Wendy and I got married 33 years ago and received a honeymoon cruise to Cozumel as a wedding gift from my parents. At the time, we were newly-married, young, poor college students with not a whole lot by way of extra spending cash. The cruise was okay; Wendy was sick most of the time. When we reached Cozumel, we had just a few hours to take in some sites and swim in the ocean and relax on the beach before it was time to hop back on board and begin the return voyage to Miami.
Two weeks ago, we returned to Cozumel, this time via airplane, and instead of spending just a few hours lounging on the beach and swimming in the ocean, we got to stay for a week and went on six scuba adventures under the ocean. It was a double bonus for Wendy, because she also got to leave the United States and travel to another country. Back when we got married, she had never traveled much beyond the west coast of the United States, where she grew up. After college, I dragged her all the way out here to Ohio. Still, she had never been outside the continental US, other than that honeymoon cruise to Cozumel, which probably doesn’t really count. We went to Puerto Rico a couple years ago, but still, even that’s a US territory, so also probably doesn’t really count.
We flew into Cancun, and I thought briefly about Senator Ted “Cancun” Cruz, who fled his home state of Texas during a devastating ice storm and tried to escape to the tropics with his family before the media caught him and forced him back home with his tail between his legs. We didn’t stay in Cancun, but rather drove south to Playa del Carmen. We had six dives scheduled — two dives per day over three days — and took the ferry back and forth from the dock in Playa del Carmen over to Cozumel, where we then caught taxis to the marina. In hindsight, it would have been better to actually stay in Cozumel, but Wendy’s brother was footing the bill for the hotel rooms (gotta love those frequent flyer miles!), so we slept on the mainland.
Wendy, her brother, my oldest son, and my youngest daughter were already certified scuba divers. I barely managed to get my certification in time, completing the last of my training a mere four days before we left. By the time the trip was over though, I was a double-digit diver with eleven dives under my weight belt. We all had an amazing time. The water was beautiful, clear, and warm (82F, even at fifty feet down!) As a brand new diver, I was pretty nervous about how I would do. During skills training, you learn things like what to do if you run out of oxygen, how to flood and clear your mask, how to read your computer and gauges, how to recover your regulator if you lose it, how to make safety stops on your way up, how to control your ascension and descension rates, and even how to cough, sneeze and puke through your regulator. My training had me convinced that I might suffer some serious problem at sixty feet below the surface, and my chances of actually dying from those problems were greater than fifty percent.
It ended up all being just psychological for me, because I had zero issues with any of my gear. Wendy had a problem with her mask not fitting properly and flooding. My daughter was sick after the first dive and puked over the ship after the third dive but felt fine after that. My brother-in-law’s GoPro malfunctioned the first two days, but my son also had a GoPro, so it wasn’t an issue. The only trouble I had was breathing too much oxygen. My dives lasted only forty minutes while everyone else could stay down for nearly an hour. That was disappointing, because I felt like I was missing out. It seemed like every time I came up to the surface, that’s when everyone else got to see the sharks, like all the cool stuff was just waiting for the nerd to leave before making an appearance. I did eventually get to see a shark taking a nap in a coral cave. Everyone tells me I’ll relax more with experience and use up less oxygen. Apparently there’s a trick to breathing underwater that I just haven’t mastered yet.
After scuba diving, we spent our last day in Mexico at Chichen Itza touring all the sites and swimming in something called a cenote, sink holes in the earth where fresh water has eaten through the limestone. The cenotes in Mexico, especially the ones around Chichen Itza and near the Mayan towns, are considered holy places. Before entering the cenote, we were ritually cleansed by a Mayan shaman, who wafted us with purifying water and smoke before we changed our clothes and descended down into the cave to swim.
We had such a great time in Mexico diving in the ocean and visiting ancient historic sites and learning about the people and the culture. The reef system in Cozumel is gorgeously colorful. We saw nurse sharks, sting rays, moray eels, lobsters, crabs, angel fish, clown fish, puffer fish, star fish, turtles, and so much more that I couldn’t even identify. I have to give a shout out to our amazing dive leader, Edgar, and to our dive captain, “Fleur” Gardenia, and to Steve at Liquid Blue Divers for giving us this amazing experience. And when it was all over, we flew back home to rainy, cold, dreary Ohio. Back to the real world.
Enjoy the pics and let me know what fun places you’ve visited. Any recommendations for future vacation adventures?
