Mea culpa... I came back from Mexico with over 100G of video. I shot it in 1080p, thinking my poor little Mac mini would be able to work with it. Nope. Had run all of it through ffmpeg before I could even watch the raw files. Once processed, I had the task of tweaking the footage into something watchable. Suffice it to say, it took a while ;-)
Jeannine decided to work from Cozumel the first few days, so I was left to my own devices. I took the opportunity to see if it was worth snorkeling in the harbor. While it's not Santa Rosa Wall, it was certainly a good time.
Day one of diving took us to Palancar Garden and Paradise Reef. At Palancar, I went in a little light, thinking I could dive a 3mm wet suit with only 16# of lead. Bad idea. Fighting to get down, cost me a lot of air. Being a little rusty probably didn't help either. Only managed about 30min on that first tank. I stuck to 18# after that and was fine the rest of the trip.
Palancar
Paradise
Next up was Yucab and Tunich. For the first dive, our dive master hooked me up with a 100 (el Gordo) tank. I certainly didn't turn down the extra air. I can't express enough how awesome the crew at Eco Divers is. Everyone there, from Kristin and Jorge, to the dive masters (looking at you Daniel, Guillermo, and Eric) and boat captains is absolutely great.
Yucab
Tunich
Colombia y San Clemente... Just a couple of beautiful, mellow dives.
Colombia
San Clemente
Punta Sur and Cathedral. Punta Sur is a Doozy (capital D and all). We start at the Devil's Throat, then work our way up the reef. The entrance of the throat, is right around 100'. You pop out of the cave at roughly 125'. I'm not a huge fan of caves and swim throughs, but this was one I just had to do (I had actually considered not doing this dive). This dive however is the site of one of the greatest dive stories I've ever heard: One of my dive buddies did this cave with 2 German girls who were celebrating their 100th dives in the Devil's Throat. Apparently it's a German diver tradition to do your 100th dive naked. They decided to do the 'getting naked' part in the cave. My buddy Victor got stuck in the cave with them because Nature Girl #2 got kind of buoyant in the process and required being rescued. Yeah... Victor wasn't happy about that bit.
Devil's Throat
Punta Sur (remainder)
Cathedral
Punta Palancar and Francesca
Punta Palancar
Francesca
Columbia Bricks and Cedral Shallows. Cedral Shallows starts out with one of the best shark videos I've ever been lucky enough to capture. My descent and the shark's path nearly intersected. No skill here, just dumb luck.
Colombia Bricks
Cedral Shallows