed departures and missed boats Airek, Alice, Jimmy and I waved goodbye to the Iguana from our private lancha with the whole of the remaining Iguana team waving back. Even though I'm coming back, and even though I've needed this holiday more with every day I stayed, it was strange to be going so far from home for so long. This is only the second time I've left the lake in the three and a half months I've been there, and the other time was just for one night. I've barely set foot off Iguana property since my arrival in this country. C'est l'aventure!

[I did make sure that I didn't leave the diving centre high and, er, dry, before leaving; Andy, the new instructor, arrived last Saturday, just in time for the cross-dressing party (I gave him fair warning...) and a few orientation dives. I think he's going to fit right in]:


Airek and I timed our holiday to coincide with Alice's departure so we could all go to Tikal together before she flew back to London. Then we convinced Jimmy to wait another night before leaving so we could leave en masse. Spent our first night off the lake in Antigua, the tourist capital of Guatemala where thousands of young people go to study Spanish. Heads as big as they were from our many tresspasses the night before, it was supposed to be just a quiet night between the four of us, but when the Black Cat hostel pub crawl found us over dinner there was no going back. What the hell, if you're gonna have a(nother) last night, may as well make it a good one.

Hard to fully appreciate Antigua on a hangover, but even so, I don't quite get it. There was far less colour and colonial architecture than all those photos I'd seen over the last few months had led me to believe, and all the students who hang out there for weeks rave about what a happening town it is when they come to the Iguana, but it didn't seem like that exciting a place. Okay, no shortage of funky little bars and cafes on the main drag—I could've been in downtown Ottawa—but beyond that there's nothing. Still, the city was plenty big to give me a bit of reverse culture shock: people! cars! our choice of said funky bars and cafes! people fashionably dressed! and what's with all the scary looking guards with massive guns?

Probably Antigua's most famous sight:


Street scape the morning after the night before:


This one's for the fam. T-I-T, I-A-N. Honest to God. I bet she's an actress and an entertainer.


(For more photos of Antigua, check out Antigua Daily Photo.)

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btw... managed to finish off Alice's and Jimmy's open water training before we left, and squeezed on staff dive in before the end.


Definitely a lot more fun for all the people who didn't have to worry about counting heads every couple of minutes in low-visibility water, but a good laugh nonetheless. I'm now in Flores waiting for Alice to finish her final exam so Airek and I can catch the bus to Rio Dulce and go hook up with Rusty.

Horizons and islands and skies full of blue

News on the job front, from the latest email:

"I'm going to place you on the S/V Mandalay, which is currently sailing the entire Caribbean chain from Grenada to Antigua on two-week cruises, and then will head to Panama in May to be based out of the San Blas Islands. I've recently obtained the world's exclusive dive rights to dive in the San Blas islands, so this will be a bit of an "exploratory" summer and we'll have some press coverage, etc. as it will be the first time the reef has been dived inside the Kuna Yala indians' tribal lands. I have some meetings next month in S. Africa and Costa Rica, but afterwards I'm hoping to have time to go back down to Panama and actually find/mark dive sites with a GPS for you. Otherwise I'll ask you to do that the first couple weeks on that itin."

Making exploratory dives on virgin reefs which possibly NOBODY has ever dived before? Aw, do I have to?

San Blas islands, by the way, are phenomenal. I'd never heard of them until the other day when Romi and Justin noticed them on the Windjammer itinerary and mentioned that they'd been there recently. They didn't just mention them, though: they absolutely raved about them. And they only saw the surface.

For my training, I'm staring with S/V Legacy in Tortola on Febrary 11. I'll sail two weeks from the BVIs to St. Maarten, and will then be flown to St Lucia to join Mandalay which is, by the way, the "queen of the fleet." And for all you science kids out there, evidence gathered on her (earlier, duh) voyages confirmed the theory of continental drift. How cool is that?

Apparently my first month on the Mandalay will be a wacky, fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants affair as there will be several different and disparate charter groups: gay naturists, world cricket cup sports enthusiasts, Pepsi India, etc. They hope I'm up for it.

Up for it? I'll be dreaming of it for the next four weeks as I make my dive briefings and describe all four species of fish we can see in the lake along with all those big rocks and, ooh, don't forget the hot mud.

