Cancun Underwater - Fishy Paradise

I woke up yesterday morning and packed up the things I was bringing on the boat. Trish got herself ready for a day at the spa and we were out the door. I got on the bus and got off once again at the wrong stop. I had to walk 10 minutes to get to the dive shop. You think I would have learned from the day before, but no... not that smart.

I got to the dive shop and a few people were there already, getting their gear together. The lady asks me to fill out some forms, so I do and I hand them back. She looks at them and says "Oh, you can't go diving today." WTF?!?! She explains that because I haven't been diving in 10 years and I don't have my certification number and I don't have my log book that there's no way she can let me dive.

Great, now what am I gonna do, Trish is at the spa, so I have a day to kill. And I can't go diving, awesome... just great. So as I stand there with a dazed look on my face thinking this through, and she looks at me again. "You could do the recertification today and then dive tomorrow?" Nope, I leave tomorrow. "Well.... maybe I could talk to the dive master and he could test you in the pool. It would cost extra though. ok?" So... apparently with enough money everyone will bend the rules around here. Ok I say, how much? $10 US. That's cool with me. She also tells me that I'll have to fill out a new form saying that I dove last year. Apparently you have to recert if you haven't gone diving in the past year.

I go to the gear rental place, get geared up, and the dive master takes me to a tiny pool. I get in, he gets me to clear my mask. Then he gets me to take my mask off and put it back on, then clear it. Then he makes me take my regulator and throw it away, then find it and start breathing again. It's not super hard to find your regulator underwater, but it is a little tricky seeing as it's attached to your back. So I do all his tests and he's really happy and tells me I can go diving today, no problems. WOOT!

So I get my stuff together and hop on the boat. The photographer chick presents herself to me and tells me that she's going to be taking video of us today. Her name was Aline, which is mexican-ish, but her english was pretty much perfect. Turns out she spent 8 years in california, pretty cool. So she asks me if I would be interested in the video and I tell her yes. She tells me she'll pay special attention and try to get me in the video a lot.

We got set up while the boat was heading to the reef, the dive master went over the rules. Basically stay together and the few symbols that will keep us alive. It's not like you can explain much underwater, all you have is hand gestures. Since we don't all know sign language, there's just a few signs you need to know. OK, not good, my ears, my regulator, my stomach, look here, low air, go up, go down, and how to tell how much air is in your tank. Then he told us all sorts of symbols for fish. I only remember baracuda, because it's the hand gesture you would make if you pretend your hand is a monster trying to eat something... that's baracuda for you.

So we dive in and sink 50 feet to the bottom. This is my first time diving in really clear water, and really warm water. The lady at the dive shop asked me if I wanted a wet suit. The water is really cold she said, I recommend a wetsuit. I asked how cold. 24 degrees... celcius. I just told her "I'm Canadian". That seemed to settle it, she stopped trying to rent me a wetsuit.

So at first the water was piss warm, but 20 feet down there's a cold undercurrent. Cold in this world is 24 degrees celcius. I found it refreshing, cus honestly diving in bath tub water was making me a little claustrophobic. I dunno, water to me should always be cold. So yeah, never once did I think "Oh this is chilly" at best I was dreading the top 20 cus the water was too warm. When I first got to the bottom I had a little bout of vertigo. The weeds were all rocking back and forth with the current, but the rocks were standing still. The weeds covered so much more area than the rocks that it made it look like the rocks were moving back and forth. My brain did not like that, the ground is not supposed to rock back and forth.

In any case, the vertigo didn't last and everything was cool after that. It was pretty awesome down there, not as many fish as I would have hoped, I saw a few grunts, the stuff we fished up the other day. These grunts were yellow instead of white. Same family, different fish. The coolest part about the first dive was that he took us through a cave in the coral. It was just a tunnel, but it was really cool.

The next dive was way better, we got to the bottom and there was fish everywhere. They weren't really scared of us either. There was cow fish, that look cool and have a triangle shaped body instead of flat. Lots of grunts again, and mixed in I saw some big blue ones that people couldn't name. There was some four eyed angel fish or something like that. Then we saw a manta ray. It was buried in the sand and Francisco, the dive master, started playing with one of it's wings. The ray obviously did not like that so it took off. It's really cool looking.

We saw a couple more rays during the dive, and then Aline pointed out a big fish to me. Turns out it was a puffer fish. The thing was huge, as long as my arm, I wonder how big it gets if it puffs up... ouch. Then we saw a barracuda, it swam into a cave. Francisco made the pacman chomp chomp sign and then put his hand up kinda saying stop. He followed into the cave after the barracuda, I went up and over. On the other side of the cave we saw a crab in an alcove. That was pretty much it down there. We came back up and hopped on the boat.

I was taking my gear off and Francisco came up to me and pulled a big rock out of my suit saying "souvenir" before tossing it back in the water. I had seen him pick up that rock but I had no clue why. I never even noticed when he put it in my buoyancy vest. Turns out he decided I was floating up too much so he put a rock in my pocket.

Anyways, I had a really good time. Trish had a great time at the spa too. We've been basically chilling since then. Our legs are still dead from that Ek-Balam trip. So hurty. They should put an escalator or something on those pyramids.

Now we're chilling by the pool, they kicked us out of the room. And we're spending the day here cus our bus to the airport doesn't leave for another four hours.

Tonight we hang out in mexico city and fly home tomorrow morning. Since you're reading this I'm going to assume you weren't here. This assumption is pretty safe because I'll only be wrong in one case, Trish. So with my assumption that you weren't here I just have to say "Sucks to be you." I hope you had a great week at work... I know I had a great time in Mexico.