Rob, a friend from work, had been recommending me to dive in the Yucatan area for a while, and in particular to dive a cenote. I finally got to follow his advice and dive my first cenote today, and what an experience it was.

A cenote, or d'zenot (sacred well) in Maya, is a collapsed cavern part of an underground system of caves, caverns and rivers flowing to the sea, carved over centuries by the rainwater penetrating the limestone. At the surface they appear as large sink-holes in the middle of the jungle but they are doorways to a fantastic underwater world.

I dived the cenote Chac Mool (the claw of the Jaguar), located south of Playa del Carmen.

The water in the cenotes is clear as air, offering visibility of over 70m. The Chac Mool cavern featured stalagtite and stalagmite, proof that it was dry at some point. Indeed, during the last Ice Age, some 12,000 years ago, the water level of the world's ocean was some 100m lower.

Some of the stalagtites and stalagmites are slanted at steep angles which is another sign of the violent geologic event that shaped the region. Sixty-five million years ago an asteroid 10 to 20 km wide collided nearby at the present day location of the Chicxulub village, pushing 70% of Earth's species, including the dinosaurs, into extinction. Some fossils were also visible, embedded in the limestone.

In contrast to the signs of these dramatic events, the shafts of light peering from the surface evoked the peacefulness of a cathedral. When crossing the halocline, the boundary between fresh and salt water, at about 10m of depth, the light is distorted at it passes through the water, enshrounding you in a dream-like haze.

It was a fantastic experience and incidentally my 100th logged dive. What a way to celebrate. Thanks Rob.

Today I rented a digital underwater camera, an Olympus Camedia 3000 with an external strobe.  

I had used disposable underwater cameras before but this was my first try with a "real" camera. The big difference is the strobe. Because sea water filters out reds, pictures taken without flash come out with a bluish tint. This time, though, with the help of the strobe, I got some interesting pictures.

Taking pictures underwater is more difficult than it sounds. For one thing my air consumption was worse than usual, because you tend to get all excited when you see a potential subject, and you swim around more, trying to stay still in a current while you frame your picture. More energy spent means more air consumed. Also, it's really hard to take pictures of fish. Most of them are moving real fast and not staying still for the picture. So I took a lot of pictures of sponges and corals instead. I did manage to get a moray eel, a crab, some shrimp, an angelfish, some blue chromis, a squirelfish, a school of yellowtail snapper, some sergeant majors, and my prize: a splendid toadfish, a rare species that is only found in Cozumel and that spends most of its time hidden in small caves where it croaks loudly (hence its name).

I got all the pictures on CD and I´ll upload them when I get back.

Gabriel recommends the Olympus 5050 as an digital underwater camera. I'm now tempted to get more toys and spend some time getting better at underwater photography...

Some people really should not dive.

After your initial dive training, you get a certification card, or C-card. Mind you, unlike a driver license, once you have a C-card it never expires and cannot be revoked. Unfortunately, maybe.
This makes some sense, though: at the wheel of a car you could hurt many more people than yourself. With diving, if you do something stupid, you´re the one most likely to suffer the consequences.

This afternoon's dive offered several examples of what not to do as a diver, from the minor to the frightful.

During the dive briefing, the divemaster is always very clear about what you´re supposed to do and not to do. This time, as always, Miguel reminded everyone to follow him and stay behind him.

All the dive sites over the Cozumel reef are drift dives. That's the easiest and most relaxing way to dive: you just let the current carry you along. You don´t even have to kick your fins. You can just sit back and enjoy the ride, literally.

Now, if you start kicking, you´re going to go fast. You´re going to go much faster than everybody else and you will end up separated from your group. That´s what happened to four of the divers. They went way past the lead divemaster into the blue yonder. Miguel, our divemaster, started banging his tank to get their attention and gestured for them to come back and rejoin the group. Did they? No, of course not. One of them, once they were back on the boat, even complained that the divemaster was banging on his tank. Well, duh.

