This is long, get comfortable.......
We got back last night after the cross country flight from Florida to Denver...then back to OKC. Southwest was awesome as always with no travel drama. Gotta love 2 free bags and they actually get you and your luggage there.
We are a group of older divers ranging from 50 to 70ish, men and women, all good divers, and pretty easy to please. After 3 trips to Roatan were rescheduled and finally canceled, and a rescheduled November trip to Curacao was canceled, we just put a trip together to get underwater somewhere.
We flew into Tampa and went to Fox Rental cars to pick up our rentals. They did not have the Explorers we had reserved, and confirmed, then tried to tell us one person can not rent three vehicles, again this was all arranged with no issues on the phone and internet before we got there. An employee decided to make either new rules or enforce old rules which caused the problem. It took about an hour to get 3 Toyota Fourrunners. The luggage and people would not all fit so part of our group took an Uber to Crystal River for $100 or so. The vehicles were fine. Probably wont rent from Fox again.
We stayed at the Hampton Inn in CR. Nice place, welcoming staff, easy to find, and they would put together a brown-bag breakfast for you with a few options if you wished.
Diving- We dove with American Pro Dive Center. The staff was friendly, knowledgeable, and the shop was very nice. Our package included:
Day 1- Snorkel with Manatees on the Crystal River, 2 tank dive at Manatee Springs
Day 2- 2 dank dive at Devils Den
Day 3- Drift dive on Rainbow River, Night Dive on Rainbow River
Snorkel With the Manatee's-
We met at the shop and watched a short video of the rules for diving with the Manatees, then loaded up in our vehicles and follow the shop pontoon boat to the boat ramp. Lots of parking and the boat is the largest pontoon boat I have been on and it had square shaped pontoons (never seen those), It was very stable, even when all 18 of us were trying to look on one side. The video showed lots of manatees all close to one another...that not how our tour went. We drove around a small bay surrounded by houses and saw a few manatees here and there. Maybe 3 sets. At one point we all got in the water and two or three large manatees and a baby came and swam around within our group. My wife broke away from the group and had a mother and baby come and look at here, with the baby looking right into her mask. I think being a large group hurt our chances here and I would recommend doing smaller groups. We did not get to a point where there were dozens of manatees congregating together like the video showed, but it was a good time The visibility was good, I'd say 30 feet when we dropped in, but being a large group, it was stirred up quickly. Me being blind didn't help either. I would absolutely recommend this trip. The water was probably low 70's so a wet suit is definitely needed unless you are a polar bear. My 3mm Deep Six was perfect...and I looked great too!
Manatee Springs- This park is about 45 minutes or so from the dive shop. There is a sinkhole to dive and a river. The sinkhole was great for a weight check but was covered in Duckweed. We had too many divers to make this a good dive. The dead duck weed on the bottom gets strirred up by a fin kick and vis went from great to maybe 8 feet quickly. The little bits of duckweed floating will induce vertigo...which I like...but many of our group did not feel the same. There is flow out of this hole to the river that connects to the river through a series of caves. Our max depth was 45 feet, but you could feel the flow and watch the particles move in the mild current. I may have seen a few fish, possibly a turtle, but not much to see. I'd like to do this one again with just a couple of divers. My wife and I popped up to see if she wanted to do anything else and my reg got Duckweed jammed in the valve that lets you exhale. Note to self-Duckweed makes a reg breathe stupid wet..... I switched to my octo, found the problem, and a few purges cleared things up. No big deal. This was a great place for weight checks, and probably had more to offer, but American Dive limits their dives to 30 minutes. Most of us came up with 2000# or more. Maybe many divers may have been cold after 30 minutes, (we weren't) but this is my only complaint of the dive shop. We did not even change tanks for the second dive.
