Ed and Beth's July 1999 Cozumel Trip
(Subtitled: Diving into Reckless Mediocrity)
Author: Ed C.
Author: Ed C.
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Special thanks to
Dave Read, from whom I blatantly
borrowed some formatting ideas. 
The Play and Cast of Characters: |
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Act I: Setting the Stage |
The lovely Beth and I were looking forward to our first Cozumel trip that did not involve driving to Dallas and staying overnight! In addition, we'd be flying Continental Airlines instead of FunJet. Now don't get me wrong -- FunJet does an adequate job of transportation with a minimum of fuss -- but it was nice to know a solid, familiar firm would be handling us directly from Austin.
Unfortunately, however, the trip left in the early afternoon instead of the wee hours, so our 5 PM-ish arrival time left barely time for one early evening checkout dive. I'm the sort that loves an excuse for a checkout dive, and often two -- one in the afternoon to check weights and gear, and another at night to catch the shy critters. No such luck this time, and always expect to add an hour to the "hotel arrival time" to cross the inevitable Customs Line (never more than four agents, even with three jets unloading at once) plus the wait for a Transporte Terrestre Suburban.
Act II: Rigging the Lights |
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The hotel was the Casa Del Mar, a moderately priced but fairly "modern" hotel on the South Side. I'd visited CDM before just to "look see", and it proved a nice place. Of course, we never used the phone or TV... we were there to dive, not to play with the creature comforts. We didn't eat at the restaurant except for our breakfasts. Cozumel has too many good native places to spend your time in the hotel, but it's nice to have a local place to sit down and have a relaxing cup of coffee before your 8 AM boat departure.
And relaxing is right -- if you haven't been to Mexico before, service is... well... relaxed. Don't show up at a cafe expecting to be out in less than an hour, and don't expect a cooked breakfast in snappy fashion. That being said, breakfast at CDM was good if not amazing. But who cares, it's time to dive!
In all my previous Cozumel travels I've dove with Aqua Safari, a distinctly class act. This time the dive package included services from Del Mar Aquatics. And I must say, Del Mar didn't impress me very much. Del Mar took us to several dive sites safely, providing us some great diving, but "missed the boat" by my book on several items including:
I guess in summary, Del Mar Divers did their job functionally well, but for my money, I'd choose Aqua Safari or Aldora Divers -- or any other except Aqua World (but that's another play entirely).
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Act IV: Raising Curtain |
This was a short (effectively night) dive right off the pier of Del Mar Divers. I chose to leave the camera behind so I could assist Beth and just kick back. Instead, dive was unpleasant and very difficult, as well as a total bust.
After arrival, check-in, and a brief unpacking, it was already after 5:30. A
light rain turned into a steady downpour as we began to gear up. I don't mind
getting wet but this
was a little annoying. This was Beth's first experience with blue water and I
wanted it to go pleasantly and smoothly. Instead of a nice warm sunny day, we
geared up in near darkness, with ten people squeezed into one small cabana
trying to keep their dry clothes dry. My wet skin stuck to my wetsuit, and
I tore out the knee when it bound up on me. Aaargghh!
The entry was a ten-foot giant stride which we accomplished easily enough. But we quickly encountered a very heavy current, pulling us quickly away from the exit point! I recall hanging onto a big anchor in five feet of water and being flapped back and forth like a flag in a stiff breeze. At the same time, Beth and several others were underweighted; I gave Beth some of my weight (I was only a tiny bit light) but even so it was a struggle just to stay down and still fight the current.
Well, when diving isn't fun, you move on. We swam with difficulty to the exit point, a boat ramp with vertical concrete walls, and the ramp itself slick with slimy algae. Of course, this was shallow enough that the surf was battering us back and forth. We ended up crawling, slowly, painfully, up the ramp while the surf bashed us into the walls! After twenty seconds of this we were far enough up the side to take the grateful hands of our trip Divemasters and be pulled up. Whew!
Together with two experienced divers in our group, Del Mar took us out on a small boat to Palancar Gardens. After a slightly lengthy trip (one motor would not throttle up properly), we arrived at the site thoroughly soaked. 2-3 foot waves would crash against the bow and drench us completely; we gave up on staying dry and quickly changed into dive skins for a soggy ride.
I enjoyed this dive, except that in the confusion, I neglected to
open the lens cover on my camera. On the way down I discovered that I'd be
saving that roll of film for the next dive .
Saw more "donkey dung" cucumbers, some nice long stringy corals, and a light amount of fish life -- nothing very impressive except one huge barracuda resting lightly on the ocean floor. And a Ballyhoo Needlefish at the dock before we departed, lovely! Kudos to Beth for spotting it.
 Carribean Spiny Lobster  Brown-Phase Coney |
A great dive! Several photos of a large spiny lobster, a huge French angel, and I spotted a Queen Angel hiding in the coral. Surprise! CLICK. (Not shown here, it didn't turn out very well.) I stayed below 60' for most of the dive, racking my dive computer up to the maximum without entering the caution zone. |
Beth exhibited terrific buoyancy as usual. She knows just how close to stay to me, yet give me enough room to maneuvoer to take the shot. One notable event was a near-grazing by a huge Grouper. (His second, more leisurely swim-by is shown here.) The dive was aided by a fairly strong current, making coral photos difficult but resulting in a totally no-exertion diving. My favorite way to dive! Unfortunately, on the way back from the trip, I had the camera in about the safest (sic) place I could find, still someone pushed some dive gear against it and broke the strobe arm. I did the rest of the dives with the onboard flash or no flash at all... |
 Tiger (?) Grouper |
Another nice dive, although it was the worst night life I've seen in six trips to Cozumel. However, the triggerfish were trying to make up for all the other species -- they were everywhere in groups of one and two. It was strange! The dive wasn't in the normal part of Chankanaab, but at the very end, presumably to keep us away from other divers.
