Congrats. Amazing huh? Never done the caves on the island, only the mainland. May be doing Cozumel with fixxer this year and the women, have to try the island caves. What are they like?
Well, I'll be honest, it was really different than what I expected. I saw many pictures of the caves (Dos Ojos, Sac Aktun), etc. on the mainland of Yucatan and it gave me a mental picture (speleotherms throughout, stalactites, stalagmites, etc.) that was quite different from the caves in Cozumel - at least the few that I saw.
We dived Aerolito first for Cavern, which was a really neat area. There's a pond about 20 ft by 30 ft that's all of about 3 feet deep, and didn't look like it could possibly have a cavern/cave connected to it. It's a coastal cave whose level changes with the tide. The water is Brackish, and halocline was at about 10-12 ft. It was very different from what I am used to (fresh water Texas lakes w/ 3 ft viz). We did get to see some VERY cool stuff there. There's a sea urchin we saw inside a few times that is a newly discovered species (German discovered it, I believe) that is endemic only to that particular cave in the world. We saw millipede-looking worms with hot-pink/orange lines that run around their body (called fire worms) in the cave floor, as well as some much smaller worms with zebra-looking stripes. Deepest I found in this cave was about 37 ft (below the stop sign in the cave). Viz was about 35 ft. During intro to cave we came back, I ended up penetrating about 600 ft into Aerolito. (Btw, watch out for the crocodiles here
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Chankanaab 1 is the hole in the pictures from that link I posted. It's about 500 ft back off the road into a jungle, and a helluva trek wearing full kit (definitely not a straight path). The viz here was about 40 ft. Very neat, brackish water also, and just different. What I definitely learned is that each cave has its own personality and properties to respect.
Chankanaab 2 is the cave on the opposite side of the road from C1 (also about 500 ft off the road). The water is MUCH darker up top - all tanic water till about 10 ft down. There's no cavern zone here at all b/c sunlight can't penetrate the junk in the water. You actually follow the permanent guideline from a branch protruding from the water at the surface into the cave, as the viz is so bad, you might otherwise not find your way into and out of, the cave. Down below the tanic water, the viz was also about 40 ft.
All the caves were about 77-78F when I was there.
Btw, how many times did you kill your team?
Heh, wow, were you watching me? That question actually makes me feel better - makes me feel like I'm not the only one. I killed my wife and I in the cavern zone once in a eyes closed, no viz line exit drill by taking a T and heading deeper into C1 (T was in cavern zone, which is the only reason he allowed us to dive there since T's are restricted in intro cave - and we didn't actually originally take the turn at the T going in, just kept going straight on the guideline). I got a very stern talking to when we got to the surface, and felt like I had committed some unforgivable sin. Man was I pissed at myself.
