Cozumel dive trip, Post 2: Diving with Felipe

Saturday, April 23rd - our first full day in Mexico - started with a hearty 7am breakfast at Ernesto's, on the beach across from our hotel. For USD $2.99, we had eggs, toast, marmalade and potatoes.

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The front of our hotel, Casa del Mar...


At 8am, we met our dive instructor, Felipe from Diving Adventures, in the foyer of our hotel. Felipe had called during breakfast to say he had too many other divers in the morning to be able to work on my PADI Open Water skills as originally planned, so I was going to go in the afternoon instead... but someone ended up cancelling, so I was able to go with the others in the morning after all. I had to quickly get ready with no time to savour the feeling of slight nervousness!

I had chosen Felipe based on TripAdvisor reviews, and he ended up getting quite a bit of business from our group. Peter and Marissa, who would be arriving later that day, had actually won part of their trip - including a few days of diving with an operation called Dive House, whom we would all be diving with in the days ahead. However, I hadn't been very impressed with Dive House's (in)ability to answer questions via email, so I chose to complete my PADI Open Water course with Felipe instead.

Anyway, Felipe was great. I wouldn't say he had the most organised operation, but I felt very safe with him, which is what matters! He is 42, married with three kids, and moved to Cozumel to dive in 1986. He used to own a big dive operation in town with a few boats, but costs were too high and he got sick of it, so he spent a few years working for the local government instead. Then he realised that diving actually was the best job after all, and started up again with just one boat and a tiny shed at the marina to store his gear in. This is that tiny shed, and the Beetle he drove us to and from the marina in each day...


Felipe...


That day there were eight of us on the boat - Felipe, his boat captain Francisco, a Mexican couple called Hector and Beatrice who were getting married in two weeks, Ken and Liesl, and us. As Ken and Liesl were completing their PADI Advanced Open Water training with Felipe, the first dive was a wreck dive: the Felipe Xicotencatl C-53. It wasn't named after our dive instructor, but he was involved in turning it into an artificial reef (i.e. sinking it) in 1999!

As the wreck wasn't a beginner dive, I couldn't go... but Ben could! Here are a few photos he took with my camera in its snazzy new underwater case, purchased for this trip. (Yes, it worked! We were very happy with it and you'll probably see more underwater than above-water photos in the rest of these blog entries!)


Liesl...


Ken...


Ben said it was a pretty cool dive... they descended down onto the main deck, swam along to the main cabin, went in through the door, along the hallway to the end, up through a ceiling hatch, and along another deck before ascending. It was a 37 minute dive that went to a maximum depth of 64 feet.

In the meantime, I stayed in the boat with Francisco, and managed to ask him in Spanish if he spoke English, before saying something in Spanish that I later realised was probably quite incomprehensible (he just smiled)!

Once the others were back on board and snacking on watermelon and pastries during their surface interval, it was time for my first dive: one-on-one with Felipe to practice some skills at Paradise Shallows. Here we are getting ready to roll backwards into the water...



After we swam to the shallows and were ready to descend, Felipe noticed I had a nose bleed! I don't usually get them from exertion or nervousness, but that's presumably what it was. Anyway, it was only minor, and once it stopped we descended about 15 feet to the ocean floor, where we practiced skills such as regulator recovery and clearing, signalling "out of air" and then breathing from someone else's alternate air source, mask clearing, and a horizontal controlled emergency swimming ascent (CESA). All of these were fine as I had practiced them in the pool sessions a few weeks earlier, as well as during our dives in Hawaii and Barbados. Then it was back in the boat and on to the real thing!

The next dive was one that everyone did together: Paradise Reef. It was a pretty reef and a fantastic introduction to diving in Cozumel! Ben and I were dive buddies, although I probably wasn't a very attentive one due to all the other things I had to concentrate on... such as getting my buoyancy right (the aim is to float up a little when you breathe in, and sink down a little when you breathe out), trying not to touch anything, monitoring my remaining air, and trying to look around and notice things! Over the coming days we learnt lots of fish names. On this dive we saw a lobster, crab, stringray, spotted trunkfish, black durgon, angelfish, jaw fish, and many more. I'll stop yakking and let the photos speak for themselves! All photos were taken by Ben.