The new instructor's arriving here on Saturday, which gives me a few days to orient him before leaving next week with Airek and Alice for some much needed rest and a bit of backpacking around the country to check out some ruins and stuff. The timing couldn't be better—when I get back I'll barely have two weeks left before it's time to go. Wow. I can hardly believe this is happening!

January 8, 2007: Fair winds and full sails

Looks like I'm Caribbean-bound, mateys. I just got emailed a tentative job offer with Windjammer Barefoot Cruises as the Dive Mate aboard one of their tall ships. I'll soon be living on one of these beauties:





Don't know exactly which ship it will be yet, but c'mon, do I care? They all look pretty flippin' sweet.

It's not a diving liveaboard, just a ship full of holidayers with a few divers thrown in. I'll be responsible for organizing dives for certified (but mainly beginner and intermediate) divers and running snorkelling and intro dives for non-divers. When there isn't any diving to be done, I'll help the Activities Mate with coordinating and accompanying "rainforest hikes, river tubing, etc." Not bad.

Windjammer's ships carry 70 to 100 passengers per week, plus 35-45 crew. Cruises run from Sunday to Saturday, so crew have Saturday night free (which is one night more per week than I have now). Passengers are usually ashore each day on various excursions, and are back onboard by 5pm for Snacks & Rum Swizzles. The evening are usually filled with deck games such as hermit crab races, trivia challenges, sailing classes etc. and at night there is usually some type of theme party such as PPP or “Pirates, Pimps, Prostitutes” costume night. When I originally interviewed for this job before coming to Guatemala, it was the schmoozing over rum swizzles, stupid deck games and costume parties that worried me most. After living here for the last few months, I think I'm ready for it.

I'm also ready for some big fat Amercian tips, which, along with commission off dives and snorkelling, make up the bulk of the pay. For that, I think I can overlook the cheesy crew uniforms:

Can't wait to get on the phone with the guy who's hiring me to work out the details! I'm soooo excited!

December 2006: We don't always drink...

Lest you think that I'm turning into a raging alcoholic (I'm not even close to drinking as much as what I did when I worked at that restaurant in the Alps, by the way, so no worries), there are some quieter moments at the Iguana too. Or at least, one's that don't involve as much booze.

Every year the Iguana organizes a Christmas party for the kids in the pueblo up the hill (though there is no drinking at the party, it is booze-related: all those ridiculous looking dots of paint you've seen on all those drunk faces? Q1 from each flavoured vodka shot on Saturday nights helps fund the Christmas party and other projects in the village).

Look at that face: how could you not want to throw her a party?


So one sunny afternoon the Iguana staff piled into the back of one of the two village pickup trucks that ply the one road in town that goes from the public docks up the hill to town, and back again. We brought with us apples and oranges and candies and empty coffee cans and rope and some old potato sacks, and before we knew it the village square was full of three-legged races and sack races and ball tosses and bobbing for apples and all the old-school fair games you ever forgot about.


We had simple prizes like pencils and erasers and whistles and other noisy things. The worst part of the day was at the end, when we tried to give away what was left of the prizes. The giver-outers just narrowly missed being taken down by mobs of kids.


Later we had a nice walk home...


And, okay, I admit it, we did have a beer after. But it was a quiet one. Look at how pensive we are:



I'd just like to add here that Romi's so hot that Airek would still have her, given the chance, despite her hairy armpits. Now that's saying something.

Nanook: the only man for me. (Only because apparently Prince fucking Charming doesn't stay in youth hostels.)



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A couple days before the Christmas rush, we even managed to sit down and break bread with the entire hotel staff—gringos and Guatemaltecos together (doesn't happen often. Then again, just us gringos sitting down at a table to eat dinner together doesn't really ever happen, either). The chicas came in extra early that morning and busted their asses making mounds of tamales, which we shared for lunch. Another Iguana tradition.


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In December we also had a couple of rebreather divers come down and use our place as a base for some exploratory dives of the lake. They use closed-circuit scuba so they don't make bubbles when they breathe under water, and they've got some specialized gas-blending equipment built into their scuba units so they can stay under water longer and go significantly deeper (in the neighbourhood of 100m) than what you can with open-circuit scuba, or at least, not without a lot of spare tanks hanging off you. They were keen to give us a go but I honestly didn't have any time off the whole month so in the end I never got in the water with them. To be honest I'm not sure how keen I am. The no bubbles thing is cool, but the computers and technical gadgetry it involves is a bit scary, no matter how fail-safe it is and how many safety redundancies are built in.

