4: the diving begins

After another day not doing all that much in Cancún we decided to head down the coast to an island called Cozumel to start some diving. Aside from being a cruise liner stop-off that has 'eco-parks' where you can swim with dolphins and has a turtle sanctuary, it's mainly known for its diving, and it does contain some cenote (cave) dives - apparently including the 5th largest underwater cave system in the world. On the ferry across we happened to bump into Matt and Rachael so we decided to team up with them to find some cheap accommodation.

We found a cheap hotel that was ok (any basics missing were made up for by the friendly siamese cat) and got settled just before it started to pour with rain. The streets flooded pretty quickly but in a break from the rain we walked the couple of blocks up to the Deep Blue dive centre and booked a couple of dives for the next day. The evening was spent in a bar on the main square in the pouring rain, with Matt begging for (and getting) free tequilas for all of us.

We met on the pier at a reasonable time the next morning and met Blanca and Luís, the two divemasters for that day. Luís was looking after another group of divers, a Spanish family who were doing a try dive and had never done it before. Blanca gave us a very thorough brief and we sped past some enormous and cruise liners on our way to the site.

Squirrel fish

The first thing we saw in the water was a nurse shark. Whenever you talk about diving with sharks to people who don't, they always say "oh I would be terrified" - but the reality is that you get a bit excited, you swim after it to get a closer look, and then it buggers off. The marine life seemed less vibrant than I had seen in the Red Sea, but we did see more 'big' things, like a small hawksbill turtle. There are loads of weird things in the sea, and fish that look positively jurassic, like the squirrel fish.

The sun came out that afternoon and we treated ourselves to a nice meal at a restaurant Blanca had recommended. Somehow Matt got us free tequilas again.

Ray

The next morning we did two more dives, this time starting at a special location called the Cathedral. The Cathedral was a location that only advanced level divers should attempt because it is a cavern and therefore enclosed overhead - making exit more complicated if you have problems! At around 30m it's also a deep dive, so time at the site was limited (the deeper you dive, the more compressed air you consume, therefore less tank time). The coral formations were pretty impressive, and we encountered barracuda and a large ray (covered with sand) soon after entering the water.

Our second was a drift dive down Palancar Reef. Here the current was very strong and it was difficult to stay in one place to observe things. Our divemaster executed a couple of lionfish along the way. Lionfish are not native to the Caribbean; they are very beautiful, and very poisonous, eat everything and have no predator. In Mexico they seem to have a policy of killing them as they come across them. They're not sure how they got there, but one theory (apart from the difficult aquarium pet one) is that they're brought over in ships' ballast tanks. In Belize our divemaster told us that less than a year ago he'd never seen a lionfish, and now he sees them on every dive.

Divers need to ascend out of the water at different times depending on how much air they have used - we always dive in pairs so both get out when the first person runs low. To avoid problems with nitrogen build up in the body you have to ascend slowly and always do a safety stop a few metres below the surface. Clare and I got a bit swept along by the current and realised due to the frantic flashing of the divemaster's torch that we were almost past the line that Matt and his buddy were already attached to. Hard kicking ensued.

Clare and I wondering where the line is