Cozumel dive trip, Post 5: Night dive and dinner plans

Thursday, May 28th, was the day Ken and Liesl flew home. After waving Peter and Marissa off on their last day of diving, I went into town with Ken and Liesl to look for souvenirs, while Ben stayed behind and worked on his assignment in the hotel lobby.

Contrasted souvenir shopping options...

The rest of the day was very relaxing... we farewelled Ken and Liesl, had our traditional sope and ice cream lunch with Peter and Marissa, wrote postcards, and lazed around until it was time for our night dive. We were back with Felipe for this dive, and Greg from BC (whom we'd met on the weekend) joined us too.

This was the beautiful sunset we saw as we waited on the boat at Paradise Reef for it to get dark enough to start our dive...

Then, as darkness quickly fell, it was time to descend to the murky depths of the reef... to witness a whole different world to what we'd seen so far in the daylight! Here are a few of the sights - photography aided by flashlight beams and the camera's flash:

An orange crab...

A sea cucumber...


Sleepy fish...

Spotted moray eel...

To give you an idea of how dark it was down there, here are a couple of shots taken without the flash. The first photo is of me, and the second is of Felipe...

This turned out to be our longest dive of the trip - 58 minutes - and we turned our flashlights off a few times to experience the enveloping darkness and see the bioluminescence. The latter is a mesmerising display of tiny green-glowing particles, visible in the water when there's movement. It was like little green fireflies darting away from our hands when we swished them through the water. Very pretty, and awesome to see!

I found that I spent much of this dive feeling somewhat disoriented - most likely due to receiving fewer subconscious cues than I am used to receiving from my senses regarding my position relative to everyone and everything else. For example, I knew where someone was if I could see their flashlight - but if I got turned about, it was hard to know where they were until I was directly facing them again. And you don't really want to go for long without knowing where your dive buddies are when you're 40 feet deep and it's pitch dark!

I also felt like I just couldn't see as well as I wanted to, or thought I should be able to, so maybe I am just overly dependent on light and sight! Suffice to say, I couldn't quite identify with all the raving the others had done about their night dive a few days earlier... but I was still happy to have experienced a night dive, and wouldn't have wanted to miss it!

The next morning - Friday, April 29th - we woke at the lovely hour of 4:45am to watch the royal wedding from the comfort of our bed. It was worth missing some sleep for!

Friday was another lazy day, with Ben working on his assignment, me reading my book, and Peter and Marissa doing some snorkelling.

At 4:30pm, we all took a taxi into town to meet up with an American couple from Virginia: Phil and Carmen. They were holidaying at Playa del Carmen - which is on the mainland, a 30 minute ferry ride from Cozumel - and had done a tour of Cozumel that day, so P&M had arranged to meet them for dinner. We found them at the Cozumel Palace Resort (a sister resort to theirs on the mainland), asked the staff for some dining recommendations, and then set off on foot to Restaurant La Choza.

It was a very nice restaurant, and we enjoyed getting to know Carmen and Phil a little while tucking in to our delicious meals and being serenaded by a trio of guitarists playing 'La Bamba'!

This is the avocado pie Ben and I shared for dessert. It had a smooth texture and still tasted like avocado, but it was surprisingly good!

P&M gave us a taste of their coconut ice cream (which had actual pieces of shredded coconut in it), and that was pretty much the most amazing thing ever. We were sorry we hadn't discovered it earlier so that we could have been eating it all week. I've even been trying to find it back in Canada!

A few poses after leaving the restaurant...

Back on the esplanade, we watched another beautiful sunset.

After Carmen and Phil left to catch their ferry to the mainland, the four of us walked to the Mega supermarket, bought some $2 pure vanilla extract as Ben's and my only real Mexican souvenir, and took a taxi the rest of the way back to Casa del Mar.

The next day, Saturday, would be the last full day of our trip (and the day P&M flew home). It was a good thing we'd had a couple of easy days, because we had big plans for Saturday!

To be continued...

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