Amazing Start

Unlike our recent travels, the travel to Cozumel didn't involve running to catch planes, finding canceled flights, or crossing our fingers that we made it onto the plane. The only surprise was that our nonstop flight from Detroit to Cozumel actually had an hour layover in Charlotte. Even with that unexpected surprise, it wasn't to bad because it got us a full meal, which we'd need for the rest of the day.

Landing in Cozumel, the check-in through customs is interesting. My favorite part is the final check to see if you are going to get "audited" is done by pushing a button. If it comes up green you go, if it goes red, I'm not sure what happens, but I can only imagine it isn't good. My finger proved to be green and somehow Becca didn't even have to push the button, I think she's an illegal!

The drive from the airport was interesting. The lush greens that I know from Maui aren't there. This island looks like my yard come late August when the grass is all brown. I swear if somebody dropped a match the whole island would go up in flames, yet it wouldn't either. Every structure that I've seen so far is pure concrete. I can only imagine it's to withstand a hurricane, but it's very odd to see no wood or iron of any kind in the frame work of buildings. It also is very apparent to me that projects get started here, yet never get finished, so it's my kind of place!

Because our group size is so large it two planes to get us all here. We happened to be on the second group and the first group got on the island a few hours before us. As we were checking in, the first group guide asked the second group guide if he wanted to get an quick afternoon dive in. Becca immediately stepped in and said "yes"! We hadn't been on the ground for more then an hour and had already had an unsanctioned dive scheduled! Rushing to get our gear unpacked, then collect it all for a rush out to get some diving in, I hardly had time to enjoy the colorful alcoholic drink I was handed just by arriving at the hotel.

Fast forward about 30 minutes and maybe another 30 minutes waiting for the boat to arrive and Becca, our two guides, and myself were off! Not bad to have our own private dive party. This worked out absolutely perfect because it now gives us a great idea of what to expect, how things work, and an overall pre-jitter kill dive. But what would any dive be without a story, well I'm here to deliver! My adventure started with entering the water, starting my decent, only to watch one of my weight pockets go plunging to the bottom! Try as I might, I couldn't get more then half way to it because I didn't have the weight needed to get down. After some half assed hand signals to Becca, she figured out what had happened and went down and got my weights and we were back in business. Lesson learned, make sure those are snapped in good (glad we only were in about 40ft of water and not the 3000ft, no bottom dive).

We didn't bring any of the camera gear for this dive. We mainly wanted to get comfortable with what to expect. That's good and bad. There were some amazing coral formations on even this very easy dive. The guides afterward said this was nothing to what we will do, but I'll say this, money spent on this trip...totally worth it after our first dive! Some of the coral formations were out of this world, I've never seen anything like them. I know it's not saying much since this is my first official warm water dive, but it was very impressive. Fish everywhere, I'll have to pay better attention to the types that I see, but I definitely saw many things I haven't seen before. The visibility is crazy, I could see for what felt like forever, which was funny that Becca and I were usually as close as we are in the five feet visibility of Gull Lake. We got two 25 minute dives in, before our official dive vacation starts tomorrow.

The evening ended with a walk into town and back and then dinner at the hotel. I'm hurrying to write this because it has been a long day of travel and dives and I'm ready for bed! We officially start our dive trip tomorrow morning at 8:15 am. I'm a little geeked (if you couldn't tell by my tone in this entry)