As previously noted, my dives for today and tomorrow were canceled by my regular op and I chose Aldora to provide me with replacement dive buddies and transportation. Their signup process is interesting, with a medical questionnaire among the usual liability waivers, etc. They are certainly dotting their I's and crossing their T's, I thought.
As we traded emails it seemed they weren't into the whole beach pickup thing and wanted me to use the Secrets pier. I begrudgingly walked over to the RR guard shack yesterday and forked over ten whole dollars for the privilege of standing on their pier for a grand total of 30 minutes over two days. You win this time, Secrets, curse you!
So they picked me up this morning, more than a little late, but perhaps not by island time. I enjoyed standing around the pier and watching the schools of fish below while I waited. I even saw a trumpet fish swimming around the pier, one of which I have not yet spied underwater this trip.
After boarding I was quickly brought up to speed by the divemaster, Sergio, as we headed out to do Palancar Gardens. You may remember that site from my amazing trip report from.... the day before yesterday. Well if you're going to take me to a spot I've been to recently, the Gardens isn't a bad spot to see twice. My feathers were not ruffled.
Then he dropped a bomb on me - we're diving Nitrox. Wait, what? Now when I filled out all the Aldora forms the day before, they asked what gas I wanted and I said 'air'. I haven't dived Nitrox since 2008 because I never feel like I need it. But he said they put everybody on Nitrox so the group can stay together better. That would be good information to have on your sign up then, instead of asking! And if you're going to force people to use Nitrox it should be part of the base 2 tank price since it's not optional. Minor rant over. Fortunately for me I had actually reviewed some of my nitrox training and all the different settings on my trusty old Oceanic VT3, including gas settings, just prior to this trip. Serendipity or wicked smart preparation? Who is to say? Props to Garmin for making this stupid easy to find on the mk2i, my new backup computer, because I had NOT reviewed that prior to the trip. But it was very simple to find and set my O2 percentage through the menus on that one.
This was my first time diving steel tanks and the DM said I need about 6 pounds less than I would carry with an AL80. So for me that would be 4 pounds. He suggested I take 6 'just to be sure'. I felt like maybe that would be too much, but he's the expert so I went with it.
We were on Aldora's big boat which, again, was not to my liking but as big boats go I can't complain, as it was clean and well maintained with plenty of room for everybody. And there were still only 6 divers in our group, with a smaller group aboard going with a private guide, so it really made no difference once we were in the water. I got to do a giant stride entry for the first time since Oil Slick Leap in Bonaire 13 years ago. That was fun for about half a second, then it was like any other dive.
And so finally, after listening to me babble about all the prep, we can talk about what you came for. Dive details!
Swimthroughs. As far as I can tell when you're diving Palancar Gardens with a steel 120 you have to do ALL the swimthroughs. Cause we did. We might have done some of them twice, I'm not sure. It would have been more fun for me, but I was right about that 6 pounds - it was way too much and I was fighting for good buoyancy control most of the dive. I was still able to navigate the swimthroughs without kicking the **** out of everything or finning sand into the face of people behind me, but it was not nearly as clean and crisp as it would have been with the AL80's I'm used to. Mostly I was worried about running out of air too fast since my lungs were getting a workout - little did I know I had nothing to fear in that department. Still, it just took some extra attention, and I managed. And I spotted what I believe was a jackknife swimming around in one of the crevices of a swimthrough. I thought it was an angelfish at the time because I'm literally the worst person in the world at fish ID, but my trusty internet guide got me the right name. Not sure if I've seen one before. Cool!
We took a break from the marathon swimthroughs for a quick jaunt over to the edge of the wall, where the DM had a treat for us. There were FOUR juvenile reef sharks that live there now, and although I only saw two of them, many in the group saw all four. What a special occasion! It's been very rare for me to see a reef shark in Cozumel so just seeing these two babies (maybe 2-3 feet long?) swimming around together made my day. Then our break was over and it was back to the
mines swimthroughs for a while. There weren't too many other spectacular sightings on this dive, and the end was just a chill drift over the flats until it was time to surface.
And there lies my other nitpick with Aldora. Their claim to fame is really long dives, but they make everyone go up as a group as soon as the first person hits 700. My preferred op lets people go up the DM's buoy line in buddy pairs if one gets low, so the people with lower air consumption can eke out some more precious time on the reef. And that time, drifting over the reef at the end of a long nitrogen hit, when many of the other divers are out of the water, is some of the calmest and most zen diving I get, because I'm no longer worried about staying out of anyone's way, traffic, gas management, etc. That time is special to me. In the end this dive was no longer than a dive I'd do on an AL80, and I ended up coming up with over 1200psi left in my steel 120. I'm not interested in getting in an argument about the pros and cons of this procedure, I understand why they do it, but it was a bit disappointing to me. So it goes. It was still a great dive!
The next dive was even better.
After a nice long SI at Playa Palancar we headed to La Francesca. My third time in 5 days.
It's ok. They could have told me it was any one of half a dozen other sites and I wouldn't have known the difference! And after having to pay constant attention to my buoyancy on the previous dive I was ready for a nice flat relaxing reef. Without swimthroughs. Please. I've done my time!
This dive I went in with only 2lbs weight and that was just perfect. I knew as soon as I descended this was going to be much easier on me.
And as soon as we hit 40 feet and started along the reef we had a greeter! A lone, medium sized cuttlefish was right in front of me to say hi and then head off in search of more interesting company. A rare treat and I was grateful for his brief appearance.
We drifted along the French Lady, everyone relaxing and checking out what they wanted to see. The current picked up a bit in some parts but nothing too bad, and I was finally starting to get used to this steel monstrosity on my back that kept wanting to roll me over and slam me into a coral head. Until the end, the dive was pretty uneventful, although I did see two of my favorites along the way. The first, little baby trunkfish - hands down the cutest damn thing you can see underwater! And also the little black fish with the neon blue spots. One moment while I again consult the interwebs... reefsofcozumel.com (my cheat sheet for all these posts) says it is a juvenile Damselfish. I love those little guys, those blue spots just pop! They almost seem like they swam out of a cartoon or computer animation, they're so vivid.
And then at the end of the dive, the Lady gave us something special. A nurse shark hanging out with a huge green moray under the same ledge. They were both straight chillin' and the whole group was able to get real close and check them out for a minute or two while both parties just relaxed. The nurse shark wasn't sleeping, but just moseying around the ledge. Once it realized it had an audience I think stage fright took over and it settled down for a nap, as some of us do when under intense pressure! The moray just sat over to the side, head poking out at us, gawking back at the gawkers. It was a glorious end to the longest dive I've done yet (thanks, shallow dive on steel tanks!).
All in all, another great day. It was a lot of new experiences (big boat, steel tanks, somewhat different procedures than I'm used to, etc) but it was great. Don't mistake my nitpicks with Aldora for complaints - they did a fantastic job giving a diver that was an unknown quantity to them a wonderful pair of dives. And I'll see them again in the morning, on one of the smaller boats as I found out when I stopped by the shop today to pay for my rides. So it should be yet another magical day underwater!
Amazing the twists and turns a good conversation can take!
). If your metal is strong you may even do North or far North sites.
