I have grown a huge like for caverns, the surfaces covered in sediment, the stangeness, the emptyness, and shear beuaty attracts me.

Previously I have had the opportunity to dive the Dos Ojos centote, but this day we set out to dive Kukulkan and Chac-Mool both cenotes in the Chac-Mool system. Again both dives were done as caverndives, and our guide made sure we had a good understanding of the nature and technicalities of cavern diving before we begang the dive.

Both caverns were sufficiently deep to have halocline (meeting of fresh and salt water). The halocline is similar to the termocline (meeting of warm and cold saltwater), but when the halocline layer gets mixed the visibility gets severly blured (much more than in termocline). At some point I wonered that it would be easy to become disorientated in the halocline if it was not possible to use the cavern line as a reference. The halocline is hovever also absolutly amazing; It was beuatiful to see the cloud of mixed water from the finn-kick of the diver in front me; The way the layers shone when not mixed and the funny experience of beeing able to turn your head so that half your mask was in the halocline and half was out was just some of the cool moments I had duing the dives.

Both caverns beuaty also related to the places where the light penetrated, the effects was beuatiful, from the laser light in Kukulkan to the leaves on the surface in the Chac-Mool. It was hard to concentrate both on taking it all in, do photos and make sure my boyancy was correct

Angelita

I had seen a video of divers entering the sulfid layer og Angelita, so diving this hole was top on my list of things to do while in Playa del Carmen. The dive was planed and we left early in order to be some of the first divers at the site. I was bobeling with excitement as we sat in the car being given a thoughrow instruction by the dive guide.

The dive itself fully indfriede my expectations. As we entered the still and blank surface and the wather gave way for our decent in the somewhat murky wathers (visibility app. 8m), we decended and at 20 m the visibility became better. The water smelled of the rootten leaves and wood. We stopped just above the sulfitlayer in the hole, and nothing I had envisoned could meassure up to what I saw; It was simply breathtaking. We formed a circle of divers above the sulfit layer, and as sky-divers fell we through the layer into the dark below. Back above the layer we played around and watched our guide jump from a treetrunk into the sulfit layer. In the end we slowly accented while swiming round. We came out and quickly decided, that it had been such a good dive, truely wonderful and amazing. Not a least because we where the first divers that day; The sulfitlayer was so clearly marked, and the visibility was better than on most days.

We went on toward Gran cenote. This one was quite special since it contained small stalemites/staleklites eveywhere. The swimthrougs were smaller and there wher plenty of dark areas around. In addition this cenote also had a nice halocline. This was surely a cavers I was glad to have dived, in addition to the beuaty the cavern also included some narower parts where you needed to focus a bit in order to swim throught without toutching.

More cenotes…

While in Playa del Carmed, I have done almost all the diving possible, and after a few days of rough sea (no sea-diving), I had done all the most often dived cenotes. The divecenter was hovever very accomodating and assured me that they would find something new for me to dive the next day. I was therefore both gratefull and happy when the diving was arranged so that we could dive the caverns Tajmahal and Chikin-HA

The Chikin-HA cenote was at an adventure site not far outside Playa del Carmen, here people could go and do snorkeling / biking / slide anlong a line and generally spend the day. None of this hovever interfered with the possibility for divers to get into the cenote.

Both divesites generally seemed to consist more of larger pices of rock, and have darker places than eg. Dos Ojos. But the light shows was also very amazing. In Chikin-HA we dived from one opening to an other, and in the second one the surface (since no-one snorkeled or entried the wather) was really amazing, it looked like ice flakes floating around. In addition there was a stone that looked like a triangel almost falling down.

The Tajmahal dive was done as a 8 around two openings the Tajmahal and the sugar bowl air dromes. We surfaced in the sugarbowl and enjoyed the beuaty of the lians drinking from the surface (not to mentioning the spiders, though not so beuatyfull).

On the way back we wathed the light like a lazer hiting the surface and breaking and I also saw small pieces of rainbow in the wather.

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I had teamed up with an other girl for a few days of diving on the island of Cozumel just of the coast from Playa del Carmen.

Cozumel is the one place I have come acros that has the largest amount of dive shops (perhaps Sharm el Sheik has the same amount); It seemed like every other shop in the island city was a dive shop, an every respectable hotel had their own dive-center (I was told 1500 dives per day was done from this 14×53 km island). We were booked to dive with Deep Blue, but it would have been easy to find a dive center, even without pre-booking. We also easily found accomondation for the night in a hotel downtown close to the dive center.