Bill and Keith weren't just here for diving—they also appreciate a good time. Bill's an ex-Navy Seal, though. I get the feeling that an Iguana good time is pretty tame in his experience (I mean, look how blasé he looks...). This man has lived, travelled and dived all over the world, and has probably seen more than I can ever hope to dream (though I'll pass on the killing bit). He also has more diving qualifications than I even knew existed and manages a massive dive centre in Virginia (www.vascuba.com). If it weren't so impossible for me to work in the States I might have tried to curry a little more favour... Instead I left it to the dirty blonde with the Blue Steel looks.
(I'd just like to point out, by the way, that that pink fluffy thing on top of the fridge belongs to Airek. It's his boa.)


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Despite how busy I've been this month, I've made some time to get in the water with some of the staff. Took Jimmy and Airek on their first dive a couple weeks ago, and my project this week is to get Jimmy through his Open Water in our joint spare time in between guiding fun dives, filling tanks, restocking the bar, checking people in, etc. It really is worth finding the time, though—I love teaching friends to dive!


Oh, good news: I've finally got a colleague! After two false alarms, I think I've finally managed to land another diver—though he's not here yet so who knows. Says he's arriving on Friday. He's an instructor so he can take over for me when I leave in a couple months. Or possible sooner, depending on how my latest job application pans out. Can't say what it is, though, cause I might jinx it.

December 2006: Iguana Red Team

The last month has been a blur. Thanksgiving ushered in a new era at the Iguana. With Danielle, Ruth and Flo's leaving, Jimmy and Alice's arrival and Airek's enthronement as Bar Manager, December saw the full-on establishment of the Nuevo Iguana and what I personally refer to as Iguana Red Team (to distinguish it from all other Iguana teams past and yet to come).


Sadly, that's the only team photo I've got. Here's another one, sin Jimmy:


This team has lasted, with no comings or goings, longer than any other team since I've been here—and there are enough staff that we can actually have a shift rota. We also genuinely enjoy spending time together, which is our downfall. We're like a bedraggled bunch of Breakfast Club misfits: the problem is that this detention hall serves alcohol. Day after day for the past month has had us moaning into our morning coffee, cursing our hangovers and sleepy heads and vowing to make the next night a quiet one. We even did manage to have a couple of movie nights all cozied up on the floor of the dive classroom. But since one of the gang always had to stay behind to run the bar, our team spirit usually prevailed and more often than not our "quiet nights" involved finishing off the previous Saturday's batch of flavoured vodka shots before they went bad. Not always a good idea... but it does make darts more interesting.




Anyway, whoever let a little work get in the way of having fun? Things start to get a little suspicious when the staff have bigger bar bills than the guests, though...

(Alice and Jimmy)


(Did I mention I cut my hair?)


(Justin and Airek)


(Alice and Rich. Rich finally got what he wanted this year: his very own pair of massive breasts. Oh, the possibilities...)


Besides our random (but regular) hey-it's-Wednesday-let's-have-a-party parties, December was a pretty eventful month. The last week of the month so a near week of rock-star calibre partying, starting with Rich's birthday on Christmas eve—which followed directly on the heels of a stellar Saturday night: no chance for recovery. After starting the day off with mimosas, and despite the rising panic over Christmas dinner preparations, Rich whisked the staff off to the lake's hot springs, where we spent the next several hours drinking Cuba libres and soaking in the sun while Deedle ran the business (maybe not the most responsible or charitable of actions, but what the hell. At least we took all the hotel guests with us...). Hedge, the wealthy English finance guy who lives next door and has more money than sense, came out in his fancy speedboat and plied us with more booze and and a few spliffs—including Deedle's 83-year-old father, who mocked us as only an 83-year-old Englishman who's never worked a day in his life could from his perch on Hedge's ridiculously fast boat, joint in one hand and bottle of wine in the other. When our hired boat got tired of waiting and took the group back to the hotel, the stragglers piled into Hedge's boat and cruised around the lake with still more joints and rum. Which are very hard to consume when you're going at James Bond speed, I might add.