That was funfest number one. Now, Cozumel is a national marine park. To preserve the fragile reef ecosystem, you should not touch any sponge or coral. You could accidentally break it. But the natural oil on your skin also degrades the protective coating that protects those fragile organisms from bacteria. The divemaster also reminds you of this during the dive briefing.

But one of the divers in our group was a grabber. Accidents happen and sometimes you brush against a sponge. But this guy was just grabbing and holding on to sponges. Repeatedly. He also grabbed some of shrimp and started playing with it. Argg... Why on earth would you do that?

I must say in general that divers are quite well behaved. After all, if they want to keep enjoying diving, it is in their interest to preserve the reefs. But there always has to be an exception.

And now for another behavior that could land someone a Darwin award. It was actually a combined effort. One of them was a diver with our group (one of those that kept getting separated) and the other was a young snorkeler, a friend of the diver.

The snorkeler was tagging along with us and from time to time would freedive. At one point, as the snorkeler was freediving, the diver gave him his spare second stage and the snorkeler took a breath.

Now, and it apparently wasn´t obvious to either one of them, but this is a really bad idea. He took a breath of compressed air, then zoomed back to the surface. When you do that, the air in your lungs expand because of the difference in pressure between the depth and the surface (Boyle´s law). As a result you can end up with more air than your lungs have the capacity to hold. This can create all sort of interesting things, including arterial gas embolism (the lung´s alevoli are distended, then rupture, then gas leaks into the arterial), mediastinal/subcutaneous emphysema (the lung tears and air leaks into the cavity between the two lungs) or pneumothorax (collapsed lung).

When he saw this Miguel started gesturing big no-no signs. Once we were back on the surface he told the diver not to repeat that performance, and she was acting somewhat bothered, wondering what she had done wrong. Now, when you don't really know what you're doing and someone tells you "what you just did was very dangerous", please, believe them. Don´t just argue with them and say "well, nothing happened". The point is that something could have happened.

Each diver is responsible for their own actions. A divemaster is only there as a guide and advisor. Whether you decide to follow their recommendation or not is your call. After all, it´s your life.

I have completed my training as a Divemaster. I have passed all the theory exams, the swim tests and the practical application part of the training. I'll need to mail in some paperwork, pay my annual dues and liability insurance and I'll receive my authentic Divemaster card!

This was different than the Rescue Diver training I took a couple of years ago. Rescue Diver is very physical. You have many rescue exercises to do, some of which are quite demanding. For Divemaster, you have to learn a lot of theory (physics, physiology, decompression theory) as well as how to interact with student divers and instructors. However, it´s not physically quite as demanding. I´m glad to have completed both training now. Next step would be the Dive Instructor certification, but I think I´ll wait to get a bit more experience to go for it, although Gabriel tells me it´s essentially focused on marketing.

Three more dives yesterday, and another three today, including a night dive. Nigth diving is really a special experience.

There are at least four different things interesting about diving: the equipment, the fauna, the landscape, the physical experience.

For some people, diving is a great excuse to buy piles of gadget and expensive and complex equipment: compressed air cylinders, exotic gases (argon, helium, nitrox), underwater lights and cameras, etc... You dive because you have to test the equipment. Others couldn´t care less about the equipment: if they could swallow a pill and breathe underwater without equipment, they would.

For some people it´s all about the fauna and flora. They know all about the mating habits of the mantis shrimp and can distinguish between the juvenile, male and female parrot fish. When they're in the water, they look in crevices and under overhangs for the rarest species. They often have cameras, but not for the equipment, but as a way to record their finds.

Some dive sites, especially deep ones, don't have much animal life. Instead, there's the beauty of the reef to enjoy, the towering coral heads, the butresses, the swim throughs, the huge barrel sponges, the fantastic underwater landscapes that feel as if they were from another planet.

And then, there´s the experience of being free from gravity. You don´t weigh anything anymore. You can move left, right, forward, back or up and down. You can move just as easily upright, horizontal, on your side or upside down for that matter. Moving is effortless. You barely have to think "up" and your breathing pattern changes, affecting your buyoancy and causing you to rise. Or a quick flick of your fins and you are propulsed forward.

