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Scuba Diving in Cozume Mexico - overview

This post and then next few lower down in this blog are of my scuba diving trip in March 2011 to Cozumel Mexico. It is a beautiful island with a large reef just off the coast of the Yucatan peninsula.  I got my open water PADI scuba certification this fall in Massachusetts and had been thinking about a trip to the south this spring after we arrived in Southern Pines NC for the spring.  During our first breakfast in Aspen Snowmass this winter I met a Mexican couple who had built a dive hotel in Cozumel.  It seemed that fate was directing me so I contacted the Blue Angel Resort and made a reservation.  It turned out that the couple I had met in Aspen lived across the street from the hotel they had built and once owned and I met them again.

If you wondered what happened to the Maya, they are alive and well in Cozumel. 

My hotel and dive service, Blue Angel Resort, overlooks the Villa Blanca dive site near the town of San Miguel.  Each dive site listed usually has two portions, one is a wall that goes into the deep blue at over 1,000 feet and the other is closer to the shore with a bottom at 60 - 40 ft.  The wall portion has deep canyons going up the face and swim thoughts or small caves open at both ends.  It is like flying through a beautiful garden.  I did over 20 dives during my two week stay.

Scuba Diving in Cozume Mexico

I spent two weeks diving at the Blue Angel Resort and obtained my Open Water Advanced certification from PADI.  The views were fantastic and the staff very professional, especially my instructor Mathew Atkins.

Blue Angel pool and one of the dive boats

Carnival on Cozumel

Me on a deep dive

Blue Angel Restaurant

Transparent Shrimp on Coral

Diving Progress

I have done about 16 dives to this point in a week and a half. During this trip I have taken the PADI avvanced open water course from the Blue Angel resident instructor, Mathew. This course has included lessons on buoyancy (some very useful stuff), deep diving to 100 feet, fish identification, underwater navigation and tonight night diving. In addition I have done a number of boat dives. These dives include two tanks. In the first dive we usually go deeper than the second. The deeper you go the less time you have on the dive and the more nitrogen accumulates in your blood. The second dive after a wait on the boat to partually degas, have a fruit lunch and rest, is at a shallower depth to give one more dive time and continue the degassing process.

I use a dive computer that is like a fat wristwatch that monitors your time and depth to ensure you don't stay down too long. It also monitors your ascent rate to ensure you don't go up too fast. The dives we do don't require a decompression step but we always hold at 15 ft. For 3 minutes as a safety factor.

I have seen many very beautiful and colorful fish as well as some really big spiny lobsters. Many of the reefs raise like pillars out of the ocean floor with numerous caves, arches, short swim-throughs and large crevasses one can swim up along the reef wall. This is especially true at the ledge which descends over 1,000 ft. Into a dark blue abyss. It is at times like flying through a forest or being in the movie Avitar.

More from Cozumel - Underwater Navigation Class

This morning I studied for my course and this afternoon I did the underwater navigation segment. I learned that I do 28 kicks in 100 feet, to navigate by bottom features and to measure distance by walking along the bottom on my hands and counting the hand strides ( also 28 per 100 feet). Tomorrow I do a deep water dive and follow that with a fish identification dive. More studying.

March 2nd scuba diving in Cozumel

More from my Scuba vacation in Cozumel at the Blue Angel Resort
Today I did two dives in the morning one at Las Palmas ref and a second at Paradise reef. It is amazing how many very colorful fish are here. We saw one large shark and a Morey eel. Many of the fish were unfamiliar to me. I am getting more confident. The bottom was sandy at about 40 feet with corals rising about 20 feet from the sea floor. Our dive master took us through tight channels between close reefs with fish on either side. We also went under arches of coral and short tunnels. There were four of us on these dives, a photographer from Quebec and a mother an college age daughter. Dominique made me a friend on Facebook so that we can see the video of the dive he uploaded.

I didn't have any lessons today but will have two tomorrow. One is on underwater navigation and the other is a night dive. I am getting tired of studying but am learning a number of new techniques.

Coffee at the Blue Angle

I am sitting under a thatched roof looking at a vibrant blue Caribbean and can almost see the Mexico mainland. Breakfast should be ready soon. Today I may just snorkel or do a shore dive with the real stuff starting tomorrow. I am thinking about taking another course to get my advanced open water certification but it includes classwork and tests in addition to a number of dives to practice additional skills.

At RDU airport waiting for flight to Atlanta and then to Cozumel

Backs and coffee

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Scuba Diving Cozumel Mexico

I am getting ready for two weeks in Cozumel Mexico scub diving. I have signed up for 18 dives with Blue Angle Resort and Dive Center. I am not sure how this will go for a guy who will go through his 68th brithday during the trip.
http://www.blueangelresort.com/

Scuba Diving in Cozumel Mexico

I am getting ready for two weeks in Cozumel Mexico scub diving. I have signed up for 18 dives but I am not sure how this will go for a guy who will go through his 68th brithday during the trip.

Snow in Groton MA

Our front door.  I wonder how long it will take for this to melt.

