Wreckdive

As it looked like it was going to be a long day today, I didn't want to add a journey with boat and bus to my next hostel to in the afternoon and decided to book the room for another night. I even got a little discount, just because I asked for it.
When this was sorted I went around the corner to the dive shop which was very close but only to find out that not much was going on here.
We had agreed to meet up at 9 with some other divers at the shop and then set out for our dive trip, but besides the dive masters and a few of his friends no one was around to be my buddy.
To solve the issue, we walked through the town and checked with two or three different dive shops but at this time no one had any customers that were to go on  a trip on a morning dive. Strange enough, since it was sort of a high season at the moment, with spring break in the US. It took probably an hour and a half to figure all this out and we ended up back at the initial dive shop, where I was told ot come back around lunch time.

I really wanted to do a dive on Isla Mujeres, this was the reason I extended my stay (and paid for it already), so I just stayed around, got some lunch and hung out at the beach a bit.
At 1pm I went back to the shop and indeed there was another Diver, Lily from the US but living in Singapore at the moment. She just arrived this morning from there and was already keen on gettin into the water.

Our plan was to do two dives, one at an old battleship and the second one at MUSA (Museo Subacuatico de Arte) - an Underwater art museum... this should be good fun.
All was good now, we got our gear and walked down to the pier. We got on the little boat and set out onto the sea.

We set out south west along the coast of the island for a while, past large yachts and impressive villas along the coast that were previously hidden from my mere mortal eyes... The water was unbelievably clear. I have not seen anything like it. It literally looked like a clear, slightly blue liquid and did not impede my view to the bottom, that was at least 7 or 8 m below us...  After probably 30 minutes of full throttle over the the waves we got to the dive site, where we would find two battle ships from the second world war. C-58, a US mine sweeper ship at 30m depth and C-55, a gunship at 21m.
There was no such thing as a briefing, the dive master just put on his gear and said, I'll see you down there. A minute later we were all in the water and the dive master already at 15 meters or so. I was finding it a little difficult to decent so quickly. It was all very unusual to me as a semi frequent diver.
I eventually caught up with them on the ground at 30m. There was not much there, the visibility was great, 25 - 30m , but all there was to see was sand.

We followed the guide and soon saw large wreck taking shape ahead of us. It was engulfed by life. Lots of big and little fish of all kinds of different colours. On the left we saw a group of 6 or 7 large eagle rays (about 3m wide) swim by. It was magical.

We circled the wreck and had a look in the portholes. More fish inside. we completed nearly an entire circle around the ship and then the dive guide went inside. I was a bit surprised, as this was not mentioned in the non existent briefing, but I followed and we dived through the entire length of the wreck along a corridor that ran through the middle of the width of the ship. We exited on the other side, the bow.

My cheap Chinese GoPro casing had now filled with water (in fairness, I have not immediately washed it out after the last use in salt water and the rubber may have become corroded), but Lily had an original GoPro and shot some amazing material, (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pW_ki8oOu2o&feature=youtu.be) .

This was such an exciting adventure. I felt like an explorer that penetrated a long lost treasure ship, it was great. - Writing about this now a couple of months later, wants me to just head out south and do it again!

We were actually just about half way into our dive time by now, so we headed over to the nearby wreck of a Gunship C-55, which lay at 21m. We swam around the Canons a little and peeked into it. The atmosphere here was very different, maybe because it was obviously a battle ship, which looked like it, rather than the minesweeper that looked more like a transporter or freighter. It didn't fell as exciting but much more eerie than the previous wreck and soon it was time to resurface again.
The boat, knew exactly where we were going to come up (probably followed the bubbles) and 2 minutes later we were on the way back to shore. We had one more dive to do. The MUSA, an area off the coast of Isla Mujeres that was set up with underwater statues, that fish and corals started using as their new home.

There were plenty of places for the fish to hide. I even saw a scropion fish and a huge grouper who was sitting inside a VW beetle that was sitting on the ground of the sea.
All this was certainly very cool but faded in the light of our past adventure at the ship wrecks.
When we were back on land, Lily had to get ready to head to Cozumel as she only stopped on Isla Mujeres for a "quick dive", just after getting off the plane from Singapore, mind you. Well, I didn't have that much energy left and went back to the hotel, freshened up and went to the beach to meet up with the guys from last night. This time I brought my wallet, but they didn't want any of the beer I owed them.
I was pretty tired after the busy day now and decided to have a lazy evening in the Hotel and watch a film (Lincoln).