I´m not much into the equipment, and although the landscapes and the animals are fascinating, I like the physical experience the best. At night, this experience is intensified. You can turn off your light, look away from the other divers and you find yourself floating in space, with nothing around you but the sparkle of the photoluminescent plankton as you wave your hand in front of you and the sound of the bubbles as you exhale. For a moment you feel like Dave Bowman in 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Actually, I think I´m getting a sense for what astronauts feel like when they travel back to earth. Yesterday I was lying in bed reading, and I wanted to roll. I pushed against the headstand, and I was surprised and disapointed to realize that my body would not just float away as I had been expecting, and as it would have underwater. Instead I had to prop myself up, then clumsily move around. Unfortunately, sometimes you have to get out of the water, just like sometimes you have to get back to earth.

Today I went on the so-called "fast-boat". It's not really that much faster as we leave at 8am, half-an-hour before the regular boat, and return only an hour earlier. It is however taking a maximum of eight divers and a single divemaster, and therefore less crowded.

We went to Santa Rosa Wall, then Tormentos Reef. Both dives were great, with less eratic currents than yesterday. Our Divemaster was an expert naturalist, particularly good at picking out the small things in the sand: a couple of Jackknife fish (black and white stripes and a long dorsal fin) hiding in the coral reef, crab, spider shrimp, tiny flounders and larger ones. We also saw the usual baracudas and giant groupers and a very friendly large angelfish who was probably expecting some food from us. I also heard the dolphins again, but didn't see them this time.

It was the first day of diving in a year for one of the divers on the boat, John. As he was setting up his equipment, his regulator started freeflowing (that is, it started delivering air continuously and forcefully making quite a loud noise). It happens sometimes when the diaphragm of the regulator gets stuck. John started fumbling with it, hitting it and shaking it violently with no effect. I grabbed it from him and put two fingers in front of the air out-take, unsticking the diaphragm and stopping the freeflow. John thanked me and added "I was just checking if it was still working. Haven´t used it in a year". OK. Well, scuba diving equipment is life support equipment. Specifically, your life. It needs an annual maintenance check, because when you´re about to go on a dive is not the time to find that you should have maintained it. I could tell already that this guy was going to be fun, so I signed up to be his buddy (I need the practice to handle emergencies). Indeed, once we were in the water John had various problems. He wasn´t weighted properly and didn´t have good buoyancy control, so he kept floating up. At one point he started floating toward the surface out of control, which can be dangerous as this can cause decompression sickness or lung overexpansion injury, so I went after him, took control of his BCD and emptied all his air so he could go back down. It´s at this point I found out that his dive computer´s battery had run out, so he had no depth gauge nor a check on his dive profile (another no-no, and another reason why you´re supposed to have yearly maintenance on your equipment). Not long after he ran out of air and I had to escort him to the surface. He started ascending way too fast, and I motionned him to slow down but let him go as my computer was beeping requesting me to slow my ascent. First rule of the Divemaster: don´t put yourself in jeopardy because someone else is doing something stupid. I eventually caught up with him, stabilized him and did our safety stop together. My respect for Divemasters increase everyday now that I start seeing through their eyes.


I went to visit San Gervasio, a site of mayan ruins in the center of the island. Since around 100BC and as late as the 16th century, women from the Yucatan were expected to make a pilgrimage to the temple of Ixchel in San Gervasio at least once in their lifetime. Ixchel in the mayan pantheon was the goddess of midwifery, fertility, medicine and weaving. Iguanas now meander amongst several buildings, temples and roads that remain in the middle of the thick jungle. I spent most of my time running from mosquitoes, but several of them managed to bite me on my feet. As it turns out, malaria is endemic in Cozumel... Oh well.

