Playa Del Carmen, Mexico!

Ok... so here it goes....

Starting with Friday where I left off - Curt and I hopped on the plane, and got into Playa pretty late that night as the flight was delayed... got in our happy shuttle and were on our way to our hostel, which had looked great on hostel world... and it was, but when we got there at about 12:30 a.m., we meet up with the owner (he had left a hilarious sign on the gate - "Mr. Curtis, please call xxx") so he can let us in, and he shows us to our room. The hostel is immaculate, nice, and gorgeous, with the immediately obvious drawback that it is blistering hot inside that room - ok - so no air conditioning. I'm a camper, I inquire but after we find out the small fan that does NOTHING is all we have, I resign to sticking it out b/c Curt booked this, and by God I was going to be a great wife about it! It really was a shame, b/c I'm sure in the off-season this hostel is prime space, but there was seriously no ventilation at all, and we both just lied there in the bed sweating to death, and of course you can't sleep when you sweat so it was pretty miserable... so at about 3 a.m. Curt swallowed his pride and said he'd had enough and was going out to look for a hotel (we had to think about our diving schedule, too you know, can't dive when you've been releasing every ounce of hydration each night before!). I was of course nervous about this, but he took a little dive knife with him and ventured out while I sat on the bed for a half hour waiting for him wondering what the hell I would do if he didn't come back... but he did - whew! And he had great news - he found the cutest little hotel with GREAT A/C and so we packed up and rolled our luggage out of there at 3:30 a.m. Playa is very safe, we found out, so yea for us there! So we got settled, set the A/C to 16 degrees Celsius (roughly 64 degrees F) and fell fast asleep until 11 a.m. the next morning! Thank goodness for some sleep! We of course missed any chance at a morning dive, but got on the books for a 2-tank afternoon dive as well as a night dive (which would be our first)!

Our dive that afternoon was a great back-in-the-water dive... nothing really spectacular or hard, just some nice reefs with a good group, and enough to get our buoyancy in check and get back into the swing of things... then we hung out and had dinner at a great Italian place and high-tailed it to another dive shop for our night dive which we were pretty excited about! We shoved off at around 7:30 p.m., got our briefing and were diving a site called Jardines (gardens in Spanish) that was literally 100 yards off the beach - if people only knew how close they were to some of this stuff :-). So we got our torches (basically big flashlights), sat on the edge of the boat, and flipped backwards (also a first for me - we usually do a giant stride off the bigger boats) into the water. Wow - night diving is a whole different ballgame, folks! We had been briefed about what to look for, not to touch any sleeping fish (some actually form a bubble around them at night) b/c the panic could harm them, or touch anything for that matter which is usually a pretty easy rule to abide by... some of the notables: a snail like creature that stays in a shell I know we have all seen, but clings on to the coral and is unrecognizable b/c it pushes out its insides which is a beautiful speckled substance. So Juan picked one of these off the coral to show me, closed his hand over it and shook his hand (non-dangerous, promise) and when he opened his hand it was this shell! I was literally so shocked (it was so unexpected, like magic) that I gave a little shriek into my regulator - haha! It had turned back into itself to show it's outer shell, a silky brown spiral shell! We also saw the corals feeding which is so amazing - and of course tons of sleepy fish and some eels as well (moray and spotted). Then we got a pretty big treat - the biggest moray eel I've ever seen in wild or captivity, was out hunting! Juan had told us if we were lucky we might see this, so we knew what to expect and what it was doing... this eel had to be over 9 feet long, and over a foot in height - massive! He was snaking back and forth along the reef, and they hunt by this body motion as once they brush up against something that is alive, they snap at it and constrict similarly to a boa constrictor, though they add a little twist by knotting themselves and pulling their prey through so it tears it to pieces - lovely, I know, but we got to see a hunter in action! He got SO CLOSE to a blue tang several times, but the tang outsmarted the eel that night... (eels have very poor vision which is why they hunt mostly by touch). At the end of the dive we had a great opportunity that is pretty uncommon as well - we got to play with the bioluminescence (sp?)! Juan had us kneel in the sand (Curt, myself and Emmitt - our friend from Southern Ireland) and turn off our torches, and then we all made quick movements with our hands and torches that produced the tiny organisms to spark bright green sparks! It was SO NEAT!!!

So the night dive was pretty awesome... Curt and I were excited about getting the opportunity to do this... so after we got cleaned up we went out on 5th and walked up and down the avenue. If I could count how many times we went up and down this street it would really be hilarious, but it's so active that it was just the natural thing to do! haha... then we went to bed as it was getting late, and we had to wake up early the next morning to go on some more dives!

Sunday morning we headed to Tank Ha, the company that we did most of our dives with (all but the night dive - Dive Mike) to get ready for Tortuga! So we headed out early so we could catch some breakfast on 5th, and got on our way... loaded onto the dive boat and headed out to a beautiful area along the coast that was not inhabited, but it really wasn't too far from Playa! This was to be a true drift dive (another first for Curt and me) so we jumped into the water and immediately the current got to work at carrying us away! A drift dive is where you jump into the water at one point, the current carries you so the boat has to pick you up at another point all together - pretty cool! So we got going, and immediately started to see turtles... in total on this dive we saw 13 (a lot), and some were just hanging out on the bottom, others were on the bottom and eating the corals, and others were lazily swimming along. Some of them were HUGE - 4 ft x 2 ft probably, and I was literally within inches swimming along with them... it was kind of comical because the current was so swift, and they are so well camaflouged that you don't really see them until you're almost on top of them, so then I would turn and swim hard into the current to stay for a minute to check them out, and then when I got tired I would just let go and turn again to see the next one... there were some small guys, too - there was even one pair that was swimming along, and they were so small in comparison to their larger counterparts! At one point we also came upon a school of tarpon (huge silver fish) - it was so eerie b/c our dive guide banged on his tank to show us something, and I looked and didn't see anything - I looked away for a second and then looked back and out of nowhere had appeared an enormous school of tarpon! Tarpon are a huge fish (about 4 feet long) that is actually pretty amazing b/c they can live in virtually any environment b/c they can actually breathe oxygen from the surface! They were completely still and just came out of nowhere so it was very cool to see how sometimes things are right in front of your face! After Tortuga we dove a site called Sabalos (means Tarpon, actually) and saw more great stuff - a few eels in caves, some great tiny organisms, and of course beautiful and colorful fish...

