I spent three weeks in my new home away from home during June/early July and did about 38 dives in total, so won’t bore you with the details of each and every one. And besides, I left my logbook at the house down there…
We used Air Canada points to fly get there, requiring an overnight in Toronto airport. The plan was to haul two bicycles to leave at the house for local transportation, but I couldn’t get the pedals off one of them, so they refused to take it; hence we only schlepped one around the Toronto airport.
This was my husband’s first trip to the new house, so we spent the first couple of days getting things sorted out – buy groceries, introduce ourselves to the neighbours, and figure out how stuff worked in the house. Until my brother arrived a couple of weeks later, we had difficulty with the pump holding a prime. Fortunately he does pool pump repairs on the side, so with the help of Hernan (who operates the dive shop down the street from us) who wrote out the Spanish words for the required parts and equipment needed), my brother and husband headed off to the local hardware and then fixed the thing. Then there was the moment that the mini-split air conditioner stopped working after a big storm. I checked all the fuses (at least those I could see) but it still didn’t work, so I called the guy who installed it (former owners left this info behind). He was there in 30 minutes (we should have such quick service at home!) and removed a picture hanging on the wall to show me another fuse box! Presto, change-o, and with the flick of a switch, we had air conditioning again. And believe me, you need it in June – without it, our room was reaching 33 degrees Celsius. He also cleaned the filters and tried to repair the remote control (unrepairable). All for $30.
My first three days of diving were with Blue Angel…Matteo was DM two days and Jorge another and was fortunate enough to have good divers on my boat every day. They seemed quite busy and one day we had a rented boat and a captain I was unfamiliar with. Our second dive was to be Columbia Shallows but turned out to be Columbia Oops. After swimming around for about 10 or 15 minutes looking at rubble (and hey, I’m OK with that!) we surfaced, got back on the boat and headed for the correct site. I met Joerunner’s group from Colorado and dived with them one day. Also dived with a nice couple from Edmonton, Canada who told me that they had brought Jorge a dry suit earlier in the year… We did a couple of shore dives together looking for the seahorse that was hanging out along the stingray park fence next door.
Jeremy from Living Underwater came by in the afternoon of my last day diving with BA to pick up my gear for my next 14 days of diving, all of which were done from the Jewfish. Man, that boat is sweet and easy to enter/exit. Superfast too! And boy does he have a great crew with Fernando (captain – who was his captain on his former boat, the LU, which has now seen better days) and Ricardo, his first mate. Ricardo’s duties are entirely topside (I can’t say that I’ve noticed this arrangement of a first mate before on other six-packs), making sure that everyone has fresh fruit, enough water, towels, and windbreakers plus laying out and setting up gear, help getting gear in and out of the water, rinsed, cameras handed to them etc. etc. This allows Jeremy to focus on the diver and diving although I noticed that he double-checked everything. All dives were with Jeremy with two exceptions when Nacho substituted. Nacho is a long-time resident. Everyone who has dived with Jeremy knows that his style is very relaxed, very safe, very long dives, done very slowly, while he pokes around looking for interesting critters. Nacho’s style was very similar except for the critter seeking.
I had the bad luck to flood my camera on about day two with Jeremy (fortunately I had a backup for the next day). But of course that would be the day that we saw the batfish – only the second one I’ve ever seen in Coz! We were on our descent to the C-53 and all of a sudden Jeremy was jumping up and down doing a happy dance (which is quite a feat underwater), which Digger caught on video. I looked down and saw the batfish out there in the wide open sand! On another dive we saw a gigantic loggerhead turtle asleep on the reef. That thing had a neck on it like you wouldn’t believe. Jeremy and I poked around looking at it and if I’d been thinking, I’d have taken a photo with him beside it to provide some visual reference of its size. Other dive highlights of the trip? I had a great time trying to photograph a squid on one night dive – I swear it was playing with me, always just slightly out of range… I retrieved two weights and a weight pocket on two different dives, and had a good time poking around in swim-throughs, which I love to do. And we did Devil’s Throat backwards one day, just for a change. Then one day Nacho took us to a site a short distance from Columbia Shallows which doesn’t appear to be dived much. Same profile as Columbia Shallows, so after about a half-hour there, we swam across to Columbia Shallows were we spent roughly another hour. I love Columbia Shallows! Nacho uses a GPS to make sure he is where he wants to enter a dive and I appreciated that both he and Jeremy will get in the water first when they want to verify current directions and/or site location before the rest of us get in the water.
