ligersandtions
Contributor
My husbands cousin was getting married in Playa del Carmen, so we jumped at the opportunity to take a long dive vacation. The first week was spent diving Cozumel (separate dive report coming), and the second week would be mostly topside stuff around Playa del Carmen with a day of cavern tours through Zero Gravity, the GUE shop catering to cave divers in the Riviera Maya.
For years, Ive read cave dive reports, been awed by photos and videos, and been intrigued by the caves. I went in desperately hoping I would not fall in love with the caves (because I cant possibly justify spending the money and time required to cave dive since we dont have local caves), but completely figured it was hopeless.
We made our way to the ZG shop (what a great set-up!). We got all of our gear set up, met our guide (a nice local cave diver named Daniel), and headed out to our first site. The first site was Jardin del Eden; we chatted about the layout of the cavern, made our dive plan, geared up, and splashed. The open water portion was absolutely gorgeous, so I had high hopes .that were not fulfilled. The cave looked dirty and the structure wasnt horribly interesting. On the exit, I had mixed emotions from Maybe the next site will be better and Ill love it to Whew, dodged a bullet.
For the second dive, we headed over to Taj Maha (or Mahal, depending on which sign you look at). While we were discussing the cavern dive, it started pouring torrential downpour style rain! We were going to be wet anyways, so we figured wed gear up and splash. This site is a lot more cave-like than the first site, though that may be because there was very little ambient light to stream into the cavern zone. I liked this site better than the first one (it looked cleaner, the structure was nicer, and I think I preferred the darkness of it), but it still did not knock my socks off.
I dont know if it was a function of the cavern dives we did (Jardin de Eden and Taj Maha), the day we did it on (little ambient light streaming in, which were the most beautiful cavern pictures Ive seen), the guide (a very nice guy, but not one of the ZG guys people rave about), or just that its not our thing, but we definitely were not bitten by the cave bug. Its something Id do if I lived closer, but not something Im dying to do now (and devote all future vacations to MX or FL to dive the caves). Im sure its something wed do if we didnt have so many other places that wed like to visit in the future, but I just cant imagine committing all of our future vacations to this area. Honestly, though, I have to admit that I was a little disappointed with the fact that I didnt love the caves like I had expected to, but its probably best that way anyways.
For years, Ive read cave dive reports, been awed by photos and videos, and been intrigued by the caves. I went in desperately hoping I would not fall in love with the caves (because I cant possibly justify spending the money and time required to cave dive since we dont have local caves), but completely figured it was hopeless.
We made our way to the ZG shop (what a great set-up!). We got all of our gear set up, met our guide (a nice local cave diver named Daniel), and headed out to our first site. The first site was Jardin del Eden; we chatted about the layout of the cavern, made our dive plan, geared up, and splashed. The open water portion was absolutely gorgeous, so I had high hopes .that were not fulfilled. The cave looked dirty and the structure wasnt horribly interesting. On the exit, I had mixed emotions from Maybe the next site will be better and Ill love it to Whew, dodged a bullet.
For the second dive, we headed over to Taj Maha (or Mahal, depending on which sign you look at). While we were discussing the cavern dive, it started pouring torrential downpour style rain! We were going to be wet anyways, so we figured wed gear up and splash. This site is a lot more cave-like than the first site, though that may be because there was very little ambient light to stream into the cavern zone. I liked this site better than the first one (it looked cleaner, the structure was nicer, and I think I preferred the darkness of it), but it still did not knock my socks off.
I dont know if it was a function of the cavern dives we did (Jardin de Eden and Taj Maha), the day we did it on (little ambient light streaming in, which were the most beautiful cavern pictures Ive seen), the guide (a very nice guy, but not one of the ZG guys people rave about), or just that its not our thing, but we definitely were not bitten by the cave bug. Its something Id do if I lived closer, but not something Im dying to do now (and devote all future vacations to MX or FL to dive the caves). Im sure its something wed do if we didnt have so many other places that wed like to visit in the future, but I just cant imagine committing all of our future vacations to this area. Honestly, though, I have to admit that I was a little disappointed with the fact that I didnt love the caves like I had expected to, but its probably best that way anyways.