Me doing the underwater sign for "cool/ awesome"... it's best to avoid the thumbs up as that means "ascend"!







Felipe...


Ken and Liesl...


A catamaran passing overhead...




Stingray...


One of my favourite sights on this dive: a school of fish hanging out in the shadows (each of these fish were about a foot long)...



Now might be a good time to mention that colours get filtered out the deeper you dive. The longer wavelength colours, such as red, are the first to go. Thus, everything looks quite blue underwater, as in the second- and third-to-last photos above. This is why many divers use a torch: having a close light source reveals the real colours. We have colour-corrected many of these photos, such as the last and fourth-to-last photos above, so that you can get more of an idea of the actual colours of things.

Meditation pose...


Jawfish... this little guy (about 4 inches/ 10cm long) would come popping out of his hole, only to rapidly reverse back in when I wiggled my fingers towards him. I got sick of it long before it seemed he would!


After a 50 minute dive to a maximum of 45 feet, we started ascending. During our 3 minute safety stop at 15 feet below the surface - which is a precautionary measure we took at the end of every dive to avoid the risk of "the bends" - I got down to 200 psi of air, so I got to practice breathing from someone else's alternate air source (aka their "octopus") for real! (It's recommended to get to the surface with 500 psi or more... and we started each dive with 3000.) Here I am breathing from Felipe's air, and holding on to him so I don't float away and have the regulator pulled out of my mouth...


And here are Felipe and I at the surface, with the boat in the background...


That afternoon we decided to have a late lunch at a small shop we had noticed beside Paprika the previous day. It was the signs for $1 tacos that lured us in! As it turned out, it was a cheap, yummy and authentic little place that we ended up eating at most days over the next week. I never did see a sign with its name, but apparently it was called Tacqueria Bandana.

The shop consisted of a counter with a few bar stools along the footpath, and on the other side of the counter was the tiny cooking area, where our meals were cooked on a camp stove. Behind the cooking area was a room with space for only one table, surrounded by the shop's supplies, a fridge with cold softdrinks, and a pile of coconuts still attached to their branches. We never saw any other tourists sitting at this table when we walked past... it was definitely the kind of shop that some people wouldn't dare eat at!





After lunch, we bought some ice creams from the nearby OXXO convenience store, which also became a daily tradition. As we walked back into Casa del Mar, discussing whether Peter and Marissa would have arrived yet, we saw them getting out of their collectivo! Their room at CDM turned out to be right next to ours. The six of us hung out in Ken and Liesl's "superior room" for a while before the other four needed to get ready for their night dive with Felipe.

That evening, Ben studied in the hotel lobby (he had an assignment due 2 days after we got home), and I read my book. After the others got back from their dive, we had a late dinner in the CDM restaurant (quesadillas for me; tortilla soup for Ben) with Ken, Liesl and Marissa - Peter had gotten sick during the dive and turned in early.

Towel animals in our room...



Mexican pesos... $1 CDN/ USD/ AUD is about 11 or 12 pesos.



The next day, after a buffet breakfast in Casa del Mar's restaurant, we dove with Felipe again. It was Ken and Liesl's last day of AOW training, and my last day of Open Water training. Peter and Marissa had their first day of diving with Dive House at the same time.

On Felipe's boat with Roberto and Sarah from Chicago, and Greg from BC...


Our first dive was at a reef called Palancar Gardens. Felipe and I practiced some skills briefly at the start of the dive, such as how to remove a leg cramp underwater...


Palancar Gardens was an amazing dive with sections of the reef at different heights, so there were large holes to drop into and cliffs to swim alongside. As we descended into a hole near the start of the dive, Ben and I were at the front with Felipe and Greg, and Ken and Liesl were further back with Roberto and Sarah. K&L noticed that Roberto seemed to be having some sort of trouble, and Felipe also noticed and went back to help. Ben and I didn't see any of this but just noticed that Felipe disappeared for a while!

