ab8cd
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I am relaxing now for a couple of days after an amazing 2.5 weeks of cave diving. I will give a more complete report when I return home. As I mentioned in an earlier post VDR uses contract instructors. I can say after experiencing 7 years of college, a 4 month police academy, and working in a dive shop... that I have seen good and bad instructors (and everything in between). I was blessed (no pun intended) to work with Ela (Emanuela) Bertoni NSS-CDS #363 of Cave Heaven. She was a perfectionist who insisted on comprehension as well as method. It was some of the most challenging training that I have ever experienced, but I am now Full Cave certified and have enjoyed several hours of cave dives in one of the most amazing environments on earth. The cenotes that I dove were Pondarosa, Xtabay, Chuk Mol, Taj Mahal, Grand Cenote, Naharon, Carwash, Minotauro, Jailhouse, and Mayan Blue. All told, I logged 23 Cave dives and 2 open water dives (to demonstrate skills). All dives were with doubles and my computers show dive time totals of over 24 hours (not counting debriefing). Most of the later dives were Nitrox and we hung an O2 tank on dives with the possibility of deco. We used Navy Tables in the training and then computers for later dives. I used a 7 mm wetsuit and hood (at times in the salt water I did get warm and would flood my suit to cool down). I was never cold. Toughest challenge... backfinning!