Day 60 - Muchas Thanks

I cannot believe that two months have already come to an end. They say, time flies when you are having fun. Well, definitely I had too much of it, since I didn't even notice how 60 days flew by at an unbelievable speed.

All I do today is nostalgically walk around the streets and along the sea, trying to soak in the quintessence of Cozumel, that ephemeral something which makes this place so homey for me. I notice and remember all the little things about the island that I forgot to mention before. Stupid topes (speed bumps) every 5 meters. Entire families cramped onto one scooter: the best sight is usually this combo - a husband and wife, plus two (usually sleeping) children in between them, and a dog in the back. Sunday live music and dancing in the main square. Street vendors with lots of exotic looking stuff that I always want but never dare to try.

Then, I buy a ton of chocolate for the dive masters (all of them have a sweet tooth) and write my thank you notes. I'm grateful to everybody here for their generosity, kindness, knowledge, wisdom, ability to have fun, readiness to share happy and sad experiences, and above all, for making me feel part of the family. I feel like I have lived here for ages, so familiar everything and everybody seem. I absolutely LOVE it here! No wonder I get heart images everywhere I turn...

Oh, and Kay and Greg - the villa Aldora's managers - don't like chocolate, and don't drink anything but beer, so I have to be more creative with them. I mean, I cannot just buy a 6-pack of beer as a little thank you present, this seems kind of silly to me. So, I come up with something even sillier: I cut out letters to make up MUCHAS THANKS and glue them to the beer caps. Turns out, cutting out things is a lot of fun! My childish execution of this project only adds to the silliness of it all, but they love it. After all, I didn't do anything to actually spoil the beer, just the bottles:).

Day 59 - The last dive day of not diving

Today is my last dive day, because I'm leaving on Thursday and I want my gear to be completely dry by then. But there's no diving today because of the stupid El Norte! What is wrong with this picture? Actually, the picture outside of my closed window is beautiful. It's only when you open the window, you are in trouble. The wind is blowing a huge ashtray all over the balcony as if were a sliver.


Oh well, now my gear will definitely dry out completely by Thursday. And I will take this "free" time to do more of nothing and post some beautiful pictures that Joe shared with me yesterday.




I mentioned Joe, Mark and Kim several times, but I never really described the characters. The first time Joe and I met was last summer, but apparently back then both of us were in this "sick-of-new-people" mode, because we didn't recognize each other when Sallye introduced us again two weeks ago. Only after a couple of hours of hanging out, we slowly but surely recognized each other. Joe is the nicest person on Earth. He works in the airplane propeller industry, but at heart he is a brilliant underwater photographer. He has a kick-ass camera with huge strobes and all possible lenses you can imagine. It is very heavy and on occasion he "lends" it to people in need of additional weight at the safety stop. I used this advanced weight system once, when during the dive a layer of air got in between my multiple wet-suits, making me so warm and cosy that I preferred to be bubbling up rather than letting go of this thermal protection. He tells me that every time he has a "bad" day, he thinks how he back-rolls from the boat, the captain hands him the camera, he goes down, unfolds it carefully, and starts chasing after the fish hunting for a great picture. Rarely do you see people so accepting of what life has to offer, able to turn every experience into an opportunity, enjoying every ray of sun and every drop of rain.

Mark is Joe's friend from high-school. Their relationship is endearing. Just one example will show it all. Five years ago, Joe mentioned to Mark that it would be nice if Mark got scuba-sertified, too. He could do it while they were vacationing together in Cozumel, because it is super-convenient here. Mark said "sure", but decided to get certified at home prior to the upcoming vacation, "to surprise Joe, and to make it possible to dive together from day one of the trip".

Kim is Joe's wife. Here's another interesting story. They have been together for 18 years, and have been married for 2. The reason they decided to get married is because one time, while passing by a jewelry store, Kim mentioned that she liked a certain ring. So Joe decided to buy it for her. And what is a better way of presenting a ring if not a good old-fashion proposal? So he proposed to her, right here, under the Villa Aldora's palapa, next to the ocean.

Day 58 - Price of Addiction

El Norte AGAIN! Seriously? I think it's the 15th Norte since I came here. This is unheard of during this time of the year. The port is closed. Nothing to do. So this is exactly what I did - absolutely nothing. It is an extremely nice and relaxing activity, I highly recommend indulging into it whenever possible.

