Went diving at the weekend, given the weather this time of year it meant a trip to Vobster and a quarry dive. The water was about 6 degrees but it was still fun, mainly due to the company. My old buddy Fraser is back in the UK after his monster bike tour. We did a couple of good dives and had a thoroughly good time despite the cold.
I’d managed to squeeze in another cave diving trip this year, after several trips to Florida & France it felt only right to go back to Mexico! My buddy Clare Gledhill and I arranged a 9 day trip with a day off in the middle. We stayed at the Dreams Hotel in Tulum which is a 5 Star all inclusive hotel, a bit of a luxury but we’ve found it reduces the time you spend sorting food and makes the cost of the holiday very predictable.
I’ve been to Mexico several times, not as many trips as Clare but we still arranged guided dives for the majority of the trip. The guys at DIR-Mexico know the caves so well you get to places you wouldn’t have even known existed. Places like this:
Our first day started off with the traditional waste of time spent renting a car, I’ve tried booking online but it’s doesn’t seem to speed the process up whatever you do. Once sorted, we popped into Zero Gravity, said hello to everyone and grabbed some cylinders.
Our plan for today was a simple warm up dive in Carwash. It was actually the first cave I ever dived and as such I’ve got great memories of the cave. When we get to the site we run into some fellow DIR Explorers members and got chatting. It was great to meet the Nick and his buddy and put some faces to names but I was rather keen to get in the water. We jumped in and as I stuck my head under the water to see the amazing crystal visibility and the start of the cavern I started grinning. Clare and I discussed the plan which was a 1/3’s dive jumping off to the room of tears. I always reckon I know my way into carwash and then end up wondering if the reel will run out before I hit the mainline. On one past occasion I ended up with the guideline somewhat taught in order to tie into the mainline! No dramas on this occasion so we tied in and set off down the mainline, one of the big changes from last time was that the cave seemed darker and siltier. Some locals had been trying to dig out Luke’s hope (cenote) and in the process seem to have chucked a load of particulate into the cave. We pass the first cenote and somehow overshoot the jump to the room of tears.
Clare is leading the dive at this point and we both decided to just keep going, and see how far we get. We pass through Adriana’s room which is section of the cave with beautiful formations. In some ways I’d forgotten just how pretty the Mexican caves are and marvel at the formations. We kept going and the cave starts to get tighter and tighter. Eventually I see Clare skimming the floor and ceiling with her drysuit and tanks and I’m glad she decides it’s just too tight and thumbs the dive. Exiting is un-eventful but as we reach the cavern zone I pause enjoying the view of daylight streaming in. We sit at 5m for a couple of minutes and watch a cave class doing various drills before surfacing. A great start to the trip and a really nice warm up dive.
Next day we were diving with Danny as a 3 person team at Taj Mahal. The plan was a 2 stage dive plus 50 bar of backgas. At the depths of a lot of the Mexican caves that would allow us a 3 hour dive. We headed into Taj Mahal and the initial part is now familiar cave having dived it on both my cave-1 and cave-2 classes. Clare loves the size of some of the rooms in this system and we headed straight up the mainline and through the vast chambers. The visibility extended as far as your light would travel.
We went right at the T in 2nd enormous room and dropped our first stage. We carried on before a jump to the left side and headed on to the end on towards Boxk cenote, where we dropped our 2nd stage bottle about 10m before the cenote. We surfaced into a breakdown area where the cave has collapsed preventing further passage by water. There are some gaps in the ceiling and shafts of daylight light up the cave.
We spend some time just enjoying the view before we exit the water for some hardcore bouldering (while wearing double AL80’s). The ground is very slippery and it’s hard going. After about 10 minutes of scrambling I re-entered furthest point and chilled out. Danny did relate the tale of someone spraining their ankle in the boulder section and then needing to struggle through the hour long exit dive – certainly made us cautious! Once we were all across and relaxed we started our next dive. We went through some beautiful cave and Danny took us on a tour of some of the least visited places. We head right at a T and run out of cave in a room with the most amazing white limestone and reluctantly begin the trip back to Boxk. Once there the process reverses and we get back into the first part of the cave and begin our exit. All told I think it was about 5 hours by the time we exit the cave, a truly stunning dive and an excellent second day.
Next up was a dive in Naharon and we were diving in a slightly bigger group as we were diving with Dan Lloyd. Descending into Naharon it’s a big black cave reminiscent of some of the WKP caves. As you head down the line your light just gets sucked up by the walls and you don’t get a huge view of the cave – it’s more a case of seeing little parts of it. We jumped left not long after reaching the mainline.
The cave now narrowed bringing the walls into view. The cave was filled with lots of dark formations, which looked like wax dripping down the walls, and then stained black with soot. It’s actually tannic staining but it does give the place a different feel. We went up through two breakdown domes where a collapse had caused some narrow spots. We descend deeper below the halocline into some amazing cave. The salt water had bleached the limestone and the dark nature of the cave begins to change. We reach the jump Danny had in mind and we then drop our 2nd stage as a marker and jump left. This section is about 3m tall but narrow maybe 1m wide. We’re now a bit deeper and in the salt layer so everything is white and blue coloured. We’re passing lots of limestone with intricate formations and finger walking through the narrow passage. Clare had brought her little camera and it actually managed a couple of photo’s, the light reflected by the limestone from 4 HID’s actually did quite a good job in such a small space. We reached the end of the line and turned the dive. It felt almost like 3 separate dives as the cave changes so much as you progress. As we reached the cavern zone we saw some snorkelers peering down at us. We did 5 minutes of deco and a slow ascent with the opportunity for a few more photo’s in the shallows.