Cozumel has some deeper dive oppotunities compared to Playa Del Carmen, and we soon where on our way to Colombia to do our first dive. The divesite started of with big coralboulders with swim throughs etc. and the dive ended at the reef wall where we drifted along looking at the fauna. We saw a barracuda, turtles and a spotted eagle ray and decided when we came up that it had been a good dive. The second dive was at Paso del Cedral; the dive started at with a app. 40 m wide strip of sand in between the coral walls the strip seemed to continue to eternity (or at least as long as the eye could see). The current was quite powerfull, which meant you needed to put in quite a lot of effort to go and see the different points of interests the guide pointed out to you on the way. Again I think we was quite lucky, and the dive included crabs, the special fishXXX, small cleaner fish, small/medium/hudge morray eels, turtles and a small shark. When we came up (after a somewat extendet safety stop), everyone agreed that it had been really good. And to top it of we came acros a group of dolphins on our way back to the harbor… All there is to say that some days you apparently get to see it all…

The second day the surface was carmer than the first, so the plan was to go to the well known place of Punta Sur. Unfortunally the visibility was not very good which made it impossible for the captain of our bout and for our dive guide to find the right spot. In situations like this is it hard not to wish for either a marking of the divesites or the use of other means of identification (GPS, ekkolod etc.). In the end it was decided that we did an other dive, and we therefore dived Colombia once more. This time we went trough more small tunels before we began our swim along the wall. It was a nice dive, but it would be impossible for it to live up to the wonders of the previous day. The secon dive was done at Yucab, shallow compared to Colobia, but with a very beuatifull fauna, more fish that I could possibly descibe, and sufficient time to see a lot. We swam around and had time to explore the different boulders of coral, and I was really surprised when I realized, that we had been diving for 40 minutes. I have never seen so big fish (parrotfish, groupers etc) as I have here, also because they came quite close.

All in all 2 very nice days diving Cozumel. I would love to go back and do more diving in this spot. I would hovever like to bring my own buddy, or if that was not possible take great care identifying my buddy for the dive and talk over with the person, just exactly my expectations of a buddy where. I write these last lines because it seemed that some og the dives actually just dived around alone, and that is not the way I would like to dive.

In addition I think you must not be shy to ask for the type of dive breefing you are most comfortable with. Briefings seems to be very short – at least from the two guides we had the opportunity to dive with.

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The top northern reef

When I was asked, if I wanted to come along to the northern part of the Playa reef, a part not dived every day, I was not in doubt – I wanted to go.

The first dive site was Los Archos, here we did the first deep dive of the trip (31 m). The dive was a drift dive and there where many beautiful corals. We also dived through the arches; The first one was more of a tunnel, but nice none the less. The reef was very untouched, and therefore very beautiful, and hence it was possible to see that some of the other reefs had been dived a lot, and probably also had been marked by some of the hurricanes. The second dive was at Cerebros, and it was a nice reef dive with lots of fish. The dive was around a large number of corral boulders, and it was possible to swim around in the body-teams in order to discover the most interesting creatures and features.

Turtels and sea horses

One of the things that I would love to see was turtles, and the place to go for turtles is Tortugas, so naturally I had to go there… The ride there was quite bumpy in the small hard-bottom boats, and waves kept sweeping the boat leaving everything soaking wet, but apparently this type of condition was ordinary (next time I’ll do a sea sick tablet). The water wasn’t crystal clear, but when we saw the first turtle I forgot all about that and tried to do a photo. While we drifted we encountered 5-6 turtles, and I was happy. In addition to the turtles there was also several trunk fish, many small reef fish and a large shoals of very big unidentified fish.After what seemed like forever to a seasick person (me), we were told to kit up for the second dive of the day. Being seasick I decided not to bring my camera (what a mistake), and we quickly descented at the “Barracuda” dive site.The dive site was quite crowded, a bit like what you might encounter in the Red Sea, but everybody seemed eager to help each other to point to the most interesting creatures under water… and for the first time I saw a sea horse. I was absolutely beautiful, I in that moment I could have kicked myself for not bringing the camera along. Not only where there seahorses, on a coral almost next to it 3 flamingo tongues resided. I had come to heaven, no doubt about it. The dive continued with a big sea turtle, big crabs, different kind of trunkfish (and many of them), morays and fish… fish, fish, fish. From the soldierfish to the stoplight Parrotfish they all seemed decided to make this dive one of the most diverse I have experienced. Only thing to be done about missing out on the photo op for seahorses was to do another dive at Barracuda. Luckily we did find seahorses again, and I was happy. We also had the chance to enjoy a turtle eating. My buddy and I was fortunate to be able to spend perhaps 5 minutes watching how it grabbed and tore of a chunk of corral while Grunts tried to grab the smaller pieces.  In Playa del Carmen there is one small wreck. The former Shrimp boat is quite small and probably not really worth visiting; at least compared to some of the beautiful wrecks of the Red Sea. It does however makes a nice change from the reef diving.