I bought a bike at the store behind Chedraui and so cycled to the caleta for a number of dives, got lifts from another diver staying up north for several more, and Jeremy picked me up at the Aldora pier for the last part of my trip. Met some super people on the boat (one very fun retired couple who own a condo next door to the Palace – name escapes me for now) who decided we needed to go diving together again, “Bosco”, Digger and Lorna (another fun couple who own an Atlanta diveshop), Melissa (who does Jeremy’s on-line bookings) and her family and friends were the ones I dived with the most. My friend Donna Baldwin (MizB) joined us one day only. After my diving days were done, Jeremy dropped my gear off at Javier Polanco’s scuba repair shop as I wanted it serviced. It cost less to service both my reg and BCD, than I pay at home for just my reg. I must have made quite a sight after I picked it up on my bicycle – with my reg in the basket but wearing my BCD! Donna, I stopped by your place to say goodbye but there didn’t seem to be any action there.
My brother went fishing on Hernan’s boat (The Billfisher) twice getting a great “local” deal that appears to be about $100 less than others quoted. He caught a couple of tuna which we had for supper and which had to be the best fish I’ve ever eaten. We invited our friends Dale and Kathy Gardiner to join us. They operate a great B&B in Cozumel that we’ve stayed at a couple of times in the past. They also provided us with a few plants from their back yard and some turtle eggs (that still hadn’t hatched when we left). Kathy says that they will remain where they hatch.
We ate several times at Los Tres Gatitos, which is just around the corner from our place, and at a cantina on 15th and about 5th. Great food and very cheap, but loud at night. I forget the name but there's a Tweetie bird painted on the wall. Also ate a couple of times at the steak place at the end of 5th (just before the cemetary) which has killer beef. Then the old stand-bys, El Pique, Los Seras etc.
One of the more fun things was ordering outdoor furniture (two loungers and two tables) from Chris the Carpenter down the street. He speaks not a word of English and so my brother and I communicated in very bad Spanglish, hand signals, phrase books and a calendar that we wanted this built from the best quality, termite-proof wood, varnished, and delivered to our house by a particular date because we would be returning to Canada after that. Right on schedule, the furniture arrived, carried by him and his three children and the kid across the street who translated that they were honoured for this big job!
I can’t wait to get back (and even more so, to retire!). I’m trying to convince a couple of friends to do their classroom stuff here and then go have a ladies week in Coz later this year.
We used Air Canada points to fly get there, requiring an overnight in Toronto airport. The plan was to haul two bicycles to leave at the house for local transportation, but I couldn’t get the pedals off one of them, so they refused to take it; hence we only schlepped one around the Toronto airport.
This was my husband’s first trip to the new house, so we spent the first couple of days getting things sorted out – buy groceries, introduce ourselves to the neighbours, and figure out how stuff worked in the house. Until my brother arrived a couple of weeks later, we had difficulty with the pump holding a prime. Fortunately he does pool pump repairs on the side, so with the help of Hernan (who operates the dive shop down the street from us) who wrote out the Spanish words for the required parts and equipment needed), my brother and husband headed off to the local hardware and then fixed the thing. Then there was the moment that the mini-split air conditioner stopped working after a big storm. I checked all the fuses (at least those I could see) but it still didn’t work, so I called the guy who installed it (former owners left this info behind). He was there in 30 minutes (we should have such quick service at home!) and removed a picture hanging on the wall to show me another fuse box! Presto, change-o, and with the flick of a switch, we had air conditioning again. And believe me, you need it in June – without it, our room was reaching 33 degrees Celsius. He also cleaned the filters and tried to repair the remote control (unrepairable). All for $30.
My first three days of diving were with Blue Angel…Matteo was DM two days and Jorge another and was fortunate enough to have good divers on my boat every day. They seemed quite busy and one day we had a rented boat and a captain I was unfamiliar with. Our second dive was to be Columbia Shallows but turned out to be Columbia Oops. After swimming around for about 10 or 15 minutes looking at rubble (and hey, I’m OK with that!) we surfaced, got back on the boat and headed for the correct site. I met Joerunner’s group from Colorado and dived with them one day. Also dived with a nice couple from Edmonton, Canada who told me that they had brought Jorge a dry suit earlier in the year… We did a couple of shore dives together looking for the seahorse that was hanging out along the stingray park fence next door.