I miss being in a hammock now. For the past several days, when the wind wasn't blowing like crazy, I spent 4-5 hours every night chilling in a hammock. I would promise myself that I'd come out just for the sunset and then quickly retire not to fall victim to enraged mosquitos once again, but it was simply out of my control. The hammock is addictive and not easy to let go of. So I obediently pay the price: my back is completely raw from the bites and scratches, but I try to comfort myself that at least the sunset pictures came out gorgeous.

Day 57 - A marlin AGAIN! What? Wow!

It looks like every time I try to take a day off, something better comes along. Today, instead of having a healthy portion of boring nothingness in my life, I got into a private afternoon dive with Javier! On the big boat, no less! To my favorite San Juan! And we saw a marlin AGAIN! Do I need to say more? Words are simply useless at this point. Although a quick note is in order: Javier saw 2 marlins in 15 years, and I saw 2 marlins in 3 days!

Dinner at Sorrisi (an amazing Italian restaurant that can compete with many in NYC) with Joe, Kim, and Mark was a decorous conclusion to the day. We all had delicious pasta and amazing wine. Happily tipsy we wandered around the main square for a while, frolicking to the infectious rythm of live salsa, people watching.

Day 56 - More on Aristeo

I was going to take a day-off today, but since it's Joe and Mark's last dive day, I decided to join them. Yeah, twist my arm, really!

A most relaxing dive at Punta Sur Sur was followed by a bit more hectic Paso del Cedral. Each dive featured an insight into Aristeo's personality.

On the first one, where we stayed at about 80-90 feet for 30 minutes or so and then continued with a multi-level dive for another 30 minutes, Aristeo was at least 20 feet below me at many points in time, so he must have gone into decompression. So what does he do to clear his computer? About 15-20 minutes before the dive is over, he sends it up on the line to 15 feet when he reels out the buoy for the boat! Unbelievable cheating!:) Well, as long as he feels good. Knock on wood, he seems to be immune to bends. A true fish-man.

On the second dive, at the safety stop, all of a sudden he took off his BCD and half of his wetsuit, because he urgently needed to pee! And for the next three minutes all he was doing is signaling us every thirty seconds, "Are you clear to go up?" All you could see in his eyes is a desperate plea for mercy for everybody to just finally go up and leave him alone with his business. I almost spit out my regulator, cracking up. Too bad all the cameras were already tucked away and there was nobody to take a picture of this beautiful scene.

Day 55 - All is well that ends well...

The day started weird. When Aristeo's boat pulled up to the villa's pier, I threw my wetsuits in without even asking if I'm on it, but - oops - for some reason, I was placed on a different boat from the group I have been diving with over the past week or so. I felt a little annoyed, because a) this particular group is super nice and we all seem to be very compatible in terms of what we like and what we can handle during diving, and b) I prefer Aristeo to Edgar. And to top it all, the boat I should have been on went North! That was unbearable to watch, so I created a little diversion on my actual boat, and after picking up somebody from downtown, we, too, went North.

Actually, as always, every cloud has a silver lining: I ended up having lunch with "my" group anyway, because we were at the surface interval at the same time, and we went to my beloved San Juan for the second dive, instead of the Eagle Ray City with Aristeo.

The highlight of the day was diving with a 15-year old girl, who is absolutely amazing. She handled a pretty stressful current at Barracuda and San Juan with utmost elegance. And all with a camera, too! Witnessing things like this makes me very happy.

The highlight of the night was a http://www.scubaboard.com/ gathering at Wet Wendy's. Their margaritas are spectacular and usually they make a huge frozen margarita "tower" drinks, but today for some reason Claire (the Hungarian girl who owns the bar) decided that they would melt too quickly in this weather, and served ONE drink in TWO glasses - both HUGE. Margaritas we tried: mango + strawberry = yum, mango + pear = yum, avocado = wow!

Day 54 - Like Water for Chocolate

I love learning Spanish! It's such a beautiful language. On the surface, it seems pretty easy, but if you dig just a tad deeper, you realize that is it NOT a simple language at all. There are 14 tenses, plus 3 non-temporal verb forms. That doesn't seem too bad in comparison to English, that has 12 tenses; however, every verb in Spanish conjugates in 5 (Mexican) or 6 (Spanish Spanish) forms: I, you familiar, he/she/(you formal), we, you formal, they. It's a nightmare to learn, but so gorgeous to appreciate! This language is very particular in its intricacy of expression: every little situation calls for a very specific "solution". Narration, for example, has its own tense. There are 3 genders. At least there are no declensions, that's a relief.