Going deep and seeing a shark

The shark season has long gone, a thing I knew before I came to Playa. One of the lesser busy days at the dive centre, it was just me and a guide going diving. We ended op being the guide, me and one of the other guides from the dive centre (the last one doing some fun diving). We went to Moe Che deep, the deep reef at Moe Che and it was great fun and beautiful. Since we were doing no compression diving and had had a bit of a swim we could not stay long close to the reef drop off. We did however stay quite some time a good 5-10 m above the reef. All of a sudden the fun diving guide signals for us to come and see something, and there on a sandy shelf lays a nurse shark. Later we also see a Marlin swimming in the distance.     The second dive this day is very shallow, but after a deep dive (40m) and a very short surface interval that is also nice. At the second dive site Chun Zumbul I had plenty of time to use the camera. Flamingo tounges, parrot fish, pipe sea horses, reef fish etc. All in all a very nice days diving, with the perfect combination of fish, depth and diversity.

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This blog entry was written by a good friend of mine, Alice Jensen who has the pleasure of being in Mexico at the moment. (lucky girl)

Already in the car from the airport, it is clear what this area is all about, as a segregator large coloured figures of seashells and fish leads the way; I do not know weather to laugh or cry.I’m going to dive with “Yucantan divers”, and when I arrive at the dive centre the next morning, they are nice and helpful and we arrange that I come back to diver later that morning.I live next to the dive centre, hence I spend the next hours watching an open water course and a scuba review in the hotel swimming pool; quite entertaining.Jarolines and Shangri LaThe dives on the near by reefs starts in the dive centre where all the kit is collected and carried on transport bikes to the beach where the dive boat is anchored – the walk from the centre is app. 10 min, and even in our wetsuits and booties that constitutes no problem, though I hardly feel smart when I cross the high street.The reefs are nothing like anything I’ve seen before. They do not contain a lot of different colours, instead they sort of looks a lot like how I’ve always imagined Mexico; dusty and with the western-feel you might remember from the movie “Babel”. There however the comparison stops. From the beginning of the first dive I’m amazed with the amount and diversity of fish; They are all over and in amounts and sizes I have not experienced before. I see huge moray ells, Soldierfish, Squirrelfish, Grunts, flounder, triggerfish, cleanerfish and large shoals of different fish. We do two dives this day at Jarolines and Shangri La, since we are no deeper than 10 m the light an colours is still good, and we only need a short break between the two. On both dives we drift along an easy current making it comfortable to lie and watch the fish.Dos OjosI was very excided by the thought of cenotes. Since I’m no cave diver, the dives would be cavern dives (no more than 40 m, always with acces out etc.).The day started a bit on the down side, with us having to wait for the bus to take us to the Dos Ojos site, it was longsome, but it the end I think it became an advantage.Dos Ojos (app. 45 min. from Playa Del Carmen), is a cenotesystem a good quarter of an hour of the main road towards Tullum. The divesite it well developed with a small shop that sells oft drinks and snacks, an eco toilet, and benches where it is possible to place your gear. The way down to the main entrance is good with easy steps, and the cenote itself looks wonderful when you walk down towards it.We did two dives; Barbi-line and Bat cave. They where quite different but both very worthwhile and I hardly noticed, that the maximum depth was 10 m. The first dive was all about the light for me; diving around the small holes where light came into the water the reflections and colouring was a new world to me. The second dive was a lot darker, and midway we entered the bat cavern. Here it was possible to breath above the water, and in the ceiling you could see bats – really beautiful.When we came to the dive site, it was full of divers, and I feared that it would be horrible, but it turned out to be very nice; a lot of the other divers had there lunch when we did our 1. dive and also on the 2. dive there seemed to be even fever divers, a thing that was confirmed when we came out of the water and the majority of divers had left.

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Poseidon has created a new Rebreather specially for the recreational market. This rebreather has been design together with some very experienced divers, like Bill Stone and Richard Pyle. The interesting thing about this rebreather is that, it is made specially for recreational diving, and not technical diving like other rebreathers.

The first version of the Cis Lunar Mk. VI will only allow you to dive to a max depth of 40 meter, and only on nitrox. So no playing around with trimix and stuff like that.

Another smart move, is you don’t have to spent time packing your scrubber, they come prepacked, this will of course be a little more expensive compared to doing it yourself, but i am a lazy person, so I love the idea.

I am looking forward to hear what people think about it once it has been released to the public in a month or two.

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