Cozumel Adventure
For the third time I had the opportunity to spend some of my summer time in the Quintana Roo province of México. This time I flew directly to Cozumel, a little island half an hour away from Playa del Carmen by ferry which is 40 minutes away from Cancun by bus.
Before I left, I had done my research and contacted a competent cave diving instructor by the name of German Yañez from Yucatech Expeditions. German is the NSS-CDS safety officer for the Island and runs Technical diving training at all levels.
After a short interview we agreed that I would take on both Cavern and Intro to Cave courses. The courses were excellent but also quite demanding as we usually started early in the morning to escape the scorching Mexican sun. Techniques were first practiced on dry land and then in the cave, with very thorough pre-dive planning and checks and post-dive debriefing. It was also my first time diving with double tanks, manifold isolator and 7 foot long hose. I will not get into too many technical details about the course as you must have read a very good report from Joe in the club magazine dated Aug 2005 (available on www.londondiver.com/history/magazine) .
For me the course was not only about gaining a new diving qualification but also about experiencing a Mexican adventure. And that was one reason why I choose German: Pure Mexican from México City, he moved to the island many years ago and is absolutely dedicated to the art. It was a real delight to be a passenger in his 4×4 driving through St Miguel (Cozumel’s only town) while talking about caves, diving and México in general.
As far as the adventure went, we had it all: short hike all kitted up following an invisible path through the “jungle”, cave entrance that looked more like a green puddle on the floor, small croc half asleep in the pond, wide awake snake in between trees where we were practicing line laying, tarantula drinking at a puddle… I loved every second of it!
There are a few specific rules in overhead diving and most of them could be also applied to open water diving. My belief is that they could even be useful beyond diving in our everyday life. Take for instance, “you shall only take with you what you absolutely need”: Even if I was not to use it during training, I stupidly decided to put my regulator in my diving bag. As it was useless, it was to be locked in the car boot while we were diving. As you might have guessed, the car got broken open and the b*****ds left with the reg. Not very happy, but should have known better.
There is also a rule for redundancy or how to dive with at least two of what is absolutely necessary: It is important that you have two regs, two lights, two reels…and two pair of shoes. Two pair of shoes? Well, believe it or not but those thieves also took my flip-flops and German’s!! I can tell you that the pavement gets very, very, very hot by the end of the afternoon…
Alex Soubeyrand