 
Tonight a US Navy ship has moored in Cozumel, and it´s shore leave for the marines, along with the usual batallion of tourists from the cruise ships (five cruise ships stationned today). Although the marines are dressed in civilian clothes, they stick out. For one thing, there are very few drunk divers in Cozumel -- alcohool and diving don´t mix, "Dont´t drink and dive" as the saying goes. For another, tourists are rarely travelling in band of four or five cropped hair young guys. A pack of them got a room next to mine. I hope they´ll be reasonably quiet and I´ll be able to sleep tonight. I have some diving to do tomorrow...

Yesterday I completed all my written exams: Physics, Physiology and First Aid, Equipment, Decompression Theory and the RDP, Dive Skills and the Environment, Supervising Activities for Certified Divers, Supervising Student Divers in Training and PADI Divemaster Conducted Programs. I passed on all of them with 80% or more. One of my answer on navigation was embarrasingly wrong, where I affirmed that three angles of 60° were all you needed to navigate in a triangle pattern... On the other hand I was also able to calculate the amount of air to put in a lift bag to get a 200Kg motor out of the sea floor, or the depth you have to dive at to breath compressed air equivalent to 100% oxygen. All useful skills that will come in handy sometimes.

I also finished the last two water exercises: timed tired diver tow and underwater equipment exchange. For this one, you and your partner go underwater, then strip out of your equipment and exchange it with each other, then put it back again. No practical application whatsoever, but it´s an interesting problem solving exercise. It´s harder than it seems.

I´ve also completed the last bit of the training, which was the drawing of a dive site map, including emergency procedures appropriate to the local site. I´ll show it to Gabriel tomorrow and we´ll see if he approves. I also still need to hear from him how I did on the rest of the practical training.

Yesterday afternoon I went to visit Chankanaab park, which means "small ocean" in yucatec maya . The name comes from a cenote (fresh water pool communicating with the ocean through underground tunnels) which is just next to the ocean. It´s a nice place to visit and take some sun in and snorkel. It also has a nice archaelogocial section describing the various pre-colombian meso-american cultures and a reconstituted typical mayan habitation. I was able to follow along with the guide´s explanation: my spanish comprehension is getting better.

Today, I spent the day diving for fun: El Paseo del Cedral, Tormentos and Paraiso Norte. The first two had some really interesting current. And by interesting I mean that it felt like you were flying at supersonic speed about the coral reef. Lots of interesting animals too: lobsters, giant crabs, angelfish, some baracudas, a nurse shark, giant groupers, a pod of four dolphins, a pipefish.

Also, a familly of four new divers who just got certified. As it turned out, the little girl ran out of air early and started panicking when she hit her reserve. I was able to put my training to good use, reassure her, reach our guide and let him know she needed to go up. Once we were back at the surface, the mother thanked me and asked me if I was a Divemaster. Well... wouldn´t you know it... I hope I made Gabriel proud...

My Divemaster training is progressing. I took some of the theory exams (physiology, conducting Divemaster programs, handling students) and I think I did OK on them. I'll take the remaining ones tomorrow. I'm also beeing graded by Gabriel on the practical portion of the course. I don't know the results yet, but Gabriel seems happy with me. I also took most of my watermanship exams, including the 400 yard freestyle swim (10min), the 800 yard fin/snorkel swim (14min) and the 15 minute water treading. I still have to do the tired diver tow, an underwater map of a dive site and do an underwater equipment exchange.
 
We took on a new student. She wanted to become NAUI Advanced Open Water certified (NAUI is a dive certification agency, like PADI). I again served as model for the skills she had to perform underwater, gradually improving my skills to "demonstration quality" level. The funny thing is that she doesn't seem to be very motivated. She complains about not looking forward to doing some of the requirements, saying that she'll do them "if she has to". Well, nobody is forcing her. She doesn't have to take her advanced certification. She has 40 logged dives, so she's already a fairly experienced diver. She doesn't seem to have major difficulty underwater, so I'm not sure what's motivating her behavior. Her husband is not diving, so she's probably not being pressured by him to do it. Some of the mysteries that Instructors and Divemasters have to deal with.
 