Jeremy from Living Underwater came by in the afternoon of my last day diving with BA to pick up my gear for my next 14 days of diving, all of which were done from the Jewfish. Man, that boat is sweet and easy to enter/exit. Superfast too! And boy does he have a great crew with Fernando (captain – who was his captain on his former boat, the LU, which has now seen better days) and Ricardo, his first mate. Ricardo’s duties are entirely topside (I can’t say that I’ve noticed this arrangement of a first mate before on other six-packs), making sure that everyone has fresh fruit, enough water, towels, and windbreakers plus laying out and setting up gear, help getting gear in and out of the water, rinsed, cameras handed to them etc. etc. This allows Jeremy to focus on the diver and diving although I noticed that he double-checked everything. All dives were with Jeremy with two exceptions when Nacho substituted. Nacho is a long-time resident. Everyone who has dived with Jeremy knows that his style is very relaxed, very safe, very long dives, done very slowly, while he pokes around looking for interesting critters. Nacho’s style was very similar except for the critter seeking.
I had the bad luck to flood my camera on about day two with Jeremy (fortunately I had a backup for the next day). But of course that would be the day that we saw the batfish – only the second one I’ve ever seen in Coz! We were on our descent to the C-53 and all of a sudden Jeremy was jumping up and down doing a happy dance (which is quite a feat underwater), which Digger caught on video. I looked down and saw the batfish out there in the wide open sand! On another dive we saw a gigantic loggerhead turtle asleep on the reef. That thing had a neck on it like you wouldn’t believe. Jeremy and I poked around looking at it and if I’d been thinking, I’d have taken a photo with him beside it to provide some visual reference of its size. Other dive highlights of the trip? I had a great time trying to photograph a squid on one night dive – I swear it was playing with me, always just slightly out of range… I retrieved two weights and a weight pocket on two different dives, and had a good time poking around in swim-throughs, which I love to do. And we did Devil’s Throat backwards one day, just for a change. Then one day Nacho took us to a site a short distance from Columbia Shallows which doesn’t appear to be dived much. Same profile as Columbia Shallows, so after about a half-hour there, we swam across to Columbia Shallows were we spent roughly another hour. I love Columbia Shallows! Nacho uses a GPS to make sure he is where he wants to enter a dive and I appreciated that both he and Jeremy will get in the water first when they want to verify current directions and/or site location before the rest of us get in the water.
I bought a bike at the store behind Chedraui and so cycled to the caleta for a number of dives, got lifts from another diver staying up north for several more, and Jeremy picked me up at the Aldora pier for the last part of my trip. Met some super people on the boat (one very fun retired couple who own a condo next door to the Palace – name escapes me for now) who decided we needed to go diving together again, “Bosco”, Digger and Lorna (another fun couple who own an Atlanta diveshop), Melissa (who does Jeremy’s on-line bookings) and her family and friends were the ones I dived with the most. My friend Donna Baldwin (MizB) joined us one day only. After my diving days were done, Jeremy dropped my gear off at Javier Polanco’s scuba repair shop as I wanted it serviced. It cost less to service both my reg and BCD, than I pay at home for just my reg. I must have made quite a sight after I picked it up on my bicycle – with my reg in the basket but wearing my BCD! Donna, I stopped by your place to say goodbye but there didn’t seem to be any action there.
My brother went fishing on Hernan’s boat (The Billfisher) twice getting a great “local” deal that appears to be about $100 less than others quoted. He caught a couple of tuna which we had for supper and which had to be the best fish I’ve ever eaten. We invited our friends Dale and Kathy Gardiner to join us. They operate a great B&B in Cozumel that we’ve stayed at a couple of times in the past. They also provided us with a few plants from their back yard and some turtle eggs (that still hadn’t hatched when we left). Kathy says that they will remain where they hatch.
We ate several times at Los Tres Gatitos, which is just around the corner from our place, and at a cantina on 15th and about 5th. Great food and very cheap, but loud at night. I forget the name but there's a Tweetie bird painted on the wall. Also ate a couple of times at the steak place at the end of 5th (just before the cemetary) which has killer beef. Then the old stand-bys, El Pique, Los Seras etc.
One of the more fun things was ordering outdoor furniture (two loungers and two tables) from Chris the Carpenter down the street. He speaks not a word of English and so my brother and I communicated in very bad Spanglish, hand signals, phrase books and a calendar that we wanted this built from the best quality, termite-proof wood, varnished, and delivered to our house by a particular date because we would be returning to Canada after that. Right on schedule, the furniture arrived, carried by him and his three children and the kid across the street who translated that they were honoured for this big job!
I can’t wait to get back (and even more so, to retire!). I’m trying to convince a couple of friends to do their classroom stuff here and then go have a ladies week in Coz later this year.
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