The second dive at Manatee Springs was actually a river. The flow coming out of the spring was very strong and lots of fun to play in. You could pull yourself into the mouth of the spring then let go and it would blow you out in the current. There was a rock ledge and log in the way that you had to dodge coming out, but it was fun and something I had never done before. I could do this again...several times. On this dive we saw lots of fish, 2 types of turtles, and the first divers in the water saw a snake hanging out next to the current. Lucky my wife didn't see it or she would have demonstrated her ability to run on water. This dive was fun...really fun. The visibility was excellent even with all the divers in the water because of the strong flow. The river got very shallow (3-4 feet or less) after the mouth but you could float down to a rope stretched across if you wanted to. We did but I walked back to the entry point to play in the current again. Wife was cold and did not get in again.
The facilities were nice, parking was fine, but it is a longer walk to the entrance of either dive option. I'd say 125 yards or so. It's probably 100 yards or so between the dives. The stairs are sturdy and none of us had any trouble getting to the water. We did carry tanks to the first dive for some of our divers to make it easier.
My only complaint here was we were limited to 30 minute dives.
DEVILS DEN!!!!!
Its capitalized because it was really cool. I have dove cenotes in Tulum many times and went through some pretty tight swim throughs.... Devils Den was an education. This is the nicest dive park I have been to, without question. I believe American Pro reserved a covered pavilion with 12 or so picnic tables for us. We each had our own table with plenty of room to gear up. The walk to the entrance of the cave was maybe 50-75 yards, concrete steps with sturdy hand rails made it easy for everyone We set up a couple of BCDs on the platform to make it easier for a couple of our group. Plenty of room. The water temp was actually warmer 74 vs. 72, but you could feel the difference. We immediately went through a set of swim throughs that were tight enough that you had to turn sideways. I was surprised at how tight most of them were. We went up down, mostly left (kind of like Nascar...but different....), but some right twisting and turning as we went. Most points you could see daylight, but this was definitely not for beginner divers or those with issues with tight places. The bell of shame would clang out if your buoyancy was not right and your tank hit the roof. THIS WAS FUN!! I think max depth was 50 feet-ish. The 30 minute dive limit still had most of us with over 2000 psi when we went back to switch tanks. This was the most fun dive we did.
See Part 2
We got back last night after the cross country flight from Florida to Denver...then back to OKC. Southwest was awesome as always with no travel drama. Gotta love 2 free bags and they actually get you and your luggage there.
We are a group of older divers ranging from 50 to 70ish, men and women, all good divers, and pretty easy to please. After 3 trips to Roatan were rescheduled and finally canceled, and a rescheduled November trip to Curacao was canceled, we just put a trip together to get underwater somewhere.
We flew into Tampa and went to Fox Rental cars to pick up our rentals. They did not have the Explorers we had reserved, and confirmed, then tried to tell us one person can not rent three vehicles, again this was all arranged with no issues on the phone and internet before we got there. An employee decided to make either new rules or enforce old rules which caused the problem. It took about an hour to get 3 Toyota Fourrunners. The luggage and people would not all fit so part of our group took an Uber to Crystal River for $100 or so. The vehicles were fine. Probably wont rent from Fox again.
We stayed at the Hampton Inn in CR. Nice place, welcoming staff, easy to find, and they would put together a brown-bag breakfast for you with a few options if you wished.
Diving- We dove with American Pro Dive Center. The staff was friendly, knowledgeable, and the shop was very nice. Our package included:
Day 1- Snorkel with Manatees on the Crystal River, 2 tank dive at Manatee Springs
Day 2- 2 dank dive at Devils Den
Day 3- Drift dive on Rainbow River, Night Dive on Rainbow River
Snorkel With the Manatee's-
We met at the shop and watched a short video of the rules for diving with the Manatees, then loaded up in our vehicles and follow the shop pontoon boat to the boat ramp. Lots of parking and the boat is the largest pontoon boat I have been on and it had square shaped pontoons (never seen those), It was very stable, even when all 18 of us were trying to look on one side. The video showed lots of manatees all close to one another...that not how our tour went. We drove around a small bay surrounded by houses and saw a few manatees here and there. Maybe 3 sets. At one point we all got in the water and two or three large manatees and a baby came and swam around within our group. My wife broke away from the group and had a mother and baby come and look at here, with the baby looking right into her mask. I think being a large group hurt our chances here and I would recommend doing smaller groups. We did not get to a point where there were dozens of manatees congregating together like the video showed, but it was a good time The visibility was good, I'd say 30 feet when we dropped in, but being a large group, it was stirred up quickly. Me being blind didn't help either. I would absolutely recommend this trip. The water was probably low 70's so a wet suit is definitely needed unless you are a polar bear. My 3mm Deep Six was perfect...and I looked great too!