I did my first wreck dive today. For some reason, the opportunity to do one before had always escaped me. I almost dived the Rainbow Warrior in New-Zealand in 2000, but at the last minute the weather got too rough. Very good conditions today, though, and we went diving the C-53, also known as the Felipe Xicotencatl (I'm also getting better at my Mayan pronunciation). The C-53 was built in 1944 for the US Navy, then sold in 1962 to the Mexican Navy. It patrolled the area until 1999 when it was decommissioned, donated to the Cozumel underwater park and sunk in 82 feet of water off shore from Chankanaab Park. She's kept upright by eight anchors and she's starting to get overtaken by coral and algae. Unfortunately, a first layer of coral attached to the paint of the boat, which is now coming off. The underlying metal will be a better substrate and it should be a nice artificial reef a few years from now.
 
This dive ended up as a deco dive (that is, Gabriel and I exceeded the recommended recreational dive tables) and we had to do a decompression stop on our way back up. That happened because of our repeated diving, the residual nitrogen in our issues and the fact that our earlier dive in the morning was a deep dive at 111 feet. No more diving the rest of the day to give a chance to the accumulated nitrogen to leave our bodies.
 
Excellent dinner at La Choza, the best Mexican/Carribean restaurant on the island according to Gabriel. The guacamole and salsa de verdeo were unctuous, the sopa de pescado spicy, but just right and the filete de pescado a la Veracruz, a fish cooked with tomatoes, onions and peppers, delicious. For desert, I had an avocado pie, which was definitely an unexpected flavor for desert, but something one could get used to. Maybe mexican cuisine will grow on me after all...
 

I'm getting used to the climate. In fact, it doesn't bother me at all anymore. I've decided that air conditionners are works of the Devil. In a hot weather like in Cozumel, using air conditionners is asking for a cold, with the large temperature gradient between air conditionned rooms and the outside. I've unplugged the one in my room, just relying on the cool breeze of the evening and I feel great.
 
Today we did a two-tank boat dive with Greg, Brett and Bryan. The first one was a deep dive, at Palancar Gardens, the second one was a drift dive at Las Palmas. On the second dive, I gave the dive briefing. I had anxiously prepared my notes on a slate and I tried to remember everything I had to say while using the communication techniques Gabriel had taught me: look each diver in the eyes, don't give interdictions, repeat every important information at least twice.
 
Later on, we did the Navigation specialty course from shore: using a compass underwater, natural and landmark navigation, tracing a square using only a compass. As I was helping one of the students by measuring the distances on the sea floor, I put my fingers straigth on top of a well camouflaged ray. Thankfully, it did not sting me, but just scurried away. Another close encounter...
 
Greg, Brett and Bryan are equipped with all the latest scuba diving gadgets. They have dive computers with a wireless connection to their air tank to measure the amount of air remaining. They have integrated inflators/alternate air supply. They have foldable snorkels. They have nice log books, tons of dry bags and wet bags, and mask defogger (most divers just spit in their mask to prevent fog from forming underwater, you can tell the real gadget freak by the fact that he uses instead mask defogger, aka spit-in-a-bottle). On the other hand, their fins and masks don't quite fit, they always have some problems getting their wireless connections to work, and it takes them longer than average to unpack, prepare and put their gears away. I think it's mostly Greg who wants "the best" as he puts it (he keeps asking us for "the best" dive site, "the best" restaurant, etc...). It's just that he confuses "the best" with "the most expensive" or "the most exotic". On the other hand, Brian, one of his sons, mumbles about wanting "the less gear possible". There is yet hope for future generations... ;-)

Today, I assisted on the Open Water dives 3 and 4 for Larry and Brian. While supervising them on the ocean's bottom I must have kneeled on a hydroid. At first, I though I had cut my knee on a sharp piece of dead coral and I even let out a cry under water. When I came out of the waterI could see there was no cut, but the very painful sensation continued. I put some Calamine lotion on, but it didn't make a difference. I continued to suffer for the rest of the day.
 
After this unfortunate encounter, Gabriel showed me how to use The Wheel (tm), this weird contraption from PADI that allows you to calculate your safe bottom times. Everybody uses tables or computers, but knowing how to use The Wheel (tm) is a requirement for the Divemaster certification. Go figure.
 
