Muy Tarde

I signed off my last transmission Mas Tarde, which in Spanish means Later. And it is later, very later. And no three bags a day to blame for it either ;^)

Cozumel was great - not too much current (but enough to do some reef and wall flying) so I was able to take some pix (trip gallery is here). Although I have been lucky enough to visit and dive at Cozumel several times over the past years, I never felt that I had found my mojo with the camera. I chalk it up to a combination of current and the mandatory Divemaster-led dives (and they do seem to get irritated when you don't keep up, but they almost invariably scoot along too quickly for someone armed with a camera).

Coz has Divemasters in the water with all divers for good reason - between strong currents, a multitude of divers, and an armada of boats on the water, surfacing alone, without a large surface marker buoy that you can launch from your safety stop, means that both the unappealing options of getting lost or getting run over by a boat are quite likely.

This time, there was the inevitable current (and I got a real workout at Punta Tunich and Cedral trying to shoot macro ;^), but I am not overly intimidated by moving water, as to do any of the good diving here in BC, you must dive in current, and doing it in cold water, in a drysuit, and/or in low viz is much more disconcerting than being swept along in the embyronic blue.

And there were the predictably fast pace-setting DM's, the majority of whom seem to refuse to just drift, and instead appear to feel the need to tour, but we did find a couple of slackish sites where I could putter a bit and not get left too far behind. And some of DMs did minimize the tank-banging and herding, and did point out some really cool stuff, so it was pretty much as good as it gets in Cozumel, other than the sploogey viz after the rains. And good in Cozumel, even post-Wilma, is very good by Caribbean standards.

We bagged a couple of really, er, profound dives ;^), including Devil's Throat (on a triple penetration, so I'm pretty sure we did the Devil's Ass too ;^), Columbia D-e-e-p and Santa Rosa Wall.

We also dove Punta Tunich, where the top of the reef is pretty flat (about 40-50 ft), with a sloping wall to the west. There always seems to be quite heavy current on this site, and there are few outcroppings behind which to hide in the lee, but many highlights on this trip including: a teensy octopus, and a bigass green moray. The man-I-wish-this-camera-shot-video moment was spying the above-mentioned bigass green moray and a bigass grouper doing a tandem hunt (into the current, damn them ;^) They are the big bosses of that bit of reef. Video wouldn't have hurt either for the rapid-fire colour-changing of the little octopus who was trying very hard to be the algae. It wasn't an easy dive, photographically speaking, due to current, and I was sad for lack of video, but it was a great dive.

Another favorite was Cedral - another rocking, flattish-terrained, made-for-Nitrox reef with a wonderful, many-tunneled swimthrough. Check out the size of this monster porcupinefish hiding in one of the cut outs - he had to be 3 feet long. There were also some herds of porkfish and grunts and a pipefish, so no one was complaining.

Chankunaab Balones also delivered - I love this site, although it too is best dived (diven? doven?) on Nitrox, as it is flat, gently sloping for 50 - 60 ft. 36% and you are golden. There be numerous jawfish at this site, and Christi found 3 scorpionfish in one dive. I got skunked on the scorpionfish (and did not have the patience, nor the lens, for the jawfish), but there were lots of highlights, like this rock lobster, and this slender filefish, and wandering amongst the coral boulders (not so much bommies, which I think of as bigger structures) was pretty darn wonderful. Added bonus: did not get buzzed by the Atlantis submarine, like our family did, in low visibility, last Christmas. Awoosh.

And I would love to tell you all about those, er, profound dives, except everything that happens on the boat, and under the boat, stays on the boat, dontchaknow? ;^)

So we saw some pretty cool critters, great and small, did some kickass dives, and the turtles just kept on coming. I put together a trip slideshow - both EXE version (for PC's) and Flash version (for Macs), which I hope helps to communicate the identities and personalities (or is that fishonalities? ;^) of some of the stuff that we see.

It was really great getting together with some old buddies, and making some new ones, and best of all, no Salmonella poisoning. Seriously.

I'll admit it took some time for my system to return to normal after the food poisoning fiasco in Berlin a few weeks before - I was a bit worried in Mexico (especially eating in some of the back street eateries with the ever-intrepid EDG) that my post-Salmonella sulking GI tract might be unhappy. Never a good thing on a dive trip. In fact (and this way be way too personal, but what they hey, if it helps someone else, that's a happy thing), quite the opposite - it was like after all that overtime outflow there was a work stoppage. Nothing that lots of water, prunes and some patience can't cure ;^)