I do love to eat spicy and even properly hot (I mean Dave Insanity and Da Bomb hot), and have never had any problems in the past but these tacos were something else. And the plan for today was to go scuba diving in cenotes with crystal clear water. Well planned, Andi.
But it has to be done, so I went to the dive Center (Infinity 2 Diving) just down the road and received a warm welcome and Met Mario (they guy from the day before), Amy , Duane and Sam, the letter two were also customers, whereas Mario and Amy were our guides.
We got our gear, threw all of it in the back of a big Hilux Truck and off we were to the first Centoe. The deepest of them all! The Pit!
It wasn't much of drive, maybe 20 min, the atmosphere in the truck was great, we all got along very well and it nearly felt like we knew each other for a couple of years rather than only a few minutes.
After a respectful look down from the edge into the Pit we assembled around a table and started setting up our gear. A couple of very basic Buddy checks and a comprehensive briefing about cenote diving in general and the Pit in particular we were ready to walk down the busy stairs (other groups of divers coming up and/or going down) to the platform from where we could jump into the darkness...
A last check and we all jumped in after each other and assembled again in the middle of the Pit, which is maybe 20 meters across to all descend together.
After only a few meters we already hit the Halocline (a visible line where the denser saltwater is separated from the freshwater above).
This place is spooky - it looks like John Carpenter's "The Fog" under water and around this depth it is harder to get the buoyancy right as a tiny but lower will put you into much denser water and you will go up again... The reason that there are salt water and freshwater present here is, that all the centoes are connected with each other through an immense subterranean underwater cave system called "Sistema Nohoch Nah Chich", the biggest in the world. And the entire system is in itself connected to the sea, from where the salt water enters, rain and little creeks add the rainwater on top, and voilà, we go ourselves a Haloc line.
Further down we "found" some animal bone and again, the organic matter (possibly from ancient Maya sacrificial ceremonies) that has been decomposing here over the last couple of hundred years has created another foggy layer. We were now around 30m deep already, but the tunnel system does not stop anytime soon. The pit itself is about 190 meters deep and does connect to many surrounding cenotes (certified cave divers have done explorations and have surfaced a couple of km away at these other Cenotes. This is obviously very risky and not recommended but it did cause inner excitement about these sort of adventures in me.
For now though, the ascent back to the surface was exciting enough, there was a real eerie atmosphere about it, the sun shining in from the top the diving torches of other divers from below, foggy haloc lines and bones, it was all very cool - but there were no fish... It was more like exploring a foreign planet than diving in the tropics.
Back at the surface, just out of the water I bumped into Lily, with whom I was diving off the coast of Isla Mujeres just a couple of days before. She was just going to go down now after us. Small world.
We had our lunch and a cup of coffee and very soon we were already on the way to our next dive site. Dos Ojos (two eyes)
Here we were going to have two dives, not as deep and more horizontal.
Dos Ojos is probably one of the most popular Centoes in the area, there are two major dives, Barbie line (max 8m) and Bat cave (max 10m).
We did the Bat cave first, and had to follow a line that was tightened between and wrapped around the numerous stalactites and stalagmites in the cave... it was certainly more beautiful than "The Pit" but it was an entirely different experience. We followed the line around corners, up and down, past large calcium walls and along rows and rows of columns... it was just like walking through a beautiful cave, but we were diving... Crazy! It took about 45 minutes and towards the end we surfaced into a hall that was dark, just lit by light that reflected from the sandy ground through the water back to the surface. This room was the reason why this dive is called Bat Cave... Through some opening to the outside world, bats can come in here and they call this place home. So we saw e few bat flying around and then left the cave through a tunnel back to the sunny outside world again.
After a bit of a break it was time to strap on the gear for the last time and head back into the caves. We entered through the same basin as before, but had to hold on to another line - the Barbie Line.
This dive was essentially the same as the previous one but into another direction and without Bats. Instead of bats, the path on this one had more openings to the sunlit outside world, thus the lighting was even more impressive than in the Bat cave. We also came past the reason why this is called the Barbie line... a barbie doll in the mouth of a plastic crocodile ...
That was it... we came back to the surface and were all pretty wrecked now.
However, over the last couple of dives my air consumption has greatly improved. After this second 50 minute dive (only at 7 or 8 meters) I had only used 1100 PSI out of my 3100 I had at the beginning. Lets hope that stays like this for the next time I'm going under water.
From here it was the usual, disassembling the equipment, heading back to the Dive show, exchanging addresses, signing log entries, a hug here and there and then finally back to the Hostel... I hope there is a shower available and I have a bed now!
This was the case and the rest felt very good, but soon enough the crowd of the Hostel was up for a night out and they dragged me with them.
The plan was to go to this Ska/Jazz band that everyone was talking about... I agreed to join them for two songs and one beer.
Unfortunately finding the place where they were playing wasn't as easy as hoped, so we wondered around for a while until we finally found the Hostel that was hosting the gig...
It was 10pm now and there was no sign of the band yet. An hour later some traditional Aztec performance group showed up and took the stage until finally at midnight this band showed up...
They weren't even that good, but for some reason everyone was talking about them... well.. I was wrecked now and decided to head home after a couple of songs and due to my stomach not being much better than in the morning I didn't even go for the one beer.
No comments:
Post a Comment