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Return from Aspen Snowmass

We are back home for a while after a wonderful Trip to Aspen Snowmass. This was about our 20th trip to Aspen and the Mountain Chalet that included visits with old friends who also seem to show up at about the same time. In addition to the skiing we went to a talk on Superconducting materials at the Aspen Opera House. We heard about the talk from a women physicist on a ski lift to the top of the Burn.

 

A new member of the human family

Click on the title for a link to a discussion about a third member of the human family, the Denisovans.  They were more closely related to the Neanderthals than us but did contribute to the genome of some humans, primarily ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melanesia) Melanesians. It is interesting that only non-Africans seem to share a few genes with Neanderthals and Melanesians.

Scuba Dive at Pampano Beach FL

Click on the title to follow the link to more informaion.

Carl's first Skydive

Carl Good This morning after breakfast at Johnson's I drove my can-Am Spyder 4 miles from home to SkyDive Pepperell and did a tandem jump. They are very professional. The scariest part wast the pre flight video that empathises that you can be really hurt or killed doing this. The rest of the process was fantastic.

Can-Am Spyder riding in Vermont

Last weekend I drove my Can-Am Spyder motorcycle to see friends in VT. They live on a 90 acre farm with panoramic views of the mountains. Wendy drove our Prius and she and Linda rode horses the next day. John and I drove our cycles 160 miles through the green and lush mountains of VT. We returned on Tue. All in all I put about 360 miles on the Spyder.

Rotary Paul Harris award

I was received a Paul Harris PHF+1 award by Rotary International for my contributions to The Rotary Foundation relating to the Center for Children with Special needs in Bangladesh. http://www.ccsnbangladesh.org/

Sky Diving in a wind tunnel

While returning to our Southern Pines vacation home from the Fayetteville airport with my mother-in-law I saw this strange tall building in Raeford called Sky Venture. On the web I found out that it was a wind tunnel to practice sky diving. Eventually I returned to check out the facility and took a lesson for about $100. It was great and the staff very professional. Part of the deal is a CD of your flights. They have another facility in Nashua NH near our home. I will have to try it again.

update from Carl in the middle east 3-26

Last night we had a native dress party including our Jordanian guide and his wife.  Today we had breakfast at a reasonable hour and headed out to Karnack. It is a very large temple complex and other than the Pyramids the largest we have visited. It is a series of pylon temples with the famous hypostyle hall composed of a large number of gigantic columns. No mater who a temple is dedicated to there are three deities, a father, wife and son. The amazing thing is that the ancient Egyptians put so much effort into such a useless thing. They are impressive especially considering the primitive tools available but a general waste of resources. After Karnack we visited --- which is very near the boat dock and is much larger in reality than the small area excavated. I say small but just in comparison to the other sites we have visited. We returned to the ship for lunch and I was greeted by toilet paper headed man and his two creators. After a lunch on the ship we headed out to the valley of the kings and the temple of the feamale pharos Hatshepsut. She was one of five female pharos and eventually killed by her son. This is near the valley of the kings on the west side of the Nile. I visited three tombs, the third of which was high up on a wall, deep and very hot. It was good to get outside and cool off. No pictures were allowed in the whole site. Tonight after supper we have a belly dance show and then have to get up at 3:45 am to catch a plane to Cairo. These early flights and the incessant and aggressive street vendors are the only negatives of this trip.

update from Carl in the middle east 3-25

The ship MS Concerto motored overnight from Aswan to Kom Ombo. I lied in bed looking out my floor to ceiling and wall to wall window watching the lighted shore and boats pass in the night. Our wake up call was at 5:45 for breakfast with a very groggy group after our long day yesterday. We were the outside ship so to go to Kom Ombo which was next door our group had to cross through the reception hall of two other ships. Some of these reception halls were three stories high. It was a short walk to the Greek Ptolemaic temple (~200 BC) built on top of an earlier Egyptian one. The temple looked very Egyptian with a few subtle differences in columns and carvings. The temple was to both Horus and Sobek the crocodile god. Sobek was a rather nasty fellow while Horus was nice. It was also a hospital with carvings of medical instruments on the walls and reliefs on the floor of people waiting for treatment. The floor carvings included board games and other ways to pass the time. No magazines but otherwise not much different from today. As before our Egyptologist guide uses a whisperer device that transmits his voice to a receiver each of us wears. This avoids interference from other guides. When I got back to my cabin there was a camel on my bed.

We then left port on our way to Edfu which has the second largest pylon based temple. Again a very impressive edifice built by the Ptolemys which were Greek dynasties that came into poser after Alexander the Great invaded Egypt. Early Christians lived in the temple and defaced many of the carvings as they did in a number of other temples. It is interesting that the chiseled out the faces but left all the hieroglyphics. It was pretty hot so I went for a swim in the pool on the top deck of the ship. Afterwards we had tea and then another lecture on Egyptology in the lounge. Our ship negotiated a lock in the Nile with very little room to spare. As were leaving the lock I visited the pilot house and met the captain who drove the ship in a very comfortable position. I didn't see a GPS and there are almost no aids to navigation or channel buoys. A night I think that he navigates by the lights of minarets in the distance. After dinner there was a costume party where a number of us wore native dress.  The picture is of me, our Jordanian guide and his wife.