Abi's Deep Dive

A few weeks ago I packed a bag and headed off for some diving in Cozumel. Almost one year ago had been my first visit, (the weekend before I did so much damage to my knee), and two dives hadn’t been enough time there, so this time I had planned an afternoon and night dive on the Saturday, an overnight stay on the island and then two more dives on Sunday before returning back to Puerto Morelos. My friends at Buceo Xtabay had organized everything, and some of the GVI crew were also coming, it felt like a real adventure!

We headed off after lunch on Saturday, driving to Playa del Carmen to get the ferry over to the island. It was a bit cloudy, but that’s beneficial when you are lugging bags of dive gear around!

We had a dive at a site called Yucab first, our guide was great and pointed out some tiny nudibranchs that I would never have noticed. We saw so much, honestly at Cozumel you keep your fingers crossed to see turtles, nurse sharks, the splendid toad fish, and the fish that we monitor at Puerto Morelos but rarely, if ever, see like the Queen triggerfish. Over the two days we saw Hawksbill turtles, a beautiful old loggerhead, a green turtle, nurse sharks, all the fish, with splendid toad fish tucked under the reef at regular intervals and spotted eagle rays. At one point the biggest spotted eagle ray any of us has seen (we monitor them so we have seen a few) swam past and then it opened its mouth wide, wow!!! We were transfixed! AND THEN behind him a nurse shark calmly swam past in the opposite direction. Mind blown!!! I can’t put videos on here, but I have posted lots to my Instagram so check out my reels on there @abisdeepdive.

We finished dive 1 and got back on the boat to go to the night dive site Paraiso. I was a bit nervous before the night dive. Being underwater in the dark can be a bit disorientating, and this is a site I don’t know, and which has a current. Of course it was absolutely fine. Our guide gave us a full briefing, we all had strong torches and after descending my worries were forgotten. We saw so much!! Diving at night gives you a completely different perspective of life under the water. There were lots of plankton type things in the water column (I need to research these more) that absorb the torch light and then shine it back to you, some of the fish you see in the day are sleeping, and others are hunting, and other creatures, who are by day hidden away, are out, including the moray eels, and big crabs who seemed to be everywhere we looked.

I have only been to Cozumel once for diving and so went straight from the ferry port to the boats so I was looking forward to exploring a little. As it happened we didn’t get much exploring done, as by the time we had finished the night dive, got to our hotels, changed then had food it was past 11pm. A guy from Colombia had dived with us and he suggested a bar called Thirsty Cougars. It sounded worth a visit, so we walked to the seafront and found the bar. The menu was typical, but the margaritas were called Cougaritas. I ordered a frozen tamarind cougarita and was not disappointed!

I had booked into a small hotel for the night, it turned out to be single story rooms arranged around a little courtyard a short walk from the seafront. It was a very pretty place, the guy who checked me in was very friendly and the room was spacious. One of my reasons for booking this place was the huge bed, and it was very comfortable. One length of the room had a glass ceiling that went over the shower area, there was a high wall right next to it, so no risk of anyone seeing in, and it was lovely that the room was so light. What I didn’t realize until the next day was that the wall of the shower room didn’t come up all the way up to the glass so the top maybe 30 cms was space into the room next door, high enough to not make peeping an option, but low enough that sound travelled. At 5am I was woken up by the sound of a man urinating!! It sounded like he was in my room! I was up and dressed at 7 ready for a traditional Mexican breakfast and lots of coffee, which was delicious, I also picked up a souvenir long sleeved t-shirt. When I returned after breakfast I had a full sexual symphony from the same room. I put music on my phone at top volume so they were aware how much sound travelled then quickly packed my bag and got to the meeting place for the next dives.

Day 2 was a beautiful day! Blue sky, sunshine and diving, perfect!

We did another two dives, Palancar Ladrillos, which gets its name from the red bricks that were dropped into the area by a capsized barge in the 1950’s. It is famous for the incredible corals and sponges. Palancar is a dive site I also went to last time I was in Cozumel and I was absolutely blown away by the towering reef and swim throughs and the incredible colors. It was a drift dive so you get taken with the current although not too fast, so you aren’t so much swimming as giving yourself a direction. I felt like squirt in Finding Nemo!! Tormentos was our second dive site, the current was a bit stronger, and there was so much to see! This was a perfect morning of diving with more turtles, spotted eagle rays and nurse sharks. The fish are abundant and not worried about divers drifting past, photographs are possible if you can be still enough to take them. Honestly on this dive I mainly just soaked it all up, the colours, healthy reef, incredible visibility and so many fish to look at I felt like a child in the best toy shop in the world!

More photographs below. Feel free to message if you have any questions, it’s always lovely to hear from someone who has read my blog.

Love and bubbles!