Anyway, as usual, during my Spanish class today we discussed a series of cool things. This time our conversation hovered over various Mexican wedding and family traditions. Here are the two that impressed me the most:

WEDDING "DOLLAR DANCE". Male guests ask for permission from the groom to dance with his bride by “paying” for the privilege and the female guests pay for the privilege to dance with the groom. The guests form one line for the groom and one line for the bride, usually the best man and maid of honor are at the head of each respective line to help collect the money. The father of the bride would lead the dance by pinning money on her dress, followed by the best man and groomsmen and then other male guests. On the side of the groom, his mother will reciprocate by pinning the money on his suit, followed by the maid of honor and bridesmaids and other female guests. As tradition goes, the money collected should be used by the newlyweds as extra cash for their honeymoon or to set up their household expenses. I did some additional research, and apparently the tradition originated in Poland! Normally, the bride collects more money than the groom, and in the olden times, when women didn't have the equal rights to work as hard as men (haha), this money was considered her contribution to the new family household income. The tradition was brought to the US in the beginning of the 20th century, and I think over time, as people became lazier and stopped wanting to put any extra effort in dancing, it morphed into simply sticking some money into an envelope and be done with it. Of course, the latest metamorphosis is a wedding registry.

"LIKE WATER FOR CHOCOLATE" is a novel and a very good movie, that explores this other "interesting" Mexican tradition: the youngest daughter must not marry but take care of her mother until the day she dies. When I watched this movie in NYC several months ago, I was touched by the absurdity of this traditional belief, but I never thought that it was STILL the reality. Apparently, to this day, in some small Mexican towns and villages this tradition is strongly enforced.

Day 53 - Drawing from the right side of the brain

A couple of weeks ago, while waiting for a ferry from Playa del Carmen back to Cozumel, I "drew" a sailboat in my Spanish textbook. It really surprised me, since I have never ever drawn or had the desire to draw anything in my entire life. And... it turns out that my Spanish teacher also gives drawing lessons! Aha, now it all makes sense!

So, I took one today, really not sure why, just to see how it feels. And it was absolutely awesome! Two hours flew by like ten minutes. When I entered the room, I saw a very intricate looking toy horse in the center of the table, and my heart sank, "Is he going to make me attempt to draw this???" And indeed, he did. In a very peculiar way. He explained, that usually people insist that they cannot draw anything, because we think with the left side of our brain, "I don't have the talent for it... Why attempt - the result is going to be laughable... I have never taken drawing classes in my life, how can I even think about drawing anything like this..." But making art should be coming from the right side of our brain. So... he took a paper sheet size piece of carton, made a hole in the very middle of it, put a pencil through it, and made me draw like this. The carton covered the sheet of paper I was drawing on, so I couldn't see what I was doing. I had to look at the model all the time and draw in a continuous line without taking my pencil off the paper. He placed the model in 3 different positions, that I had to draw over one another, however I felt like. All without looking. And then I had to shade in certain parts, just for the sake of experiment. Then, he showed me how to draw in a more "serious" manner. I tried both pencil and charcoal. I cannot explain what exactly I enjoyed about the whole process, but it was a lot of fun! There's a book called "Drawing from the right side of your brain". I guess, I should get it now...

The first thing we saw while starting the descent on our afternoon dive at San Juan was a huge eagle ray. We all took it as a sign that the dive was going to be great. And it was! I have never seen so much marine life on this site, because usually you just fly with the current and don't try to look for any sea creatures: if they pop up in front of you - great, if not - so be it. But not with Aristeo. He managed to find something on every inch of the site: an enormous green moray eel (actually, as big as they can possibly get - about 10 feet), lots of grown-up and baby turtles, sharks, a marlin (it's an extremely rare sight here, afterwards the dive masters who have been working for over 20 years were telling us that during their entire diving career they maybe saw marlins 3 or 4 times!), etc. The dive was unbelievably good. Back on the boat, we all applauded for the lack of a better expression of our emotion.

Day 52 - Sallye's leaving...

