Arkaengel
New
I just returned from a week long trip to the Mayan Riviera where I had the opportunity to take my TDI Cavern Diving certification with Dennis Weeks from Diablo Divers (Diablo Divers | cavern ? cave | experience ? education.).
I heard about Diablo Divers through Scubaboard. They seemed highly recommended, so I contacted Natalie from Diablo. Her name comes up a lot on this forum. It turns out Natalie was out of the country during the period I was in Mexico, but her business partner, Dennis, was willing to serve as my instructor for the course.
Dennis provided, without a doubt, the best quality diving instruction I have had the privilege to learn from. He certainly made the course fun, but his primary emphasis was ensuring I had the training necessary to, in his words, "successfully execute the dive." He made it very clear that my passing the course would be strictly determined by my performance. He had allocated three full days for my training. If at the end of that time he was not confident in my abilities, he made it clear I would not be passing the course. As someone who has taken dive courses where passing just requires showing up and looking somewhat alert, I was grateful he took the position he did.
Dennis was extremely thorough and took the time necessary to clearly communicate the principles I needed to learn. He did not rush through the material and frequently asked me if I had any questions. When I didn't understand something, he would guide me through the material until I did. While what he taught me was certainly based out of the textbooks we were using, he didn't drone through pages and pages of text. He taught me all of the key concepts contained in the textbooks through one on one conversation and practical, hands-on demonstrations.
All six training dives were carried out with the same thoroughness and emphasis on safety that characterized Dennis' dry training. He wouldn't bring me into the caverns until he was confident I had the basic skills necessary to safely do so. Once we started the cavern dives, his drills covered a huge range of potentially life-threatening scenarios he wanted to ensure I was capable of handling. One of those drills included him giving me a primary light he knew would fail on the dive, and then rushing me as soon as it did so with a completely unexpected "out-of-air" emergency complete with a no-light cavern exit. Completely unexpected and certainly the most "realistic" drill I've ever completed.
After completing each dive, he would run me through each part of the dive and ask me what I thought of how I did. He would then provide his own feedback - letting me know what I did right and what I did wrong. One of his post-dive comments regarding how I was checking my tie-off points for alternate guidelines in a no-light situation was "that was sloppy, and if you don't improve it will get you killed."
Dennis did an exceptional job of making the dangers of cavern and cave diving very evident and tying in how our training addresses each one of those dangers. I left the course with a profound appreciation of the dangers of cavern and cave diving, how to avoid those dangers, how to address emergency situations when they occur, and what the limitations of my current training are.
All of the training was done one on one. I was Dennis' only student on the course. I am sure he would have liked to have had more students to make the time spent more worth it, but he was perfectly willing to teach the course with me as his only student. That type of one on one time spent with an instructor as qualified as Dennis is pretty rare. I was reminded how rare and valuable that type of instruction is when we met a group of 16 cavern diver students with only four instructors assigned to the group. I am sure their training experience was very different from my own.
I also had the opportunity to spend a day diving with Carlos, one of Natalie and Dennis' instructors. Carlos is a super guy and an excellent instructor. I really enjoyed diving with him and learning more about Mexican culture in my conversations with him. On the first day of the course, Dennis convinced me to use one of his twin-tank wing and plate configurations rather than the single tank BCD system I always dive with. Doing so was extremely frustrating as I have never dove anything but a single tank system and always with my own equipment. The new twin-tank system and unfamiliar equipment was completely throwing off my buoyancy control and in-water balance. I ended the day frustrated with my inability to even dive with any degree of proficiency let alone learn new skills. Carlos did an absolutely exceptional job of addressing the problem with me and putting my mind at ease. His easygoing, patient nature was exactly what I needed. That, and a new pair of more efficient fins, and the problem was well on its way to being solved.
I am looking forward to returning to Diablo Divers to complete my Cave certification.
So... if anyone is looking for first rate dive instruction or guiding in the Mayan, I can't recommend Diablo Divers highly enough.
Mark
I heard about Diablo Divers through Scubaboard. They seemed highly recommended, so I contacted Natalie from Diablo. Her name comes up a lot on this forum. It turns out Natalie was out of the country during the period I was in Mexico, but her business partner, Dennis, was willing to serve as my instructor for the course.
Dennis provided, without a doubt, the best quality diving instruction I have had the privilege to learn from. He certainly made the course fun, but his primary emphasis was ensuring I had the training necessary to, in his words, "successfully execute the dive." He made it very clear that my passing the course would be strictly determined by my performance. He had allocated three full days for my training. If at the end of that time he was not confident in my abilities, he made it clear I would not be passing the course. As someone who has taken dive courses where passing just requires showing up and looking somewhat alert, I was grateful he took the position he did.
Dennis was extremely thorough and took the time necessary to clearly communicate the principles I needed to learn. He did not rush through the material and frequently asked me if I had any questions. When I didn't understand something, he would guide me through the material until I did. While what he taught me was certainly based out of the textbooks we were using, he didn't drone through pages and pages of text. He taught me all of the key concepts contained in the textbooks through one on one conversation and practical, hands-on demonstrations.
All six training dives were carried out with the same thoroughness and emphasis on safety that characterized Dennis' dry training. He wouldn't bring me into the caverns until he was confident I had the basic skills necessary to safely do so. Once we started the cavern dives, his drills covered a huge range of potentially life-threatening scenarios he wanted to ensure I was capable of handling. One of those drills included him giving me a primary light he knew would fail on the dive, and then rushing me as soon as it did so with a completely unexpected "out-of-air" emergency complete with a no-light cavern exit. Completely unexpected and certainly the most "realistic" drill I've ever completed.
After completing each dive, he would run me through each part of the dive and ask me what I thought of how I did. He would then provide his own feedback - letting me know what I did right and what I did wrong. One of his post-dive comments regarding how I was checking my tie-off points for alternate guidelines in a no-light situation was "that was sloppy, and if you don't improve it will get you killed."
Dennis did an exceptional job of making the dangers of cavern and cave diving very evident and tying in how our training addresses each one of those dangers. I left the course with a profound appreciation of the dangers of cavern and cave diving, how to avoid those dangers, how to address emergency situations when they occur, and what the limitations of my current training are.
All of the training was done one on one. I was Dennis' only student on the course. I am sure he would have liked to have had more students to make the time spent more worth it, but he was perfectly willing to teach the course with me as his only student. That type of one on one time spent with an instructor as qualified as Dennis is pretty rare. I was reminded how rare and valuable that type of instruction is when we met a group of 16 cavern diver students with only four instructors assigned to the group. I am sure their training experience was very different from my own.
I also had the opportunity to spend a day diving with Carlos, one of Natalie and Dennis' instructors. Carlos is a super guy and an excellent instructor. I really enjoyed diving with him and learning more about Mexican culture in my conversations with him. On the first day of the course, Dennis convinced me to use one of his twin-tank wing and plate configurations rather than the single tank BCD system I always dive with. Doing so was extremely frustrating as I have never dove anything but a single tank system and always with my own equipment. The new twin-tank system and unfamiliar equipment was completely throwing off my buoyancy control and in-water balance. I ended the day frustrated with my inability to even dive with any degree of proficiency let alone learn new skills. Carlos did an absolutely exceptional job of addressing the problem with me and putting my mind at ease. His easygoing, patient nature was exactly what I needed. That, and a new pair of more efficient fins, and the problem was well on its way to being solved.
I am looking forward to returning to Diablo Divers to complete my Cave certification.
So... if anyone is looking for first rate dive instruction or guiding in the Mayan, I can't recommend Diablo Divers highly enough.
Mark