Diving with Dan was a pleasure – once again we just turned up, ran through a basic plan and went diving. It’s still really nice when the DIR just works as it should and lets you go diving in a safe manner.
Next up was Grand Cenote, as Danny pulled the map out of the car he explained that he’d been one of the principal explorers in the system and sure enough he’s listed on the map as having found huge sections of the cave system. As such he knows the cave incredibly well. Our plan was for a complex navigation dive with 5 jumps and a T heading down into a section called La Boca. We descended and found the cavern line but came across a class making a dive. We made it past them but I was then on the back foot when running the jump as I’d not started getting ready before I reached it. We jumped off at the stop sign (English version) and onto the white mainline. There were lots of pretty formations with white and green being the dominant colours. We identified the jump to Kalimba (we’d discussed it in the pre-dive plan) as it was right next to a change of direction marker. We dropped a cookie to reinforce our exit and kept going. Next jump was at the end of the line and it was a big one so Danny used a reel. The cave now started to narrow a bit, the formations got even prettier. We took a shorter route past a cenote and kept going. I actually ran out of cookies at the last jump – I only had 5 on me so I had to use a line arrow (I’ve since added a few more to my pigtail). We eventually turn the dive on gas and exit. Despite a 3 hour plus dive we had no deco to do since we were on nitrox 32 and the average depth was 7m!
Next up was jailhouse, one of Danny’s favourites. Our plan for this one was a photo dive, with Danny bringing his new SLR camera. This site is part of the Mayan Blue system but is further up the road next to a ranch. As such it doesn’t suffer from the break-in problems that Mayan Blue itself struggles with. For those who don’t know Mayan Blue is in the jungle way out in the middle of nowhere and a lot of cars have been broken into while the divers are in the water. Fred has lost his shoes and his lunch in the past so it’s an indication of the poverty that some people are in.
The site is called jailhouse as it originally had a barbed wire fence around it so when the original explorers surfaced in it they were penned in. It’s now been well setup for divers with a path down to the Cenote. The cave starts off as a dark cave with lots of stained black rocks. We passed through that section with Danny only taking a couple of photos. We then reached a section where we descended below the halocline and found the big white Mayan blue style cave. The dive itself was absolutely stunning. Huge big cave passage, fantastic visibility, lots of big formations. We passed a fossiled tree root where dripping water had deposited rock onto the root freeze framing it as a rock structure. All the time Danny was shooting pictures. A simple stunning cave – I can see why it’s one of Danny’s favourites.
Another notable one on the trip was Dos Pisos, a relatively newly explored cave. It’s a bit of a longer walk to the water and it doesn’t smell nice but the cave makes up for it. The first section was tight narrow cave which required careful progress. Our tanks were on ceiling, chest on the floor and with gentle finning as there wasn’t always anything to use your fingers on. It was a white green cave, a little like grand cenote. After a short distance Danny flashed from position 3 and indicated that his stage was free flowing. We stopped and he tried to fix it. It worked for a little while but played up again so we dropped it and carried on with only back gas. Lots more formations and again very striking. We turned it on gas and began our exit. Right back near the entrance we made a jump to a stretch Danny hadn’t done before. We found a circuit which looped back onto the mainline nearer the exit. Amazingly we went past a lot of roots which look almost spooky underwater. When we jumped onto the mainline we turned right and reached our first jump. We removed the first jump, returned down the mainline removed our second jump and carried on exiting. It did prompt a conversation around markers and that on re-finding our first jump and our own cookies that we had re-confirmed we were on the mainline.
On one of the days without DIR Mexico we went to Grand Cenote. Once again we started off on the cavern line with a jump onto mainline. This time though we took the jump off towards Kalimba into a section called Pasa Delagato. This was still big passage but very pretty. Along the way we stop to take some pictures and drop stages at 40mins in. At 60 mins we reach the jump to Bosh Chen and keep going to the T. It also represents a change of direction so we cookie it and head right to Kalimba. The cave now becomes very tight and squirrelly. Often the line doesn’t seem to follow the cave and you end up heading up into the ceiling or down through a hole. We pass several very close-in jumps which I’m careful to study carefully on the way in and out along with some amazing formations. We hit turn pressure at 90 minutes and began our exit. The exit is a little quicker than the entry and all too soon we are back in the cavern.
I found this dive fascinating given the fatality that happened within this stretch of cave. A group coming from Kalimba swam in, turned left at the T and within 20m reached the jump to Bosh (which they took). Coming back from Bosh they then swam for close to 40 minutes down the wrong direction heading towards Grand Cenote rather than Kalimba. The caves are totally different style and would have been impossible to confuse. They should have expected a T almost immediately yet didn’t seem to notice. They should have marked the jump (it was a snap and gap but should be treated the same as any other jump) to Bosh. They should have recognised the fact they were seeing completely different cave. Having dived it I could see there were lots opportunities to avoid the incident. It was a very sad situation but a reminder of how important it is to really pay attention to the cave.
Overall a totally superb trip which left me very dived up. Being able to do a load of 3 hour cave dives where our longest deco was only 5 minutes is just amazing. Danny did us proud with some jaw dropping dives and of course the photos left us some fantastic pictures. Hope you liked them.
Meant to put a picture of the perfect RB80 cylinders online. They are 8.5L cylinders which are taller than the RB and therefore keep the unit off the boat bench when kitting up. With 17L of backgas it works very well for a good range of ocean dives.