After we finished our dives for the day we went and took a much needed nap! Diving with oxygen tends to make you pretty tired, so we're going to have to look into Nitrox sooner or later (have to be certified to dive with Nitrox but a lot of people love it). After our nap we got up and moving and went out on 5th again, had a "long walk on the beach" so we had lots of together time :-)! This night we also went out of town a bit to have dinner at Alux (pronounced Aloosh) which is a restuarant that is in a huge cave - it was so cool! We walked in expecting a way nice restaurant though, and it was but they were playing totally out of place music - 80's American! So it didn't quite fit but there were a ton of songs that were just hilarious to hear at a restaurant that was so nice - so we jammed to some "Gloria," "By the Rivers of Babylon," and more bizarro dining music! At first it was totally weird, but after awhile we just went into fits of giggles waiting to hear what was next... it was a trip! The food turned out to be DELICIOUS though - Curt got filet mignon and I got flambee shrimp - they cooked it at our table and omg it was just so yummy...

The next day of diving was the Cenotes (pronounced senotay)! Got up early again and got out to Tank Ha to meet up with Luca who was going to be our dive guide - turns out Luca is from Perugia which is about 40 minutes from Castiglion Fiorentino so we had a lot to talk about! He's been gone from Italy for quite a few years - shut down his business one day and started traveling all over the world to be a dive guide and has worked in Egypt and other great dive spots! Anyway, we drove just outside of Playa to reach the cenote system Chak Mol (means jaguar's paw I think in Mayan?) where we were to dive two cenotes: Kukulkan and Little Brother. Cenotes just as some background are basically holes that open up in the earth that are caves filled with water - saltwater is the base of the water table, and then fresh water over time has formed the top layer, but it's not brackish water per se in that there is a line called a halocline where the fresh and salt are separated like oil and vinegar, they don't mix! Thus when you are at that line and swimming it tries to mix and creates a blur so if you're behind someone (which we were!) it's like looking at something in the Twilight Zone (I literally thought that when I first encountered it)! And what is strange is that Luca told us to expect this and I had a picture of what it would look like in my head, but when we actually encountered it I thought something was seriously wrong b/c it's not just a blur it's like things are wavy b/c of how the light refracts... here's a picture of what looking through a halocline looks like... once we got used to this we figured out you just have to not follow directly behind so you could have crystal clear vision. And by crystal clear I mean you sometimes would forget that you were actually underwater the visibility was so crisp! So that was interesting... not to mention being in the dark, going through tunnels, viewing stalactities and stalagmites, warps in the strat of the rock (love geology!) and the fossils that were in the limestone... one observation that Curt made that was pretty cool is how unbelievably sharp the limestone was, but it's because water has never run through there, just sat in there so everything was preserved to however it lay when it caved in (or whatever happened, cenotes are somewhat of a mystery), was dry (and thus the stalac/stalags forming, and then under water as time went on! All very interesting, but you can bet your britches diving these was an exercise in my will and self control. Not that I was on the verge of panic, but you know me in always needing an escape route, and these were severely limited though at any time you could be at the service in less than 10 seconds (it's just that in many places how to get to the service would be another issue all together, but Luca knows the system like the back of his hand - stay close to your dive guide! :-) Needless to say, was an experience of a lifetime and we will probably do this again - the overwhelming feeling at the end and during was just a humbling realization of how we always think we are so great and smart but we just have nothing on God - being underwater and surrounded by amazing rock formations is definitely an awe-inspiring experience!

After the cenotes we were sad that our diving was over, but we still had some great fun that night! After our dives we had a great snack at a restaurant across from Tank Ha - so yummy! We filled out our dive logs, got organized, then met up with Luca and other locals (or transplant locals) to have some cool drinks and a good ol' bbq - it was so nice of them to invite us! It seemed like every person there was from a different country... Curt and I sometimes wonder who is really smarter - the person that is ambitious and chooses to climb the corporate ladder, or the person who practices "life is too short, might as well enjoy it" lifestyle? We have no idea... I guess the grass is always greener...

We went to bed at a reasonable time as we had to wake up in the 5's to get to the airport, so the next morning got to Houston without any glitches, but from there I had a hell of a day getting back to DFW - ugh! There were storms all over Texas on July 4th, so Curt and I parted (sad) in the airport (after Dad and Kendyl delivered my laptop - THANK YOU!) and then I got on my way only to be delayed on the runway, caught in a holding pattern, experience an aborted landing, THEN sit at the gate for a good half hour b/c the ground crew was not allowed to assist us b/c of lightening... SO overall I was supposed to be at the airport at 2 p.m. and didn't actually get in to the airport until 6:30 p.m. - I could have driven it! What's worse is that some of our friends were picking me up so I was still in Houston when I was supposed to be landing so told them not to bother and that I'd call them when I got to DFW - I felt so awful! Luckily I didn't impose on any 4th plans for them, so when I did finally get in I took them to dinner as a thanks...

Whew! Ok, so this has taken me days to write... Curt gets in town tonight so we'll get the rest of the pictures up soon! Stay tuned for those... they will be the highlight! :-)

xx