After I wrote my report last night I found a curveball waiting for me in my email. My dive op had me, and me alone, on their schedule for Thursday and Fridays so they had to cancel those dives. Flexibility is the name of the game if you want to be happy in Cozumel, so we worked out an agreeable resolution. I'm now doing a previously unscheduled twilight and night dive with them tonight, and swapped one of my future days off for the Friday slot. Suddenly I had two free days on my hands. What was I going to do?
Dive of course!
I hit up Aldora to see if they had space for me, and they did! So for the next two mornings I'll be diving steel tanks with them, which will be a first for me. Looking forward to it after all the great things I've read about them on this board.
As for today's dives, they were fantastic. With only two divers on the boat it felt like a private charter. We hit up Palancar Horseshoe first and the current was gentle and perfect for a lazy tour of the towers everywhere you look. We did plenty of swimthroughs and just had a lot of fun with our small scuba team of 3.
At the start of the dive a green turtle graced us with a close flyover as he headed to his next appointment. Later, as we got ready to start our safety stop, another turtle was swimming by just below us and as I swam over the sandy bottom to get a closer look at him, I scared up a southern stingray right below me! He took off in a hurry, surely muttering unkind things about the disturber of his nap. Sorry buddy, didn't see you there, I swear!
Second dive was part of Cedral, what Martin called the Cedral Mountains. It's like a slow motion rollercoaster with 'waves' of reef that we swam up, over, and back down. Towards the mid point of the dive I bagged my first green moray sighting of this trip, and he was a big boy! He was napping under a shelf, and I used my light to get a better view, taking care not to shine it in his face. Because nobody likes that, right? Even still, after half a minute of that he seemed to be getting a bit agitated and started to give me sideways glances, so I let him be and moved along down the reef.
The rest of the Mountains after that were absolutely littered with barracuda. We must have seen at least 20 of them out and about, including a big school of 8 or so out for a jaunt together. I love seeing them. Such a smart and curious fish! They've been my dive buddy for good portions of previous dives while they followed me around trying to figure out what I was all about.
Right at the end of the Mountains we got another fantastic turtle sighting, with this big green goofball chowing down like a madman on some coral, while a barracuda sat motionless a few feet away. A couple of french Angelfish were hanging out by the turtle's mouth, snapping up whatever they could get from the buffet.
And then we were back on the boat and comparing notes on our sightings - apparently I missed a golden eel right at the end. Next time!
Now I just have a couple more hours of SI before it's time to head to Fonatur for the night dives, so no restaurant report tonight. I'll have to catch everyone up on the night dive tomorrow because with no siesta today I am pretty sure I'll get back from that and collapse into bed. Gotta be up early to meet the Aldora crew! Hasta luego, amigos.
