Alright folks, buckle your seatbelts for today's dive report, because... well, because it's a good safety habit and you can never be too careful while riding around on the internet.
Today was day 2 of 2 with Aldora, and this time I was on one of the fast boats (yay) with five fellow customers, all but one of which I dove with the day prior. Fidel was the captain, and Sergio once again lent us his expertise to guide the dives. Today we were going where no man had gone before, at least for the last month or two. Today they reopened a few sites that had been closed for a brief respite from all us underwater touristas. So we headed straight for Columbia Deep.
The current was super slow, so the dive was on. Another steel 120 of nitrox strapped to our backs, we hit the (tiny) waves at 8:31am and quickly dropped to depth, where a green moray was waiting to punch our tickets and admit us onto the grounds. He looked pretty cozy in his tollbooth though, so all we got to see was his head poking out.
As I was preparing to write this report I looked back through all my log book entries and discovered this was only the second time I ever dived Columbia Deep. That explains why it all looked fresh to me, especially since my memory ain't what it used to be, and it used to be garbage. The formations were impressive. If Palancar has towers, Columbia has skyscrapers. Seeing the massive columns rising out of the depths was awe inspiring.
We proceeded to do some swimthroughs, which were much easier today since I carried zero extra weight for the first time in my diving career. I'm still getting the hang of the steel 120's though and badly flubbed one of the swimthroughs when the tank shifted as I tilted to the side. Fortunately all I bounced off was the sandy bottom, but I felt like a rookie for silting up the water. After getting through that swimthrough I tightened up my BCD a lot more until the tank fused with one of my vertebrae, and the rest of the dive went well in that regard.
As we exited one of the swimthroughs we came upon a massive black grouper. This was the grouper you make friends with when you end up in grouper prison. We didn't get a super close look at him which was probably for the best, because he might have been hungry. I named him Lord Vader out of respect. He swam south, so we swam north.
As the dive progressed we left the massive beachhead of coral we'd spent all our time on so far, and swam over an incredibly deep sandy bottom. I will hazard a guess that is almost surely wrong, but I would say the bottom was at least another 150-200 feet below us and we were at about 80 feet for this swim. A hulking shadow in the distance gave us our direction, and in time an absolute battleship of a reef came into view from the gloom. It gave me the chills, in a good way. It was a very similar feeling to seeing a wreck come into view when you descend on one. If I didn't need it closed to sustain life, my jaw would have dropped open.
We spent another half of the dive meandering around in these incredible formations, with the slow current allowing us to take as much time as we wanted in the canyons. I found a fireworm here, a parrotfish checking me out there, a juvenile.... everything, swimming around everywhere. The reef was fully alive. That zen I crave so much came back - it was apparent by now that we had a solid group of divers here and my normally safety conscious risk assessment back seat diver went off for a coffee break. The dive ended peacefully and uneventfully, with no other grand wildlife sightings. One hour and twelve minutes of diving heaven, max depth 95 feet, the vast majority of the dive around 70 feet. Yeah, I can see why you guys like these steel 120's on nitrox. So much time in the deep formations had me dizzy with delight. I felt like I had just toured the Grand Canyon by helicopter. We climbed aboard and headed for Playa Palancar, me with what passes for a grin plastered across my face.
After an hour of scarfing papas fritas and agua purificado at Palancar, it was back on the boat and we shot off to Palancar Bricks.
This is a dive I always enjoy, and this time was no different. We dropped in and Sergio started giving us a tour of the swimthroughs, which I am pretty sure at this point he owns stock in or something. That man loves his swimthroughs! At the entrance to one of them we had a huge crab out in broad daylight, checking to make sure we weren't bringing in any contraband. We checked out clean so he let us pass.
And then we got to the cathedral. If you've been there you know how it is. For those of you that haven't, picture a large, vertically oval dome with swimthrough entrances and exits on all sides. The light comes shining in from a hole in the top of the 'dome', and lights up the room beautifully. I was the last in line for this swimthrough, and I took a few moments after the diver in front of me exited to savor the sight in solitude.
We spent a good 40 minutes hanging out in the shallows after that, peeking all over the reef at about 30 feet, looking for anything and everything. We got a slow flyby by a green turtle, but otherwise nothing too large to see. The gorgonians and barrel sponges looked GREAT though. Everything seemed to be in fantastic shape to my untrained eye. I'm guessing you don't get a lot of new divers kicking stuff to pieces out on the Bricks. It looked healthy!
Finally we ran out of reef and with a sandy bottom stretching out below us we started our safety stop. Just halfway into it, eagle-eyed Sergio caught sight of something and gave us the signal for 'shark'! We swam in the direction he was pointing for a couple minutes and sure enough, a juvenile reef shark appeared, bopping around the reef about 60 feet below us. We watched him for a while, enjoying an extra long safety stop, and then headed up to the surface, our diving day complete. One hour, 28 minutes of diving on the Bricks. Nice!
The only thing left on the schedule is my reservation tonight at Buccano's. If their wine doesn't taste too good, I may be in good enough shape to write up my experience there when I get back tonight. If not, look for it tomorrow!
Hasta luego, amigos!
