20,000 blogs under the sea

And there we went...Part 2

Yes, I know, I know, we've been back for a couple of weeks now...I've been busy...here is some more of the Cozumel trip report.

The morning routine started with breakfast at 7am. The hotel restaurant offered a huge variety of breakie foods to choose from and the best papaya around! We were down at the Dive Paradise office for 8am to see which boat we were diving from. Once on board we set up in front of a tank & assembled our gear. Our boat dives were great even though most dives were on the slower boats. I know some people like to take the faster boats or even stay at resorts closer to the reefs but I don’t mind the slower boats and being farther away. Heck! You’re on vacation, what’s the hurry? Some of the sites were an hour away but I enjoyed being out on the water, soaking up the sun and talking with the other divers on the boat. We chatted with divers from Iowa, Texas, Ontario, & Florida as we headed towards the reefs.

Our dive day consisted of 3 dives. Two morning dives, a deep dive (max 90 ft) & a shallower dive (60 ft) and then a shallow afternoon dive.

The deep dives were beautiful. I was awe-struck by towers of coral, swim-throughs, huge sponge formations and colorful fish. The largest and friendliest queen angels I have ever seen swam around in pairs. We saw our first turtles & eagle ray at Palancar Caves. Palancar Gardens, Santa Rosa wall & Columbia Reef were all stunning.

The shallow dives offered tons of life. Wesley & Ryan were great at finding lots of spotted eels. I think we all heard Ryan scream “WOW” through his reg when George showed him a huge green moray under an overhang. There were so many fish it was hard to remember all of the different types.…Queen & French Angels, Parrotfish of every type (including a midnight and a couple of large rainbows), huge Groupers and Permit fish. Quite a few large stealth-like barracuda also cruised by. I think a favourite was Villa Blanca Wall as it’s where we got incredible fly-bys of huge Spotted Eagle Rays. It was really neat to look over at our group of divers suspended in awe. Another fish entertained us with his comedic antics of swimming close to our heads and biting through our bubbles. He was almost like a puppy as he followed along with us for quite a while. (He looked like a brown grouper but we really couldn’t figure out what he was). Tormentos was a wonderful dive site with a twist of having underwater sand dunes. What a sight! On our dives we also saw seahorses, a couple of nurse sharks, huge crab & lobsters. Balones of Chancanab, Los Palmos, Yucab Reef, San Francisco wall, Dahlia and Chancanab Shallows were our other shallow dives.

And there we went.... Part 1

The good news is we all had a blast in Cozumel. The bad news is the camera was not cooperating and I got only a handful of underwater pictures. What a huge bummer (almost as bad as finding out that Rupert got kicked off Survivor). No idea what was up with it. We tried everything we could to get it to work and were wondering if something got fudged when our bags got opened up & checked at the airport. Our final option (that we didn't have with us on the trip) is a bit of lube on the camera housing shutter release. We'll check how that works on the next dive this weekend.... now back to Coz with just a couple of pics.

After a 9:40 pm flight to Seattle, then a 11:45 pm flight to Houston, and then a 6:00 am flight to Cozumel, it seemed to forever before we would get in that warm turqoise water. Everyone seemed to be happy with their rooms at the Magic Sunset (formerly Brisas Cozumel, formerly Costa Club, formerly...). We got settled & after a quick bite geared up for our "welcome dive". What a pleasure donning our Bare Velocity 3mm wetsuits and 1/3 of the weight of what we are used to wearing. We all did a giant stride off the dock (some from higher up than this chicken) and giggled at the warmth & clarity of the water. The life was nothing compared to what was to come but it was still very nice to find a couple of lobster, a sharp-tailed eel, scorpion fish, a yellow stingray and a spotted drum. It was a great primer dive.

It took us all a few minutes & a few tries to organize how we were going to get into a routine for the week. Which gear was going to get washed here & stored there etc. It had been a long couple of days with only a few hours sleep, so we shuffled off to our rooms to prep for dinner. After dinner we forced ourselves to go for a walk into town, afterall we couldn't go to bed at 7pm...that would be 5pm Vancouver time! We hit the pillows at 8:30 already dreaming of the dives to come.