April 8th and 9th, 2021
After the night dives on the 7th, the group opted for two afternoon dives for April 8th. Prior to showing up at 1pm for the afternoon dives, I indulged in a much-needed deep tissue massage. I felt like a new man!
Weather is just ideal. Flat seas, calm winds, sunny skies, starting to warm up. We motored south to Palancar Bricks for the first dive. We had the entire reef to ourselves. Just WOW? When can you say that you have ever dived any of the Palancar reef dives and not seen another diver from any other boat. Well, now I can and 2 of the 4 Palancar locations are currently closed for the month. All other boats and snorkelers were camped out at the other site that was open (Palancar Caves).
We had super clear 100+ foot visibility and this dive was a turtle fest. We saw them at every turn. It was a wonderful and leisurely dive as we strolled our way through and around all of the huge pinnacles.
We motored north during our surface interval and decided to dive Yucab. Another fun dive with great visibility and several juvenile spotted drum sightings and numerous eels and a few big Amber Jacks.
After getting back and cleaning up, I connected with one of the other divers that I have met on this trip and have cliqued with (Axle from Phoenix, AZ). We walked down to No Name Bar in time for sunset and then sat outside for some food and drink while listening to some live music (cover songs), played by a talented vocalist from England. It was a great day.
April 9th has commenced with the last 2 dives of the day this morning. The group wanted to see some sharks, so we set off for Paso del Cedral and hit the motherload. We found a good-sized nurse shark with a remora sitting on top, snuggled up close to a big green moray under an overhang. After a few minutes a watching and picture taking, the nurse shark decided it was time to get out for a cruise south. We followed for a while and then lost here in the distance. About 10 minutes later we saw her again and followed while she led us (at least it seemed like that is what she was doing) to some of her friends. We came over a ridge behind her and then she descended (with remora in tow) under another ledge where she squeezed herself into a shark sandwich with 2 other, even larger nurse sharks, and another massive green moray.
So, there we floated, looking in amazement at 3 nurse sharks and a 7-foot green moray snuggled up like 4 peas in a pod. It was just epic! My last day of diving was turning into an “all-timer”, and to think, I was kind of wanting to dive Santa Rosa Wall this morning. So glad the rest of the group prevailed in the search for nurse sharks.
Last dive was at Punta Tunich. I have really grown to love and enjoy the diversity of this dive site. We rolled through verdant coral fields between 60-80 feet, filled with every juvenile fish in the spectrum, for quite some time, before the terrain turned up into the 35–40-foot range. We meandered along over hill and dale spotting nurse sharks, southern rays and more turtles. We saw one of the biggest Giant Barracudas I have ever seen. The current suddenly picked up and we were moving at quite the clip north. The reef dropped back down to 60 feet and along we went headlong, faster and faster. We made it all of the way to the end of Tunich up on a narrow ridge that I have never made it to before and it was just visually stunning with the wall dropping off into the abyss to the west of us. I shot up my SMB for the whole group and we slowly ascended to safety stop depth while seeing another large nurse shark cruising on the ridge 40 feet below us.
Wow! 2 amazing dives to wrap up the trip. All of the dive gear is cleaned and drying out. Just finished up lunch at Kooben Laab with another one of those amazing salads and a tagliatelle pasta in an olive oil and garlic sauce with mushrooms, bell peppers, onion, carrot and broccoli.
Absolutely delicious and I love this restaurant. Do not plan on having dinner there without a reservation though. I learned the hard way and had to improvise. Early afternoon seems to be the way to go for walk-in.
I have my COVID antigen test in about 2 hours at the International Hospital, which is around the corner from Casa Mexicana and across the street from the Aldora dive shop and a few doors down from Tres Pelicanos dive shop. I will pick up the results a couple hours later. Will post about this process later, but everyone else I have spoken with this week has said that it has been flawless. Cost for the test is 899 Pesos. So, about $45 US.
That’s it for now. Will download photos from today a bit later and see if anything turned out and will post if they do.