K&L later told us there was a cloud of green stuff around Roberto's head. Liesl thought at first that he had vomited. However, it was actually a nose bleed, so that illustrates the point about the colour red getting filtered out underwater!! Felipe took Roberto and Sarah back up to the boat, where Roberto recovered and was later able to join us on the second dive.

Here are some photos of the amazing Palancar Gardens...


A large grouper...


Liesl...


Ken and Liesl...


There aren't many photos from this dive, as Ken and Liesl needed to do some navigation exercises using a compass for their AOW training, and Felipe let Ben (the photographer) join in. Ben told us later that at one stage he had put his finger in the sand to hold himself in place, and a stingray went shooting away in front of him - it had been hiding just under the surface of the sand right in front of where he put his finger!

Towards the end of this dive, Greg spotted a turtle and a small nurse shark. Ken, Liesl and I didn't see either of them, but Ben saw the shark and said it was probably 1.5m long. The others saw more turtles and sharks later on in the trip too, but I managed to go the entire time without seeing any!

During our surface interval - which was usually about an hour due to the need to let the nitrogen from the first dive exit our system so that it was safe to dive again - we rescued a middle-aged lady snorkeller who had drifted too far out from shore. She was very calm about it all and told us she knew someone would come and get her!

Our second dive site was called Cedar Pass. For the first time, I experienced caves and swim-throughs (basically short tunnels in the reef). I hadn't realised I was able to go through these with my level of training, so it was a very exciting surprise! Here are some photos from Cedar Pass...



In a swim-though... naughty me doing the "ascend" sign (it only looks so dark because the flash was on - the photo above is a more accurate depiction of the light levels!)...



Fantastic sight to our left during a swim-through...


Ken and Liesl emerging from the swim-through...


A large grouper... this fellow was nearly 1 metre (3 feet or more) long!


Queen angelfish... we saw lots of these beautiful creatures...


Spotted trunkfish... these were my favourite newly-discovered variety of fish. They look so cute with their tail fin extended out from their body and their funny little noses that were often digging in the sand! These ones were probably a foot long...


K&L...


...And back at the marina. Francisco pointed out a huge marlin someone had caught that was hanging up on the other side of the marina (between Liesl and Ben's heads)... we could see it from that far away as it was probably 10 feet long!


Back at Casa del Mar, we sorted out the PADI stuff to do with Ken, Liesl and I finishing our courses, and took a group photo with Felipe...


That afternoon a rental car was brought to CDM for Ken and Liesl, who had the use of one for part of their stay due to the flight and hotel package they'd purchased. We all decided to go into town to try a restaurant Felipe had recommend: El Moro. This would require two shuttle runs since there were six of us. Here are the others trying to find reverse so they could leave...


Success!


Some nearby lizards...



Ben and I checked out CDM's beach and hammocks across the road while we waited for Liesl's shuttle run to return...






After what seemed like a long time, Liesl arrived back with the news that they had driven around for quite a while and had no success at finding El Moro, so the others were now settled at a restaurant called Palmera's on the touristy esplanade in San Miguel. Here we are during dinner...


Ben's meal...


My meal (at this point in the trip I was yet to have a meal I really loved - Mexican not being my favourite cuisine - but I did find a couple eventually!)...


A few photos of the touristy part of San Miguel (you'll see some photos of the non-touristy parts in a upcoming entry)...




Marissa's photo...



While in the above square, we ran into Greg (from that day's dives) with his brother Guy. Guess it's not a very big island! Greg and Guy were on their way to a bar they knew would be showing the Vancouver Canucks vs Chicago Blackhawks game live. So yes, Canucks fever exists even in Mexico!

Watching the sunset...





Afterwards, the boys walked while the girls took the car to a supermarket called Mega on the south edge of town. We stocked up on snacks for the upcoming days of diving, then headed back to the hotel and turned in early, ready for diving with Dive House on the morrow. To be continued... and there'll be underwater video (with sound) in the next entry!

Click here to see lots more photos from our Cozumel trip.

PS. This entry took me half a Saturday to do, so I'd really love some comments! :)