Lester willis de paamul, q. Roo, mexico

[JANYVIC]

Those of you who have been fortunate enough to have visited Scuba Mex dive shop in Paamul and dived there, will remember the founder of the dive operation, Lester Willis. He started the shop over twenty-five years ago for his own amusement after he retired to the Mayan Riviera, long before it was known as the Mayan Riviera. Over the years, not only did Les keep himself amused with the shop, he pleased and amazed thousands of divers with the incredible reef offshore of Paamul. His death last month ended a wonderful and exciting life but his legacy lives on. John Everett, who has been Les' partner for the past 15 years, after moving down from Beaumont, Texas, continues to carry on the tradition of easy, fun, exicting recreational diving for divers of all ages and skill levels. We will miss Les forever and think of him whenever we see the soft corals waving in the surge.

 

[Andreas_Montoya]

I dove with Lester quite a bit. One particular day, I made the morning dive, then left at lunch for a cenote dive. The cenote had three stops, two in sinkholes in the jungle and one in a subterranean cave with a small hole in the top filled with Free Tail bats. On every stop, my hand came out of the water to remove my mask, so now my computer thought I had made "4" dives. We made it back just in time to catch the boat and make the evening dive. When the dive was over, I took off my bc to pass up to the boat and stripped my dive computer off. John Everett went back in to try to find it, as I was nitrogen saturated. He couldn't find it and I was sick.

Lester assured me they would find it, as they dove there all of the time. The next day was a different reef, so the following day we went back to that reef. Lester told everyone to look for my computer. I looked in every barrel sponge and every nook and cranny, bleeding my tank almost dry. Finally I had to surface and looked at the vastness of the reef, gave up. I heard someone banging on a tank and Lester had found it.

John said, "I'd love to download that one. It thinks you made 6 dives and spent two nights and days on the bottom."