Cozumel Day 4

The first dive of the day was at a site called Palancar Caves. Up until this point, all the coral formations had been almost like ground cover. The Palancar Caves reminded me of the Grand Canyon or maybe Luke Skywalker as he skimmed the surface of the Deathstar. There were times when there were easily thirty to forty feet of vertical coral walls on either side as I drifted between them with less then ten feet between them. Pictures couldn't do the sensation justice, though no real caves, it did feel like you were in a cave. I set a new depth record for myself at 88 ft. It was also a very eerie feeling to drift out past the edge of the coral wall, look down, and see no bottom except an ever deeper blue abyss below myself. Drop something here, forget about ever seeing it again! The end of the dive brought us to a white sand and coral bottom where we saw a huge stingray with a fish swimming directly over it like they were best buddies. Exiting on the boat brought is into jellyfish city. I thought for sure I was going to have stings all over me as I exited the water in thousand of what felt like squishy eyeballs.

The second dive site of the day was called Tormentos. My memory of this dive is already shot (that just proves I should have did the write up on these the day of instead of waiting!). I do remember the current here was stronger then anything so far, the underwater world really zipped by. We did find a lobster that we tormented, so I assume that's why it's called Tormentos!

The night dive was my favorite of the day. The octopus was by far one of the coolest things I've ever witnessed. The ability of it to move and adapt to avoid detection is simply incredible. In addition to being able to change color in an instant to camouflage itself, it's ability to change it's shape was amazing. At one point with a handful of divers all surround and flashing it with search lights, it moved to what I can only describe as a piece of coral that was like a huge mushroom, then the octopus sat on top of it and changed color, had we not been chasing the poor thing and watched it try to trick us, I would have completely lost it. Until you see something like that with your own eyes, telling somebody about it, or even not watching it live, it still doesn't give a real sense of how impressive mother nature is. I'm still bummed I missed my minute and a half of watching that huge turtle eat, but watching this octopus may have been the most amazing thing from this trip.