Worst of Cozumel.

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Orinoco Flow is a Celtic Women standard. I didn't watch past the first song.

Regardless, that performance was Enya.
 
I know my Enya! Have every CD she ever issued (as well as those by her sister Maire Brennan) and all Clannad CDs which includes one or both of them. A big fan of that genre.

Incorrect, all Enya.

Orinoco Flow
Caribbean Blue
Book of Days
Anywhere Is
Only If
The Celts
 
I started listening to Clannad on vinyl in the early 80's. For whatever reason, I can't stand Celtic Woman and am a bit disheartened to hear they covered Orinoco Flow. I know it eventually became a bit cliche', but that song blew me away when I first heard it.

Anyway, that video will haunt my nightmares.
 
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Wow, talk about bottom bouncing. Painful to watch, and the music reminded me of the soundtrack of most of my nightmares, only thing missing is the rapid eye movement.:confused:
 
That and Celtic music......
 
Well back on track.... Everything we read and heard was the diving was fabulous. In retrospect it was probably our fault but when we went it was so bad we did only one dive. After we found our boat ( 1 hour of searching marina) we finally left the dock.....45 min out we had to go back- they forgot the divd master! No lie....we should have gotten off then but two d our group prepaid their dives. They never ask for our C cards. Boat trip took 3.5 hours just to get to the dive site....we saw people walking faster than that boat went. They argued with one person in our group as to how much weight he needed and finally talked him into less weight. When he could not submerge he went back up when he went back down current was so strong he got lost from the group. When we got back aboard dive master said it happened all the time and tgankfully he got picked up by another boat. Vis about 40 feet...current so strong it was like a roller coaster ride.Very little life. Total trip lastes from 9am to 5pm for a two tank dive. We do not know if we will ever go back. Bill
 
Well back on track.... Everything we read and heard was the diving was fabulous. In retrospect it was probably our fault but when we went it was so bad we did only one dive. After we found our boat ( 1 hour of searching marina) we finally left the dock.....45 min out we had to go back- they forgot the divd master! No lie....we should have gotten off then but two d our group prepaid their dives. They never ask for our C cards. Boat trip took 3.5 hours just to get to the dive site....we saw people walking faster than that boat went. They argued with one person in our group as to how much weight he needed and finally talked him into less weight. When he could not submerge he went back up when he went back down current was so strong he got lost from the group. When we got back aboard dive master said it happened all the time and tgankfully he got picked up by another boat. Vis about 40 feet...current so strong it was like a roller coaster ride.Very little life. Total trip lastes from 9am to 5pm for a two tank dive. We do not know if we will ever go back. Bill

That's all useless without saying who it was.
 
Here is my worst experience on Cozumel, copied out of my diary:

I had a very, very bad day.

It’s now eleven o’clock at night. It’s been over twelve hours since it happened. I thought I would have calmed down and put it behind me by now, but I keep replaying it in my mind. I guess I’ll write it down and see if I can get over it. I went to the terreno baldía, the vacant lot across the street from Don Nassim Joaquin’s property on 12th street north where I have been surveying the Maya ruins I found there. The site at one time ran along the top of the rocky ridge that was later cut into two halves when Calle 12 was made. I wanted to see if there were any Maya remains on this north end of the rocky ridge.

I had spoken to Don Nassim and his grandson about the idea, and though they said the entire block did not belong to them, but they were friends enough with the owner to give me permission to walk transects of his part of the property, and if I needed to hire men to clear paths, they would get them. I told them that I just wanted to walk the property first; we could decide later if we wanted to clear portions of it.

This morning looked like nice weather, so I put on a pair of blue-jeans, a tee-shirt, and tennis shoes, and then parked in front of Las Iguanas, the apartment building owned by Don Nassim, adjacent to the vacant lot I wanted to survey. He had told me to enter through the front door of the apartment building, go through the interior door of the lobby to the lobby’s utility room, and then go out through the screen door to the back patio. From there, he said, I could walk into the huge lot that was enclosed by a fence except for this area adjacent to the patio.

I followed his directions, and found myself confronted by weeds and vines higher than my chest. T he ground was rocky and uneven beneath a carpet of rotting vegetation, made soggy from the rains last night. The weeds were woven together into a matted wall by the interspersed vines, making any forward progress slow and exhausting. You couldn’t push them apart to make a pathway; you needed to push a wall of them forward in front of you, climb on top, stomp it down, the go through the process again to make it another two feet forward.