Sallye's leaving today, so no diving for either of us, as I want to see her off properly. We walk into town in the morning, check her out of the dive shop, and have a very tasty breakfast at the Museum. This time I have a pretty awesome dish again - scrambled eggs with cactus, parsley, and... mint! A very unusual, yet amazing combo.

Update on Sallye's lost luggage: Every morning and night during her 5-day trip, Sallye was making phone calls to all possible trip-related Delta locations - Cozumel, Atlanta, Cancun. Every time she heard a similar story: the bag is going to be put on the next flight from Atlanta to Cancun, and you need to pay $100 to get it to Cozumel. She never got the bag while here. Finally, by some magical coincidence, it flew back home on the same plane with her. Almost a happy end.

It was so great having Sallye here, and so much fun diving together! I cannot wait to our next underwater adventure, wherever and whenever that may be...

Day 51 - Diving a dream

El Norte started yesterday, so today I decided to try and brave the East side of the island once again. And THANK GOD I did! I don't know what is happening to me lately, but for the past several days every dive seems to be a spiritual, out-of-body experience.

Diving the East side is very different. The formation is shallow and consists of soft coral - gorgonians, or sea fans. Even the sand pattern is different here. The first part is known as Elkhorns for the obvious reasons, as seen from the pictures. And the second dive - which I made this time (hurray!!!) - is only at 10-20 feet and features canons and canon balls from a sunken Spanish galeon. At some point on the second dive I felt my fins touching the surface - we were only in 6 feet of water!

What BEAUTY! Unfortunately, I don't have the words to describe it. Fortunately, Sallye was taking her awesome pictures, so I have images that are definitely worth a 1,000 words each. The only thing I can add to the pictures is that these two dives were absolutely dreamy. The dream-like sensation was enhanced by the constant lullaby rocking of the surge. Very-very slowly, just like in a beautiful dream, you are taken by the water back and forth, back and forth. You look around and all you see is the same rythmic movement everywhere: sea fans - back and forth, schools of fish - back and forth, turtles - back and forth. I would not be surprised to learn that it was actually an REM sleep - there was definitely no dominating brain waves in my head during these two dives.

On our way back to the shore, we rescued a fishermen's boat. The boat broke when the dive-hunters were underwater, so the boat couldn't follow their bubbles. It had happened three hours prior to our arrival to the spot, and nobody had any idea where the divers were. Our boat was very small, so it took about an hour and a half to tow them. Thankfully, the divers were OK - after realizing that the boat is nowhere in sight after surfacing, they just swam to the shore.

I was so relaxed during the both dives, that I actually slept all the way through the surface interval after the first dive (when others walked around the beach in search of various useful beach garbage - they found a cool heart for my collection:)), and then after the second dive, Aristeo arranged several bags in the boat's front for my comfort, and I napped again for an hour and a half. It was so cosy. What a peaceful day... And thanks to Sallye, my hearts collection can finally boast an underwater one!

Day 50 - Diving with the camera

This morning, when the same group was getting on the same boat, we looked at each other and nodded understandingly - we are with Aristeo again, which means a serious workout. And serious fun!

During the first dive - Devil's Throat - I borrowed Sallye's camera to try how it feels. And it feels... LIGHT. I mean, the camera is positive buoyancy, and I didn't really compensate for it with any weights, so I was bubbling up all the time. Of course, at the reef's depth (125 feet) it's not a problem, but for the safety stop I was seriously light. I could have kept swimming downward at 15 feet, as I always do when I'm a little light, but Aristeo tried to help me by putting pretty much all of his dive paraphenalia on me. I ended up decorated like a Christmas tree: with all his dive lights, lion fish killing devices, etc. Sallye also was light for this dive, as she was trying to reduce her weights, so we were both downward vertical at the end of the trip - funny. My pictures are all almost black & white, as I wanted to do "landscapes", and the three rules of underwater photography are: close, closer, and even a little closer. But I enjoyed having the camera, and of course now desperately need to get an underwater case for mine.

For the second dive - San Francisco wall - Sallye had the camera in her possession (you can certainly notice the difference).





















For dinner, we went to La Choza to meet http://www.scubaboard.com/ people currently in Cozumel. And although it was a lot of fun and everybody was super nice and interesting, this dinner made me confirm my realization how I have overdosed on new people by now.