Trip report, Aldora, Mary Carmen

[tridacna]

I happen to prefer Santa Rosa as a second dive. Ask me why?

Dave Dillehay
Aldora Divers

Why?

 

[MMM]

Yesterday we did a very short dive (on nitrox) to Maracaibo deep (as deep as you can go on nitrox) and then swam across the shallow to Maracaibo Shallows. It was one hell of a swim. Current was really strong. I wouldn't have wished that on anyone but an experienced diver. We had steel tanks (only the DM and I had 95s) but it would have been undo-able without. Or at least a very, very short dive. We manged to eke out 55 minutes. Someone asked me if I got any good pictures. I said "are you kidding? We pretty much blew past everything."

I don't blame them. While Devil's throat is a pretty cool dive , I always felt Punta Sur/Columbia and that whole far-south area was over-rated. It's tough to do a gradually ascending profile (and still see reef), like you can on the wall dives further north, so the dive stays very deep and puts everyone at the limits of their air and no-deco times. And, many of the giant coral heads have a lot of distance between them, so you burn can a lot of air cruising across the sand to the next one.
Also, some of the weirdest, most unpredictable currents I've run into in Cozumel have been there. (I recall many times signalling the divers to do like i was, get down low and and dig their hands into the sand and pull across the sand to the next coral head, when the currents were particularly uncooperative. I've seen some strong up and down drafts cause some real problems,too).
Compound all this with the fact that most divers.....can't dive, it makes for a difficult and often scary endeavor for the divemaster.
Personally, I always preferred most of Palancar, and Santa Rosa, as first dives.

 

[divingjd]

Yesterday we did a very short dive (on nitrox) to Maracaibo deep (as deep as you can go on nitrox) and then swam across the shallow to Maracaibo Shallows. It was one hell of a swim. Current was really strong. I wouldn't have wished that on anyone but an experienced diver. We had steel tanks (only the DM and I had 95s) but it would have been undo-able without. Or at least a very, very short dive. We manged to eke out 55 minutes. Someone asked me if I got any good pictures. I said "are you kidding? We pretty much blew past everything."

I like that dive, going through Los Arcos and up to the Shallows, but we’ve lucked out on the current. Maracaibo is always an NDL issue for me, even on nitrox. Gas has not been an issue with the big tanks.