Dykkeren

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.

No Comments »