The Diving
The diving
was ok. All the boat dives were
dive master lead drift dives. The
operators were safe and mostly careful about the reefs.
Visibility was 45 to 80 feet, mostly towards the lower part of the range.
Water
temperature was 78 to 75 degrees at depth.
The currents are strong and fickle and you go where the current takes
you, so you spend some dives largely over sand.
On the dives where you drift by the walls or reefs, you blow by a bit
quickly. The reefs were a bit
sparse and looked a bit beat up. It
reminded us of the Florida keys. Although
there were a lot of people diving, we didn't have any trouble finding a dive
on short notice. Costs were from
$50 to $60 for a two-tank dive with your own gear.
The wildlife
was nice. Lots of big angels,
schools of big fish, groupers, eels, flying fish, turtles, sharks, anemones,
feather dusters, garden eels and lots of others.
There are puffer fish here and I was surprised when Hector thrust an
inflated puffer at me at point
plank range.
It turned out to be a realistic plastic puffer he bought at the Shedd
Aquarium in Chicago. He went on to
pull the same stunt on most of the dive masters we dove with.
It was fun while it lasted, but the puffer escaped on one dive.
We had an
encounter with a passing submarine. A
passing sub appeared out of the depths at about 60 feet.
Hector and I encountered a similar tourist sub at night off the coast of
Cayman, so we recognized the sound of the sub.
Hector decided to give the tourists as show, so he swam up to the sub,
smiled in the windows, and did a few right-side up and upside down moves for the
passengers. From the flashes of
light emanating from the sub during his performance, we think he was
photographed a couple of times. If
anyone has his photo (28 Mar 2001), please let him know (FB)
and he will add it to this web site.
The weather
was nice and sunny every day, but the seas were a bit rough. Trips out to the dive sites were rough and bouncy.
If you get seasick, you should count on taking anti-motion sickness
medicine before every trip.
There seemed
to be a lot opportunities for non-divers to try diving. Each beach had several dive operators offering resort
courses. Several folks in our group
tried out diving through that means. They
did fine, but I don't know if any of them really got the diving bug.