We then waited for the arrival of a very enthusiastic trio of divers. Greg and his two sons, Brian and Brent, just flew in from New Mexico, where, as Greg points out, they don't have much water. They're just here for four days and determined to do the most of their time here. They've signed up for the Advanced Open Water training. We took them on a first dive to check their diving abilities and work on their buyoancy control.
 
While I was watching them get setup and then underwater, it reminded me of an observation I made before: Divemasters are living embodiments of calmness.
A Divemaster never rushes. A Divemaster does things slowly and methodically. A Divemaster doesn't do brusque movements. A Divemaster's life is outwardly unharried. Underwater, a Divemaster is graceful and fluid. A Divemaster doesn't flinch when a fireworks explodes under his feet. OK, maybe not the last one. But in general, it's true that every Divemaster I've known have shared this characteristic. 
On the other hand, new divers are often seen running, rushing to put their equipment on, then putting it off because they forgot something, then putting it back on. Underwater, they have jerky movements, turn their heads left and right quickly, flail their arms around, point at thing excitedly. Basically, they behave as if they were on land.
Water is much denser than air, and therefore our movements and our demeanor need to adapt to the aquatic world. Conversely, Divemaster seems to have on land the same cool demeanor they have underwater. I wonder if my own demeanor is going to start changing, even when I get stung by a hydroid :-)

Today´s Bastille Day, the French national holiday. Well, let me tell you: it´s not really big in Mexico. Might have something to do with the fact that Cinco de Mayo is a Mexican national holiday celebrating the victory of Mexico over the French :-)

Anyway, to celebrate I went to the closest thing I could find to a French restaurant, an Italian one, Ambar. It turned out to be fantastic. I got a table in the back garden, lighted with kerozene lamps and candles, with soft Italian electronica playing in the background. The lobster lasagna and the tiramisu were both great. I´m glad I´ve discovered this restaurant, because I can´t say I´m developing a fondness for Mexican cuisine.

I got the first stage of my regulator fixed. Thankfully, dive repair shops are not what´s missing on the island. I went back in the water today as an assistant in training with two students doing their final dives for certifications. It´s a father and son team, Larry and Brian, from the Bay Area. A small world. I was able to get them some help and did some nice, demonstration quality, skills: mask clearing and second stage retrieval, serving as the example to emulate. We´ll dive again tomorrow to complete their training.

I got a sense of the Divemaster Mystique today. There´s this aura of omniscience that surrounds the Divemaster, conferred solely by the title. Divers instinctively rever "their" Divemaster (even when he´s in training). The training material explains that this will happen and suggegsts this is an opportunity for the Divemaster to be an intermediary with the instructor, who supposedly can be felt as more distant by the students. There could be some of that, but I think there´s more going on: when given the opportunity to ask advice to the instructor or the Divemaster, the students turned to the Divemaster. As Gabriel told me jokingly later, we should introduce ourselves as the Instructor and the Assistant, to avoid confusion :-) That makes it even more important for the Divemaster to be a good role model, since divers will instinctively copy the good or bad habits of "their" Divemaster. The pressure is on :-)

A lot of dive theory today: physiology, physics (PV = n R T, Gay-Lussac, Boyle, Dalton, Henry), equipment.

Speaking of equipment, my brand new regulator got busted. The seat in the first stage is blown and no spare part in the dive shop. So, we had to rig together a new regulator. Good practice on equipment maintenance, though :-)

Gabriel played the dive student today, and I gave him an underwater tour of his own backyard, starting with the predive briefing and leading and navigating underwater. Of course, he wouldn´t make things easy for me, so he had on purpose a series of non-life threatening incidents: he "forgot" to put his second stage in his mouth when doing his entry, I had to go and rescue him, using my panic diver training. Then he managed to loose his weight belt, loosen his tank, go off course, and bit his second stage. Each time, I had to keep an eye on him to catch him as soon as the problem occured, then assist him in fixing it. I only missed one of the simulated difficulties, which was his fin kicking style.