The boat ride had much less splashing than during the day, but a medium wind chilled me before I hit the water. I was anxious to finally splash down. There were a flood of newbies in our group, and the Divemasters spent the entire tour banging on their tanks to show yet another lobster, yet another crab. Ho hum. After the first few times Beth and I tried to go on our own, but the Divemasters were diligently rounding us into a tightly knit bunch. |
 Pink Tube Sponge |
It was Babysitting 101. Every time I tried to move I bumped into another diver, and had my head banged by more than one newbie who descended on me or turned suddenly, swinging their tank my way. Since I couldn't get away, I ended up following a few newbies, catching their consoles before they dragged the reef, and pushing them to the side before their fins scraped the soft corals. At least I was able to do some good.
One of my favorites! Santa Rosa is a steep wall, usually with a pretty solid current, but with absolutely brilliant corals and a pretty good amount of multicolored fish life. If you keep your eyes in the distance, it's not impossible to see a pelagic -- often barracuda. At the dock, Beth saw a school of Ballyhoo right by the boat. Wild! (Where's the camera, where's the camera? Argh!) Del Mar Divers assigned one Divemaster just with the four "experienced"
divers from yesterday which gave us a little autonomy. That was very
much appreciated; I love this dive, and I love experiencing all sorts of
areas of the reef. I switched to my dive skin; I was a little chilled but
the sensation of underwater freedom is positively amazing! And I wore
virtually no weight. How could I resist?
With our own Divemaster we had a chance to do plenty of fascinating swim-throughs, most of which I'd never seen before! That was a blast! Some were fairly tight and it was hard for us to avoid brushing the sides. The caves made this dive very special; very little coral but plenty of life. Great! I didn't take as many pics as I'd have liked; without the strobe, most were dark. Here's one of the lovely Beth hanging with me at the "Recommended precautionary fifteen foot safety stop". Again there's no strobe; she's not normally this blue!" |
 Beth at our Safety Stop |
 Black (?) Grouper |
Another nice dive. One big grouper shown here, still kind of dark. A long, gentle, relaxing dive with no current. While the rest of the group may want to kick hard and put away the miles, I like to take it easy. (I'm on vacation, I'm not working out.) The dive skin was wonderful once again. I attempted two pictures of brittle stars, but unfortunately my Aquashot (see part VII) doesn't handle macro shots well enough for me to include them here. Our last dive -- glad it was a nice quiet one. |
Act V: The Concession Stand |
 Autorent Jeep |
No trip to Cozumel is complete without a trip around the island! Beth had never been to the far side before so we rented a Jeep, gassed up (very important with only two gas stations) and hit the road.
The 40 minute drive to the far side was very nice, punctuated by a bit of brief rain -- in which we discovered the jeep top was broken, and would never rise again. But it cleared right up and we had a pleasant breezy trip.
After enjoying the surf crashing on the shore, swinging in the hammocks, and watching for waterspouts at the Paradise (Bob Marley) Cafe on the far side, we hit the jeep, only to spend an anxious 15 minutes attempting to restart it. (It was an automatic, unfortunately.) Other US tourists waited with us to see if we'd need a ride in to town, but eventually it did start. We vowed (1) not to turn off the Jeep until we arrived at the rental shop, and (2) not to rent from Autorent Cozumel again!
After turning in the Jeep the rental agent had to move it to a new location. It took him at least five minutes to start it but this did not deter him; he proceeded to move it back into the "available to rent" line. I hope it received some attention before it went back on the road with another hapless tourist!
 Ed's Diving Log Book |
Act VI: Final Bows (The Dive Log)Here are the rest of the details from my dive log. Specifics about each dive are in the write-up above, with only brief comments here for reference. In the section "N2 loading" I describe the relative loading of the nitrogen bars on my Data Plus computer -- mostly for personal reference, I'll admit, but it gives me an idea how conservatively I dove. For those who aren't aware, the Data Plus is a slightly "liberal" computer, but has a significant loading penalty on deeper repetitive dives -- as you can see below. |
Dive Location Depth Time N2 Loading Comments Number (FSW) (min) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 Del Mar Pier 10 10 1 green notch Barely qualifies 2 Palancar Gardens 89 37 Nearly full green Ballyhoo 3 Cedral Wall 74 43 Solid green Lobster, grouper 4 Chankanaab 44 46 2/3 full Night/babysitting 5 Santa Rosa Wall 83 33 Nearly full Swim-through caves 6 Tormentos Reef 56 48 Moderately full Relaxing, grouper
 Ikelite Aquashot 3e |
Act VII: Credits |
A list of the gear that I felt essential to bring with me to the dive trip. Note that the days of my Aquashot 3e are numbered; more capable cameras are in my future!