It’s raining a lot down here, and often times, it is raining hard. I woke up three times listening to a fast, soaking rain. And then I woke up again with my lovely bride’s hand tapping my leg.
“We have to wake up.”
There’s a sentence I never hear, so I was up and moving before I knew why.
We had to get up because we were running late. And we were actually going diving. This is how our anniversary began.
It continued like this. We got to the dive shop, conveniently located next to our resort, a bit late. They hustled us off to a shuttle right away. The driver took us down to the famed 5th Avenue, where we met today’s host, David, who was also our dive master yesterday.
This poor guy has to put up with us for two days in a row. We followed him to the ferry, and we crossed the 10-mile straight between the mainland and Cozumel. He guided us through some cenote caverns yesterday, and now this.
We arrived in Cozumel and David flagged down a cab. We rode 25 minutes down the coastline to another resort. We walked through the housing area, beyond the pools and he pointed out where lunch would not be held, and where we would, later, depart for our dive. Lunch had been moved from a nice modern building near the beach, back 200 yards to the main building as a weather consideration.
Over a bad lunch — one which made us happy we didn’t stay there, as we briefly considered — I wondered aloud how it was that the weather was risky enough to move the food, but we’re going diving in it. The weather, this afternoon, was merely hot, and humid. And this was how we sat around for an extra time for our boat to arrive so that we could go dive.
Eventually, though …
We slipped below the energetic surface of the sea. Of course one of the first things I saw was a giant brown bowl sponge.
And then some more of those.
This one was quite pointed.
All of the little reef fish were out on their afternoon reef fish business. The visibility was limited by the region’s weather. The good news for you, then, is that between the low-viz and the few dives, there aren’t that many photographs to scroll through.
Here’s an overhead view of a spotted trunkfish (Lactophrys bicaudalis). This is probably the worst photo of the set, so it’ll get better from here.
I had better luck with the sponges and coral this time. I guess because they weren’t moving. We were. The currents were strong, not impossible, but it was obvious why the ports have been closed and the diving canceled this week and last.
Here’s the blue chromis (Chromis cyanea) hanging out over his local sponges. Not all of them look healthy. Also, this water was incredibly warm.
And if you think the best shots might be of the brown sponge, you could be right.
Another smattering of reef fish, and a good demonstration of the murky visibility, and a reminder of how spoiled Caribbean divers can be.
Here’s a stoplight parrotfish (Sparisoma viride) that was passing by. This is a mature male, you can tell from his appearance. The parrotfish has two appearances, and they can change their sex. They’re called stoplights because of the yellow flash near the pectoral fin. You can almost see it here as he swims along. Also, I think this color scheme would make for a great sneaker.
I believe this is a permit fish (Trachinotus falcatus), which feed on crab and can be found from Massachusetts to Brazil. But that’s about all I know of them.
I know a bit more about this fish, which is easily the best fish in the sea.
We saw three barracuda on the first dive of the day.
And here’s another stoplight parrotfish, and this one is showing off that splash of yellow.
This is a blue tang (Acanthurus coeruleus), the common name of quite a few different reef fish. This one is an adult. The coloring is the clue. They range from a yellow juvenile, yellow tailed blue subadult to the blue adult phase.
And here’s one more shot of the best fish in sea (still no bubbles).
These are from our first dive this afternoon. I’ll share some photos from the second dive tomorrow. Maybe I’ll have a few videos for next week.
The downside was that after our second dive, and our boat ride back to the island, we changed into dry clothes, and then the bottom fell out of the sky again. We had to run in a deluge the 200 yards back up to the hotel. Another cab, another half-hour ferry ride in a squall the whole way, and then a shuttle back to our hotel. It took 10 hours to get in these two dives.
Also, our romantic anniversary dinner on the beach was canceled. Weather. No one told us. We had late night Italian, of sorts, instead.
