Cenote Diving in Tulum, Mexico

The wind is great for sailing, but not always good when you want to go scuba diving outside the reef. I´ve been in Mahahual almost two weeks now with the GVI marine conservation research project. We got into the water immediately to do a review dive of 16 skills, then the winds started, keeping us out of the water for several days, to the point where they were going to let us go traveling because the forecast wasn´t looking any better. And guess what, they died that night so we dived instead of traveled. That meant the boat sent out five times a day, so two dives daily for the advanced divers! We started spotting the fish we´d been studying, both adults and juveniles. They can look dramatically different, but guess you could say that for some adults when looking back at their baby pictures.

Our spot on the south side of the Ka¨an Siam Reserve is nice. It´s a 15-minute walk to a very small village, so small most if not all of the electricity runs on a generator. We have our own generator so lights go out at 10:00 if not before. We´re up at 6:00am so that´s not a problem. We head to the kitchen to make porrage if we´re on kitchen duty, to the kit room for boat gear if we´re on boat duty as well as to the barrels which need to be filled with water for rinsing our gear, or to the kit room for rakes, shovels and the wheelbarrow to clean the grounds. The beach is raked daily of all the seaweed and trash. I never realized it but raking the sand cuts down on sand flies. I always thought it was just the swanky hotels looking as polished as they could. There really is a reason for this.

Yesterday morning the boat went out and came right back in because the winds had picked up again, so while there were cleaning chores to be done, four of us packed very hurriedly and headed for the bus station to get the 8:30am bus to Tulum. We´d heard about cenote diving in this area and off we were. Cenote diving is going through fresh water sometimes to salt water to look at underground caverns. It must be like seeing the mines in Lake Superior, with stalagtites and stalagmites. One cenote had a layer of sulpher dioxide in it so we went through about 1-2 meters of fog. That was a bit eerie. It also made me think of Minnesota because some parts looked like a fall day with a dusting of snow on the barren ground. No leave on the trees either. We even took a picture of us sitting on a log. How Minnesotan is that?

We´re going to have another Mexican meal without a ton of rice before headng back to Mahahual this afternoon. We get lots of starch at the base so this is a real treat. I even had an ice cream today, my first in a long time. And it was fun to check email today, and have lots of communication with you all back home. Life is good.

Again, please excuse any typos. I still haven´t figured out the Spanish word for spell check.