The afternoon went from 007 to Mission Impossible when a phone call from Deedle had us on a last-minute stopover in Pana to buy cream and butter for Christmas dinner. We made a grand entry, which was probably the best thing about the whole affair. Just picture it: stylish little jet boat appraoches the public docks at stupidly high speed with our heroes on board (Cuba libres in hand) sweeping out a wide arc as it closes in on the shore. Just as we pull into the beach, Rich makes a perfect swan dive off the bow, and we've arrived. We. Are. So. Cool. Barefoot, still in our swim suits, significantly intoxicated and in possession of 20Q from Hedge (about US$3), Alice and I found ourselves marching through the streets of Pana desperately searching for a tienda that could sell us the necessary goods. We walked an hour to the supermarket only to find that a pound of butter and a litre of cream cost Q71.25. Fortunately I'd found another Q50 in my pocket, so we only had to beg the cashier for an extra 1.25, but that still meant we were out of cash for the tuk-tuk ride back to the docks. We hailed one anyway and upon arriving at the docks, I waited as insurance against payment while Alice went back to the boat to get the cab fare. When we finally got back to our bored and disgruntled shipmates, who'd been waiting well over an hour for us, Rich clarified the directions for us: we'd only needed to stop in at our office and pick up the shopping bags that were already paid and waiting for us. Thanks for nothing.

Safely back at the Iguana and with Christmas preparations safely out of the way, we continued to celebrate the birth of our lord Richard Kerr.

Until the next day when we feted Christmas.


Then Boxing Day.

Then New Year's.


But Justin's birthday is when it really got out of hand. Though he doesn't work directly for the Iguana, he's basically our in-house energy manipulator (masseur, he says, is too narrow a label). He's been here longer than most staff, and his girlfriend Romi is an integral part of the Iguana team, so he's pretty much one of us whether he wants to be counted in or not. He celebrated his 40th birthday two days before New Year's Eve and it was a, er, memorable evening—though I'd managed to wipe a few of the night's events from my memory until seeing photographic evidence the next morning.





I don't know how this happened. I have no words for this.

Anyway, to quote an old friend, we partied more than rock stars. And I'm still waiting for a day off work...

Thursday, November 24, 2006: Thanksgiving

Ok, so, American Thanksgiving. It was a bit of a bigger deal than Canadian Thanksgiving the month before (when I was given three measly chickens to stuff and no cranberries...

...but whatever. I still knocked their socks off with the pumpkin pie. So much that before I even knew I'd be cooking, my pie was on the Thanksgiving menu.

Spent the day before Thanksgiving in the kitchen prepping stuffing, turkeys, carrots, potatoes, gravy, pumpkin, the works. We even had cranberries to make a sauce.


It being Danielle's first Thanksgiving ever, she had the honour of stuffing our three turkeys, a task she undertook with unbridled enthusiasm.
Almost too much enthusiasm...

Forgot to get a shot of the finished products. But, well, they looked like three roasted turkeys. I'm sure you can all imagine.

The scene in the kitchen on Thanksgiving Day was general mayhem: it was our second day in the new kitchen and dining room and we were set to feed 70 people. Where's the grater? The funnel? More towels! Serving spoons! The garlic! But never fear, the team's all here; we pulled through, and in the end there were even a few leftovers. The pies were a hit, too. Especially the special staff pie (not shown).
I swear I had nothing to do with that particular act of sabotage.

After working for two days to prepare a full home-style menu—not to mention it being our first big night in the new place and Danielle's official last night (though for, um, health reasons, she was unable to vacate the premises for another 36 hours, but how were we to know?)—we were due for a bit of a par-tay.



Rich lets loose grown-up fancy-pants New Iguana-style (note the wine glass) after months of hair-pulling to get the place ready.


Have bar, will dance. A new Iguana tradition begins (the ceiling was too low in the old place to allow for such shenanigans or we'd have been all over it then, too.)










Rich and a star-spangled Rusty.


Danni shows Rich the love one last time.


And, for posterity, one last pic of me and Danni.


It was a muy feliz acion de grace para todos a la Iguana!