woke up at 4:30am (hurray, set my alarm today) and prepared for a 5:30 pickup. the boat met john and i at our dock and took us to the big dive boat, we checked our gear and had fruit and coffee. the trip to blue hole was 2.5 hours and it was intense. we traveled inside the reef for about 25 minutes, nice and smooth, then crossed to the open ocean. have you ever been on a 50 foot boat catching air? that was the next hour and a half, hang on tight. i've been on some crazy boat rides before but this really put them all to shame. we were gonna make it to our destination in 2.5 hours regardless of how big the waves or how strong the winds. the last half hour was inside another reef and calm again while we got ready to dive.
i have to admit that i was pretty nervous about diving the blue hole. i'd met some people in cozumel that did it and they were telling stories about people that get narced at that depth (130 feet) and are just doing crazy shit, totally unsafe. my deepest dive to date is 90 feet, and that was only yesterday. add to that the brand new gash on my hand that was oozing blood last nite and only my 12th dive ever, i was questioning if i had any business going down. but how could i not?
the plan was to slowly go to 40 feet and wait a bit, then to 100 feet, then bottom out at 130 (the actual bottom is around 400 feet i think). the first 40 was nice, decent visibility, some fish, all good. looking down all you see is black, that's when the nerves start. it didn't help that one of the divemasters is already coming up fast holding onto an obviously disoriented woman from the first group. so we kick off the ledge and slowly descend and as you go down into the darkness you are surrounded by suspended particles, big chunks of sand maybe, and it reminded me of pictures of outerspace, floating in the stars. there aren't any fish and very few plants, just some algae on the rocks. and then the stalactites begin as the ceiling of the cave opens up, sort of like a giant hourglass. the stalactites are huge, like the columns on the parthenon. everything was great until i looked at my depth gauge and realized that i was at 135 feet.
i don't know exactly what its like to be narced but there were some crazy thoughts running through my head. the first thing i did was hold my regulator against my face because i thought maybe i might try to breathe without it. and since i had a few extra minutes in the morning before the boat was due i checked facebook, i remembered someone's starwars post. so i'm in dark dark water, there's white particles floating around me, my breathing sounds like darth vader, and i fuzzily recall a little death star mind trip. but i couldn't have been too far gone because i distinctly remember wondering how the hell i was gonna write about it.
so i started talking myself through this part, i knew that we were only going to be at this depth for about 8 minutes. breathe. look at stuff. breathe. breathe. everythings ok. breathe.
the next thing i remember is seeing john waving at me and pointing down, there were some giant reef sharks circling underneath us. i can't even guess what depth they were at, they were grey figures against the black bottom. and then he's frantically signaling to me to rip the tape off my cut hand and bleed in the water so he can get a better look at the sharks. he's a funny guy.
now its time to start ascending and we take it pretty slowly, we get to the shelf at 100 feet and stop for a couple minutes to make sure the group is all there. we go up to 40 feet to the sandy bottom and stop again, the fish and plants are back. we continue to 25 feet and stay there for a while, a safety stop and reality check. i notice that the dive boat has a couple air tanks with regulators suspended about 20 feet on lines in case someone has run out of air. good thinking. we continue to the surface, total dive time is about 40 minutes. amazing. i'm so glad i did it.
after a 10 minute ride we are at half moon caye, and are going to dive the half moon wall. again we're prepping our gear after a surface interval, drinking water, eating fruit, ready to go. we bottom out at about 65 feet and see the most incredible fish and sea life. one of the big problems here is the lion fish, they are absolutely beautiful but an invasive species. hurricane katrina did a lot of damage here, one part being the release of lion fish from private aquariums. since then they've killed off a large amount of natural species and they have no predators as they are very poisonous. so all of the divemasters carry spears and any time someone spots one they kill it.
aside from all the giant grouper following the dead lion fish smells we had a giant barracuda hanging out with us, he seemed to like me a lot. great dive.
we spent a little over an hour in this dive, then headed to the beach for lunch and our next surface interval. half moon caye is just how you'd picture a tropical island, coconut palms, all sorts of different crazy blue colors of water, some small shacks. you can pitch a tent there for $10 a nite, or rent a little bedroom for $20 a nite. its a natural monument with a red footed booby rookery.
our third and final dive of the day is at long caye, the site is aquariums. and it was exactly that, like you're the little diver in your tropical fish tank. every fish i've ever seen is here in giant schools, fans, corals, grouper, giant tarpon, lobsters, eels, turtles, rays, sharks, my filefish, angels, butterflies, so many that i don't know the names of. huge schools would swim through you like they didn't even notice you're there. this was truly the best dive i've done to see the incredible diversity of a reef, its far enough away from boat traffic to keep it pristine.
we stayed down for about an hour then sadly, it was time to head home. we had about 2 hours to get back and the crew breaks out the snickers bars and rum. suddenly we're drunk (the fun bunch of the group, anyway), and discussing strippers and english literature.
there were 4 of us that have been diving together since the storm, but maria and jennifer have to go home tomorrow. john will be here another week. i realized that i've been here a week and i don't have a place to live tomorrow, i can't possibly move to my next spot yet. i prepaid for 5 days of diving and a night dive and have only gotten to do 2 days plus the blue hole. so i'll be looking for a place to live tomorrow instead of diving, hopefully there's no one moving into my condo and i can keep it for another week. i have plans to kayak the lagoons in the afternoon with john, looking for crocodiles. he thinks it would be a good idea to get a live chicken from the market and tie it to my kayak, while he videos what happens. he's full of interesting ideas.
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| giant blue hole in the middle of nowhere |
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