Guess what I did today? Tough one huh... Yup, I went on a cavern diving tin Mexico and IT WAS AMAZING!!!
We are staying in Cozumel and the cenote (mayan for well or cave opening) diving is mostly on the main land south of Playa Del Carmen. It was a bit of an adventure to get there with all our gear. Taxi to ferry, ferry to Playa Del Carmen, cab to Puerta Aventuras to meet our guide then a pickup truck ride to the cenote.
If you don’t know much about cave and cavern diving let me just say that it is pretty much the bleeding edge of diving right now. The main gist of it is that you can’t fuck up as you are in a water filled cave deep in the ground. With most open water diving situations there is always the option (though usually not a good one) to surface and get back to where the air is. Not so much with cave and cavern diving. Therefore safety, redundancy and skill mastery are foremost with this kind of diving. You surface at the cenote opening and deal with what ever happens under water. Fix it or die!
Cave diving is a very serious undertaking and involves a bunch of intense training and loads of certifications. The difference between cave and cavern diving is that with cavern diving you can basically always see the light from the opening so that you can therefore always find your way back to the exit point (surface). There are some other things too like you can’t go more than 200’ linear feet from the surface, you can’t go deeper than 70’ and there has to be 50’ of visibility. Let me make one thing very clear - I am not a cave diver. I am actually not even a certified cavern diver as that involves a three day course that I didn’t have the time for this trip (already making future plans though..). What I did today was a cavern tour. I hired a certified guide, Natalie from Diablo Divers and she made sure I got back in one piece. I had to have decent skills under water like good buoyancy and trim but she did all the hard stuff like make sure we didn’t die etc. That being said, she was kind enough to drill into my head the path home even if she vanished through some mole hole in the space time continuum or whatever and I found myself in there all alone.
The first site was named Ponderosa and is basically just a dirt road off the highway. The road leads to a parking lot and a hole in the ground full of fresh water. It felt great to get in the water and escape the heat. Once we submerged a whole new dimension opened up and it was diving like I had never experienced before. The viz (diver slang for visibility) was awesome as the water is so pure and clear. Everything took on a dreamy etherial quality with shafts of light streaming down through holes in the cavern roof. Air expelled from previous divers is pooled in little pockets on the ceiling that looks like shimmering mercury. We follow a set guidline that leads us of a tour of the cavern. Along the way we go up and down and pass various other openings in the cavern rooftop (other cenotes). We don’t surface at these other openings but enjoy the amazing light show they provide for us below the surface. At times the roots from the mangroves above can be seen extending down into the clear water. Spectacular!
The highlight of the dive for me had to be the halocline. It is a long story but basically the lower depths of the caves are salt water and the upper levels fresh. The halocline exists where these two densities of water meet. Most of the cave is clear but this couple of foot deep layer of cloudy water exists between the two. Natalie described it best when she said it would look like swimming through vaseline. Sure enough, she dropped into the halocline and her form pixelated before my eyes. She was “fuzzy” and it felt like my senses were seriously messed. If I hadn’t been told about this phenomena in advance I would have freaked. When I dropped into the halocline everything went really weird. I couldn’t read my dive computer a foot in front of my face and all I had to follow was Natalie’s goopy, distorted form in front of me. Once below the halocline everything jumped back into focus and the water got warmer. It was amazing!
One of the rules of cave diving is the rule of thirds. We budget a third of our air for the trip in, a third for getting back and a third for any emergency should one come up. Therefor once I used up a third of my air I signaled Natalie and we turned around and headed back the way we came in. Simple.
Back in the truck and of to Tajma ha. Another cavern site in the middle of nowhere. This time the dive involved a lot more ups and downs and slightly tighter quarters. Loads of formations (stalactites, stalagmites etc.) and fossils. Oh yeah, and another one of those wicked haloclines. When we got back to the surface there were a whole load of dorky tourists standing there staring at us. That was kind of weird.
I have to say that the dives today were two of my my favorite dives ever and the whole experience ranks right up there with pretty much anything else I have done. It was a spectacular day and I am so thankful to have had such an amazing trip. It just goes to show you. In life never say never. I have to say a heart felt thank you to our awesome guide Natalie and to Rebecca for coming along for the ride.
I do apologize for the picture quality of the dive pics. They are just video stills from helmet cam. I didn't want to take still camera along on this first experience as I find it distracts from diving that that was my focus today. I'll upload video upon my return to Canada and post here.
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