Thank you guys for the kind words. I'm glad you're enjoying my euphoric ramblings.
First up for today... is yesterday! Last night I did twilight and night dives, and as expected had no energy to do a full writeup after. But here it is, as promised.
The twilight dive was on Santa Rosa Wall, as per usual, and it was stunning, as per usual! Despite knowing I was going to get some great scenery, I hadn't a clue what else the reef had in store for me. This was one of the most wildlife diverse dives I think I've ever done. Right out of the gate Santa Rosa let us know she had something special in store for us. A nurse shark was just below us, swimming away into the deep. And then 30m further south, an eagle ray also decided it was time to head for the channel! So far my only eagle ray sighting of this trip, but it was a great one and unexpected at this time of the year. At this point I was only 3 minutes into the dive and already ecstatic.
After that great intro we started moving along the wall. There were a couple lobster colonies creeping out of their dens, but then the real show started. A purple splendid toadfish was almost on full display, much further out than you'd typically see in the daytime. In the fading sunlight his purple coloring almost seemed to be glowing like neon. Very cool! Right after him there was a humongous brown sea slug/worm (not sure what they're really called) which I always think are gross and neat at the same time.
Shortly we came upon another group of divers who were shining a light on the wall and stopping for a long peek at something. It was a rockfish, motionless and in near perfect camouflage in the coral. No idea how that other group spotted him. The rockfish was followed by a couple of big barracuda, and then a turtle passed by. It was at this point I realized my dive log was going to be easier to fill out if I just tracked the stuff I DIDN'T see on this dive. And that list grew smaller...
Next up was a parade of either amberjacks or horse-eye jacks, I really can't tell them apart. But they were hunting or fighting or whatever jacks do, out over the deep just behind us and away from the wall, and it was cool to watch them moving so fast.
Towards the end of the dive we came up over the wall and finished over a more level spot, and that was where I spotted a tiger tail (worm I think?) followed by an absolute unit of a parrotfish. He was definitely the parrotfish that other parrotfish have to give their lunch money to.
There was undoubtedly more, but that was all I could remember by the time I was home, showered, and writing log pages. It was one of the most exciting dives I can remember in terms of sight seeing.
The next dive was the night dive, which we did on Paradise, as per usual. I am not the world's biggest fan of night dives only because there tends to be too much going on. There are usually a lot of other divers in the water near enough you can see their lights and hear their rattles, and also people tend to get excited and want to swim all over looking at every new thing that they didn't see during the day. I get it, but I am much more of a laid back, chill, feel-the-zen type diver, so all that hustle doesn't suit me. It's fun to do once in a while, but I don't go out of my way to schedule one.
All that said, it was still a great dive. The octopus were out IN FORCE. I have done night dives before in Cozumel, on this very reef, and have never seen even close to what I witnessed last night. I just stopped counting after 10 minutes because I'd already seen a dozen. But there was a special one at the end of the dive that I'll come back to.
After we'd all been over-satiated on octopus sightings, I started to look for other things. A couple of puffers were swimming nearby which was neat to see at night. The crabs were also out in force and we saw quite a few big guys gearing up for dinner, but none really out and about - they were all still hanging out on their ledges trying to make plans I guess. It's probably hard to meet up with your crab buddies for a night out when none of you have cell phones.
Towards the mid point of the dive we saw two sharptail eels, white with tan/greyish spots. Another diver on the boat later swore they were snakes but the face looked pretty eel-ish to me so I looked it up when I got back to the condo. Otherwise I certainly wouldn't have known what they were called. The second of the two we saw was super chill, and I flew right over him head down so my mask was only a foot or two away. He didn't seem to mind at all. It was pretty awesome to get a closeup like that.
The rest of what we saw was not terribly unusual, so I'll skip right to the grand finale. Towards the end of the dive we saw Yet Another Octopus (is everyone bored yet?) but this guy put on quite a show for us. He was spread out on the sandy bottom just in front of a small coral head, and we put our lights just to the side of him, as you do, so he doesn't go blind. Well we must have had the lights at just the right place because he started shimmer between different colors extremely rapidly, waves upon waves of color crossing over his body as he went from brown to white to green and then back again in all different combinations. The colors were just dancing over his body, as if he was the center display at a rave where red and blue were forbidden. This went on for a good 30 seconds and I was almost in shock - I had never seen anything like it with my own eyes. If I could have tipped that little pulpo I would have because he gave a fantastic show, and there wasn't even a two drink minimum. All joking aside it was one of the coolest things I've ever seen underwater.
That's it for last night's dives. I'll start a new post for today's adventures in a little bit, so stay tuned for a writeup where I dived for the first time with Aldora, and tried the sushi place Cozumel Dreaming for an early dinner.
That's really cool that you get to go back so soon. I can tell you I have caught the bug again. I'm not even halfway through this trip and I'm already thinking about when I'm going to shoehorn the next one in. This place is magic.
