Scuba diving in the Caribbean!

I mentioned in another post that we attended a wedding in Mexico early this February, and also that following the wedding, we spent a couple of days chilling out in Cancun. Although I could have done without the crazy commercial resorts out there, the main reason we stopped for a couple of extra days was so that I could do a scuba dive in the Caribbean sea, one of the supposedly best places in the world for scuba.

This was one of the easier scuba dives to organise. Staying in a resort means you have a concierge who is willing to help you sort anything out, which means that by Monday morning, husband and I had set off early on the boat with a whole host of other scuba divers, for a morning of fun and adventure.

Those of you who are familiar with husband must be scratching your heads about now - if he can't swim, surely he can't do scuba?! True fact, but I was able to get him on board the boat, so that he could spend the morning basking in the sun with a nice book, and take some convenient piccies of me as I donned my scuba wear and jumped into the sea 😀😄 (Not that I'm posting those here - waaaaay too much flesh on show - ok, just one then).

The only photo I'm posting of
me in scuba gear

It was a good group who set out for the morning dives. We had a few experts and a few less expert around. There was the one standard obnoxious guy who has every scuba diving gadget in the world, and was totally shocked when he found out that the Canadian guy and I didn't have our own diving watches. Bastard, maybe he'd like to give me one of his spares? The Canadian fellow was lovely, and was pretty much my diving buddy for both dives. Interesting fact: the huge number of Canadians to be found in Cancun is down to the cheapness of the flights from Canada - it's their equivalent of a cheeky trip to Spain. Then there was a guy with his twelve year old son about to embark on his first dive. Bless, he looked so nervous! We had some great chat that day.

But back to the business at hand. I couldn't wait to gear up and get in the water. We had a good 45 minute drive (one does drive a boat right?) to get to the first location, which was the famous Underwater Museum of Art (MUSA). This was really something. Designed in 2009, it consists of over 500 permanent life-sized sculptures fitted to the sea bed. It fits in amongst the reef structure down there, enabling marine life to colonise and inhabit it, subsequently increasing biomass. All the sculptures are built from special materials that encourage coral regrowth, a welcome initiative in a world where coral is constantly being damaged by us nasty human beings. Bear in mind that coral is fragile and damaged so easily by human interactions or pollutants, and it only regrows at a rate of 0.3 to 2cm per year. It makes a nice change to see a real drive to combat elements of climate change.

We managed to get a good 45 minute dive in at this spot. All of my group had similar levels of experience as me, so didn't come up against any issues. The dives themselves were relatively shallow, probably no deeper than 15 metres at the deepest. But this was probably one of the more fascinating dives I've done, particularly because it was so eerie coming across all these sculptures as I swam along. There were some really cool ones, like the giant loops (supposed to represent mirrors I think) that you could swim through, or the car (looked a bit like a beetle). But then you'd come across the groups of people sculptures, which I found super creepy. I can just see a horror film where scuba divers are attacked by these things coming to life!

Cheerful monkeys, ready for adventure

As usual, my favourite part of both dives was keeping a keen eye out for turtles, my best underwater pals. And I saw loads, floating along, having a ball. As I've mentioned in my other post on scuba, there is nothing so peaceful as floating along on the sea bed next to a giant turtle. They're beautiful!

Post scuba - I'm knackered!

Because the first dive was so shallow, we didn't need to rest long in between dives - just long enough to scoot to the next location in honesty (a place called Aristos). I swigged some coke to get my sugar levels up again and back down I went into the beautifully clear water.

gorgeous weather

The second dive didn't have any weird statues, which I was secretly quite grateful for. We got to see plenty of coral and fish and other sea life - I'm pretty sure I saw a barracuda down there - I can very visibly remember it's horrendous looking teeth. Unlike Hawaii and Zanzibar, there wasn't the multitude of starfish, but I did see the biggest turtle ever. Incredible.

Husband looking longingly at the shore

But all too soon my dive time was up again and we were back on the boat. Husband looked very comfortable on the top deck, book in hand and sunnies on face. I was beyond exhausted and starting to get very hungry. So we popped back to the shore, said our thank your and goodbyes, and started towards a delightful little eatery called the Blue Gecko Cantina, where we reinvested in some good old fashioned calories by way of jalapeno poppers, tacos and a couple of beers.

more tacos!!!

tacos!!!

jalapeno poppers