Manatee Springs- This park is about 45 minutes or so from the dive shop. There is a sinkhole to dive and a river. The sinkhole was great for a weight check but was covered in Duckweed. We had too many divers to make this a good dive. The dead duck weed on the bottom gets strirred up by a fin kick and vis went from great to maybe 8 feet quickly. The little bits of duckweed floating will induce vertigo...which I like...but many of our group did not feel the same. There is flow out of this hole to the river that connects to the river through a series of caves. Our max depth was 45 feet, but you could feel the flow and watch the particles move in the mild current. I may have seen a few fish, possibly a turtle, but not much to see. I'd like to do this one again with just a couple of divers. My wife and I popped up to see if she wanted to do anything else and my reg got Duckweed jammed in the valve that lets you exhale. Note to self-Duckweed makes a reg breathe stupid wet..... I switched to my octo, found the problem, and a few purges cleared things up. No big deal. This was a great place for weight checks, and probably had more to offer, but American Dive limits their dives to 30 minutes. Most of us came up with 2000# or more. Maybe many divers may have been cold after 30 minutes, (we weren't) but this is my only complaint of the dive shop. We did not even change tanks for the second dive.
The second dive at Manatee Springs was actually a river. The flow coming out of the spring was very strong and lots of fun to play in. You could pull yourself into the mouth of the spring then let go and it would blow you out in the current. There was a rock ledge and log in the way that you had to dodge coming out, but it was fun and something I had never done before. I could do this again...several times. On this dive we saw lots of fish, 2 types of turtles, and the first divers in the water saw a snake hanging out next to the current. Lucky my wife didn't see it or she would have demonstrated her ability to run on water. This dive was fun...really fun. The visibility was excellent even with all the divers in the water because of the strong flow. The river got very shallow (3-4 feet or less) after the mouth but you could float down to a rope stretched across if you wanted to. We did but I walked back to the entry point to play in the current again. Wife was cold and did not get in again.
The facilities were nice, parking was fine, but it is a longer walk to the entrance of either dive option. I'd say 125 yards or so. It's probably 100 yards or so between the dives. The stairs are sturdy and none of us had any trouble getting to the water. We did carry tanks to the first dive for some of our divers to make it easier.
My only complaint here was we were limited to 30 minute dives.
DEVILS DEN!!!!!
Its capitalized because it was really cool. I have dove cenotes in Tulum many times and went through some pretty tight swim throughs.... Devils Den was an education. This is the nicest dive park I have been to, without question. I believe American Pro reserved a covered pavilion with 12 or so picnic tables for us. We each had our own table with plenty of room to gear up. The walk to the entrance of the cave was maybe 50-75 yards, concrete steps with sturdy hand rails made it easy for everyone We set up a couple of BCDs on the platform to make it easier for a couple of our group. Plenty of room. The water temp was actually warmer 74 vs. 72, but you could feel the difference. We immediately went through a set of swim throughs that were tight enough that you had to turn sideways. I was surprised at how tight most of them were. We went up down, mostly left (kind of like Nascar...but different....), but some right twisting and turning as we went. Most points you could see daylight, but this was definitely not for beginner divers or those with issues with tight places. The bell of shame would clang out if your buoyancy was not right and your tank hit the roof. THIS WAS FUN!! I think max depth was 50 feet-ish. The 30 minute dive limit still had most of us with over 2000 psi when we went back to switch tanks. This was the most fun dive we did.
See Part 2
