Thursday, February 22, 2007
I was tired all day and a little nervous because I hadn’t been diving in 8 months. We set up our stuff and they hauled the heavy stuff out to the boat. José and Lupé would put on 1 BCD and throw another one up on their shoulders. It was impressive. The boat is a long, narrow motorboat—perhaps 20 feet long—not as long or as wide as the dive boats at Andros. It had 1 motor, not 2, like the Andros boats. Instead of climbing down from the dock onto the boat, we picked our way over the coral and rocks, which feel sharp through the booties, hook 1 leg up over the boat, and pull ourselves in. Then we find our stuff and sit down by it.
They motor slowly out of Half Moon Bay (Akumal Bay has the Akumal Dive Shop) and out into the ocean a little way. They never go very far. They slow ride out does tend to make me queasy, however.
Our first dive was to La Tortuga reef, and indeed we did see a turtle. The leader was Lupé. There was a couple—the woman had long, chestnut-colored hair—a man named Vinizio or something like that, and Todd and me.
They stopped the boat and briefed us on the dive—how we get in, how deep (80 feet), how long we’ll be under water, how to stay down until we reach 700 psi, and then to go up and do a 15-minute safety stop. We put on our masks and fins and they held our BCDs for us. Then we propped our butts up on the edge of the boat—I felt a strong jerk as the 40-pound tank dropped down my back—and then I leaned back and fell into the water. My left hand hit someone as I went in. Then I saw that the woman with chestnut hair had a free-flowing regulator. She kept hitting it with her hand and the DM finally told her to use the second stage instead. Then we descended.
Compared to Andros, Akumal reef has vast expanses of sand. I assume that if it were a sign of degradation, there would be more bleached and damaged coral. But I don’t see any bleaching—just lots of brown coral. Perhaps it looks less colorful because it’s a cloudy day. I saw a turtle and a ray. I see elkhorn coral.
Then the boat goes back to the bay (faster than it went out), we sit a while. I consider just doing the one dive, but Todd wants to dive again, so we go out to Yool Canal. Todd said he was a little bored, but I liked it well enough. I would have liked to spend more time hovering by cleaning stations, but this was a follow-the-leader dive. Saw flounder, plus a fish with the same coloring that rested on the bottom, about 8 inches long, with yellow/gold stripes.
Todd and I have been practicing our ascents and are doing rather well. We tend to go up and down a bit too much, but we were able to do our safety stop at 15 without (without hanging onto a line, as we did in Andros), without too much of a problem.
I felt queasy after this dive and had to rush to the bathroom to poo. I had eaten bread all day—chocolate muffin, cookies for a snack and for lunch, and watermelon juice. All day I burped watermelon juice. The word for watermelon in Spanish is “sandia.”
I was so tired after this dive I just wanted to lie down, so I did, and Todd went to La Buena Vida for lunch. About 3 or so I went to the dive shop to get my sunglasses, which had left in the boat. I hung around for a while and then went back to the room, waking up Todd in the process. Then I went to the dive shop and Lupé was there. He said the fishing was bad. They didn’t catch anything. He was kind enough to wade out to the boat and get my glasses. I had been afraid to earlier because my shoes weren’t stable enough to go to rocks and I didn’t want to go barefoot and I couldn’t get to my scuba booties because the dive shop was locked.
I took many pictures of a pelican sitting on the Akumal Dive Adventures boat. Then I went back to the room and we got ready to go to the CEA gala. We got there at 6:30. I became annoyed with Todd because he was leading me all over the place in my white sandals and my feet hurt. When we got to the gala at Lol-ha restaurant, the bidding was over. We were disappointed—we had wanted to bid on some photographs. I got a rum and pineapple juice and then we went to dinner at Lol-ha. There were paintings with a cubist flavor on the walls. I wasn’t sure if they were prints or originals. One was of a forbidding face streaked in paint (like war paint). There were long ribbons of cream-colored fabric hung from the rafters that formed billows and twists. It is an airy, breezy place.
I had carne tampiquena (what’s in that anyway?) and a green salad, which seems not to have bothered me. I had merlot and Todd had pinot grigio.
During dinner, a couple entertained us with Latin dances (I had no idea which dance they were doing—maybe the website for CEA says?). They were great. She did splits, cartwheels, etc. They were beautiful to watch. They were dancing on a stage, in front of a screen on which were projected pictures from CEA (turtles, staff, etc.), draped by the same kind of fabric hanging from the ceiling.
Then we paid the rest of the bill and went into the snack bar, which is outside by one of two bars and the beach (with its private property sign. I had chocolate mousse cake and Todd had tres leches cake. My cake tasted as if it had been brought in frozen. Then Bandikoro began to play—they’re an African percussion band with two women. It was the first band Todd had ever seen that had 2 marimbas. They played percussion for a while and then switched to more of a dance sound.
The pair who danced earlier got up to dance. By now it had become obvious that they were married because their son was with them. Their dancing to Bandikoro was equally impressive, though they didn’t have room to do things like splits. At one point, the woman’s hair extension fell off—she actually had only neck-length hair—and she shrieked and her friends shrieked almost as loud with laughter. Later the husband danced with one of her friends, who also seemed pretty good, and tried to teach a white girl to dance Latin-style. Todd and I got up to dance and I tried to do a cumbria box step of sorts. Mainly it made my calves hurt.
posted by Price of Silence @ 9:04 PM
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