Well Cozumel lived up to the billing. Tom and Bill took a fantastic dive trip with Diving with Martin. We started at the Palancar Bricks then moved to the Las Palmas Reef. The Bricks area of Palancar is made up of huge coral heads. Each of these 
heads is as big as a house and can be as tall as 60 feet or more. THese heads are all crunched together making a maze of caverns and tunnels between them. It is an amazing experience to swim through these and find yourself staring down a vertical wall of coral that disappears into the depths below. So you get the best of both worlds. You get the caverns AND a wall dive. We had great fun following each other through these.
The second dive was along another wall. We descended upon a flat surface to the right was a plain of brilliant white sand. To the left was the reef. The reef made a sharp bend downward and became a slopping wall that disappeared deep in the blue. The current was stronger here since it wasn’t being broken up by any large coral formations so you end up flying over the surface with out having to expend much energy.
The reef was teaming with life. Early in the dive we ran across two very large lobsters walking across the reef towards deeper water. This is very unusual since they do not normally come out in daytime. We also saw a “Splendid toadfish” which is endemic 
to the coral around Cozumel. It was 
really pretty. The dive master coaxed it out of it’s hole in the coral as I tried to get a picture. It swam right at the lens I had to back off to get a photo. The first one just showed some blurry big lips. The fish is quite pretty and I was glad to be able to catch some photos of it.
Rob and the rest of our group went to Tulum for the day. They
found it interesting but the trip rather rushed. The group left for the ruins before Tom and I left for our dives. They did not return until 7:15 pm. That would be 15 minutes after the ship was supposed to depart. Luckily, since this was a ship’s excursion, they waited on them.
Wednesday, February 28, 2007