There´s quite a bit of pressure when you have to keep your eyes on a student as clumsy as Gabriel was today, but thankfully today´s was the worst it gets in a given dive, although all of these problems happen regularly in everyday dives. Yesterday, for example, a diver in another group lost their weight belt just as we were beginning the dive. Most incidents happens in the 10 minutes at the beginning of the dive, so I´ll have to keep my eyes peeled.

Got some nice churros at Plaza del Sol. California law prevents churros stand in California from making them fresh, so they´re always pre-made and stale. This one was the real thing.

Today, review of dive physiology, meteorology, oceanology and biology. A lot to cover, but Gabriel keeps it light and interesting, generously sharing his experience that goes beyond what´s covered in the manuals.

Equipment failure: my first stage delivers too much pressure to my second stage, making it leak. The technician was out today, so we switched to a spare first stage and will have to get it fixed tomorrow.

We went in the water to do some additional work on my basic skills. My hovering (stay immobile in the water without moving hands or legs) and mask clearing (full removal of mask, then putting it back on) was better this time around, but I fumbled my underwater equipment removal (removal and replacement of scuba unit). I have to be able to do all these to "demonstration quality", that is with sufficiently exagerated and clear movements that a student watching me could learn how to do it. I still have to work on that.

Later, I accompanied Gabriel and two students on an underwater trip as divemaster in training. It was the students' second dive. Although you could see they were excited about exploring the environment and the experience of being underwater, they were also swimming all over the place. As a divemaster who is worried about their safety, this makes your job more interesting...

As it turns out, one of them had a problem with his BC that he had filled with too much air and he started ascending out of control. I went after him, grabbed him, purged my BC and tried to empty his. With the underwater adrenaline rush, I didn´t manage to quite empty it and Gabriel had to come over to give a hand.

This real life experience helping out some students was both humbling and exciting. I'm looking forward to more.

Gabriel is the intstructor for my divemaster training course. We met today for our first session. We covered the duties of the divemaster, interaction and supervision of student divers. Gabriel has a very conversational style, covering a lot of content without any notes, just discussing one topic after another and providing tips as he goes along. For example, don´t give negative commands to divers. Don´t say "don´t go deeper than me", because that's the firt thing they will be tempted to do. It's like if I tell you "don´t look behind you". Instead, say "stay shallower than me". Same meaning, but better results.

We also did a review underwater of the 20 basic diving skills. I´m not quite used to my new equipment yet and I'm having trouble staying vertical because of the way the weights are arranged in my BC jacket. Something to get used to.

As a bonus, we did a dive which ostensibly was to work on my breathing. After a little while underwater, I started hearing some clicks and pops that seemed unusual. Underwater, you can't tell the direction sounds come from: our brains are used to calculating direction based on the speed of sound in the air and the small difference in timing between our two ears. Because sounds travel five times faster in the water, our brains just get confused and sounds seems to come from everywhere at the same time. So I wasn't sure what they were, but they kept getting louder, and then suddenly I saw three dolphins playing with each other underwater. A sight to behold.

From the minute I step out of the plane, I can´t help but notice it is hot. Mind you, I like hot. But this is really hot. Actually, let me take that back, it´s not so much hot as hot and humid. I´m usually not a big fan of air conditionning, but this time I´m glad my hotel had a unit.

Surpisingly my mobile phone works great here, roaming from my US account. Mmm... and I thought I was going to be disconnected for a while.

At last, after months of planning I am finally in Cozumel. My hotel is in between a McDonald´s and a TGI Friday´s (no, it´s not even called DGE Viernes). There´s also a Pizza Hut nearby. I really don´t know what to make of all this. I suppose that´s the price to pay to have AC and phone service.

On the other hand, I have left home my Powerbook´s power supply. I knew I was going to forget something. Now I know what it is. They don´t have too many Apple resellers around, so I may have to get one shipped. And the reason I really need my Powerbook is because of my digital camera. Just in case you´re wondering :-)