At first, I had regretted forgetting my machete at the gate of our house when I unlocked it to leave this morning, but after losing my footing and falling on the hidden rocks for the third time, I realized I probably would have would have managed to disembowel myself by then if I had remembered to bring it. I pressed on in the heat, sweating like a pig and dehydrating rapidly. By the time I had made the first hundred yards I was exhausted. There was a tree I could see up ahead, and standing on a rock, I could see the ground underneath it seemed shady and free of weeds.I deviated from my transect and headed for the tree to soak up some well-deserved shade and a chance to catch my breath.

I had just stumbled into the clearing, panting and looking around for rock or stump to sit on while I cooled down. That’s when I got the first sting. I slapped the bee and flicked its body off of my arm, but just as quickly felt more stings on my back. I knocked the bees off by shaking my tee-shirt, but more landed on my scalp and arms. They were coming in droves, and I realized these weren’t regular honey-bees; these were Africanized “killer-bees.” I tried to run, away from the clearing, but the weeds presented the same solid wall from this direction. It was push, stomp, push, stomp, push, stomp just to gain a few measly feet of distance from the hive. More were landing on me by the second. I was literally covered in bees. They were going up my nose. They were going in my mouth. They were in my hair, stinging my scalp. They were under my shirt stinging my underarms and chest. I fell when I stumbled on a hidden rock, and more came. The buzzing sound was at an industrial pitch as I rolled on the weeds, killing many, but to no avail; ten more came to take the place of every one I crushed. I realized in a flash that I would die there if I didn’t get up and keep trying to run.

I got to my knees and tried to crawl though the weeds, but the matted ground and rocks made it impossible. I scrambled to my feet and began the “push, stop, push, stop” method again, but more bees kept finding me. I began screaming “Help! Salvame!” like a terrorized school-girl, and more bees went in my mouth. One stung my tongue. One stung the roof of my mouth. Several were hanging by their ripped-out venom-sac from my lips. I fell a few more times before I finally reached the patio of Las Iguanas, after what seemed like an eternity of “push, stomp, push, stomp,” and being stung constantly by the dead bees’ reinforcements. I fell again before I reached the screen door and then made it through the door on my hands and knees. When I slammed the door behind me, I saw hundreds of bees crawling on the patio side of the screen door, but many more were still latched onto me and stinging like the devil. I got up, and made it through the lobby to the open entrance door, where I sat down on the steps and began to pull bees of with both hands.

A young woman was walking by with her child in tow and I asked her if she would call an ambulance. I was feeling faint and lay down on the sidewalk, out of breath, exhausted, and the bees continued to sting me. While she called the ambulance, more people came over from Don Nassim’s parking lot and helped me pick off bees and squash them on the sidewalk.

The thought I had earlier of going into shock and dying in the weeds in the vacant lot came back to me, and I came close to losing it then and there. Nobody would have found me until the buzzards had become too much of a nuisance. I was one lucky son-of-a-bitch. I was also lucky I had never had any problems or reactions to bee-stings. Usually, they just hurt, but didn’t raise much of a welt and the pain went away fairly quickly.

The ambulance arrived and I told them to take me to the Red Cross, which they did.
During the ride, the paramedic helped me pick off more of the super-persistent bees. We must have left another dozen squashed on the floor of the ambulance. We picked off more when I took off my shirt in the emergency room, and after they pumped me full of cortisone and Benadryl (I think), the nurse and the doctor began pulling dozens of stingers out of my neck, arms, face and scalp. Most of the stingers that were stuck in my back came off with my tee-shirt. My legs didn’t get stung much because of the thick blue-jeans.T he socks and shoes had protected my feet.


My blood pressure was within reasonable bounds, taking into consideration what I had just been through, and between my natural resistance to bee venom and the fast acting injections, I was not puffing up, just hurting.
I knew from past experience this would go away quickly, and after about thirty minutes, the throbbing subsided and I put my shirt back on. They watched me for a few hours, but I was stable with no swelling or signs of anaphylactic shock, so when I asked to be released they agreed.

I still feel kind of disassociated and unbalanced. Parts of my skin is numb, and others parts hurt. I’m little weepy and emotional, mostly when I think about how close I came to a pretty miserable (but probably fast) death, and I wish my wife was here.

It was a very, very bad day. But now it’s midnight; it’s over now.

It took a few days before I stopped feely woozy and discombobulated. The bomberos came after that and removed the hive. Later, we cleared the weeds down to dirt and I mapped to site, this time with no interference from killer bees.
 

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