Today we are diving with Condor again and his photographer friend Diego. It wasn’t very busy so we had the boat to ourselves and could go anywhere. Anywhere we could see TURTLES!!!!
We dropped into the water and Aimi was far more confident descending today. Her nervousness about her ears was left behind and she was able to equalise a lot easier and land on the bottom quicker.
We followed Condor along the reef with the current and this time I didn’t have to worry about getting pictures or videos. Diego was swimming around and getting some amazing shots of us. He uses a red filter over the lens of his GoPro and it makes a huge difference to the colours and contrast of the images. Its something I saw being used in Thailand but completely forgot about till he brought it out. My images look completely blue and flat compared, so we bought them, and I think you’ll agree he did an amazing job.
Because it was just us, we had a lot more flexibility about where we went. This area of the reef had lots of canyons, for want of a better description. It was awesome to practice getting the buoyancy right and use my breath to rise and fall over each ridge skimming the top of the plant life. The canyons ranged in size but some came to about the width of your shoulders which meant floating down them a bit tight. In once place there was a coral arch bridging the canyon so Aimi and I flew (swam) under it, which was novel. Also, I was bobbing thru one canyon, happily seeing the fishes float around and over me, when I pretty much came face to face with a barracuda fish. I think that’s what it was, long and slender and with a huge mouth, it sort of startled me and I shot upwards out of the trench back next to Aimi for safety… or maybe sacrifice if it came after me…
The problem with lots of swimming is that you eat thru your available air quicker with all the physical movement. Ideally, you’d move as little as possible, slowly and efficiently gliding from place to place, using as little air as possible so you get as long a scuba dive as possible. I slowed my pace and tried to start conserving my air, but then we saw a Turtle and I got excited and was more interested in making sure I was controlling my buoyancy and position than worrying about breaths. These creatures are amazing to see fly thru the water. They mostly don’t care that we are down there with them. They must see so many scuba divers, they just blink slowly and carry on munching their sea-weedy lunch.
That was the last bit of scuba diving for a while. Tomorrow we were just relaxing, so the nitrogen had plenty of time to release from our bodies. This is usually important before getting on a plane to avoid decompression sickness (the bends). But we only went down 12ish meters and hadn’t done any consecutive dives so there is very low risk, but I thought it better safe than sorry. We spent the rest of the day (again) just chilling by the pool – we could definitely get used to this routine…
The swim up bars have been used a few times, and I never thought I’d say this, but it’s just a bit too cold to sit in the water drinking. The Mexicans are all walking around in hoodies or at least long shirts and caps. Another of the dive instructors was wearing a woolly hat, like what we are going to have to wear when we get back to the UK! The water was definitely on the cool side. Nice and refreshing after sitting in the sun, but just not quite warm enough to stay there all day. I contented myself with swimming over to get the drinks, usually a Strawberry Daiquiri for Aimi and Dark Rum and Coke for me or a Mojito, before getting immediately back out.
There were a few other drinks we enjoyed cycling thru, but I’m not going into how they are made, just google them: Mango Daiquiri, Pineapple & Rum, Margarita, Miami Vice, Pina Colada, Dirty Monkey, Mudslide, Mini Beer and of course, shots of Tequila. Aimi can drink Tequila without wincing, I can’t even smell it. I’ll do a shot occasionally with a butt-load of lime to follow, but its gotta be a party, PARTY!!!