Santa Rosa Wall

Thanks to my lovely wife Nancy, I became certifiable!

Nancy bought me the PADI Open Water Diver certification course for Christmas.  The coolest gift ever from the coolest woman ever.  I finished the classroom work and pool dives with John at Scuba Center here in town in preparation for our vacation in Cozumel.  There, I hooked up with Luis at Deep Blue Divers.  Highly recommend him - patient, nice guy - and didn't worry me at all, even after pointing out that he may need some new fins one of these days.  He had a broken one, kind of floppy, just past the insert-foot part. "Oh, that.  I hit it on a prop"   First order of business was climbing into the wet suit, putting the gear together, checking gauges, etc.  I was amazed at how nervous, or more precisely, excited I was; and how much fumbling I did trying to do everything correctly.   My first two dives were from shore - to a depth of 25-30 feet.  There, I worked on some skills.  Removing and replacing my mask and gear (30 feet under water), buoyancy/hovering skills, controlled ascents.  Which was a skill I kept doing backwards, actually making Luis 'scream' at me underwater when I kept trying to add air to my BCD.  The next day it was out to the Santa Rosa Wall for dive three, and Tormentos Reef for dive four.  Both are 'drift dives' - where the current just carries you along, and there's really no need to do much swimming.  You basically just steer.  These pictures of the Santa Rosa Wall are from other divers, I just did a Google search.  If they were my pictures, I'm sure they'd fall into the "you and your god damn nature pictures" category...

Santa Rosa Wall Scooter Simpson Flickr

Santa Rosa Wall Ultrahi Flickr