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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