Oh ooh, Domino

[Sushi Boy]

Started with some so-so dives yesterday at Isla Mujeres. Two dives, 45 mins each, 31 fsw, maybe 25 feet of vis. Saw some squid and a few other cool things but all in all pretty non-descript.

Today we went looking for whale sharks. Did we find any? Ummm, only 30 or more... At times there were three or four in my field of vision. I think I got some good shots and a video too.

This afternoon we saw an island made out of thousands of old water bottles, I trumpeted a conch shell, and stood at the eastern-most part of Mexico.

I love Mujeres (but you probably already knew that..

[ReefHound]

I'll trade you the day I had at work today for your so-so dives.

Good to hear about the whale sharks. Hope ya didn't scare them off. I'm hoping to see them this Sunday.

You realize that you booked Isla Mujeres, not Easy Mujeres, right?

[Sushi Boy]

Ha ha, yeah I was confused by that at first too. I'm makin' do though...

[Sushi Boy]

After a long day in front of the computer, my pics are edited & uploaded to my Mayan Islands Tour Gallery.

[Sushi Boy]

I shot a couple of vids too. They won't be on National Geographic anytime soon, but here's one of them:





Here's the other:

[Sushi Boy]

Two quick sidenotes:

The pics I uploaded only have a sampling of all of the whale shark pictures I took. If you're rabid enough about whale sharks to want to see all of them, send me a PM and I'll forward you the link for the rest.

Also, my trip photos include pics of two CHUM stickers that I left on Isla Mujeres. The first 5 people who get their picture taken with them (on the island - no photoshop...) get a free beer!

[nudilover]

Nice vids, I have some good vids from the philippines but I have not found a way to upload to chumclub.org. Do/Should we have a way to post videos? Maybe get a chumclub youtube channel?

[Sushi Boy]

Aah, Jedi CHUM tricks.

If you dig deep enough through the FAQ, you'll find info on vb markup codes

Scroll to the bottom of that link for info on the codes to use for a youtube video. That'll post it just like mine were.

[Sushi Boy]

Now that the gear's been unpacked, rinsed and dried, the mail's been open, and I'm caught up at work, I thought I'd jot some quick notes about the trip.

Isla Mujeres - What a great island!
Small, golf carting around it takes a little over two hours; we managed to circumnavigate it with the boat going to two dive sites and the return to the dock. No Bubba Gumps or Domino's here. If you need your Mickey D's, this place aint for you. Every meal I had was fabulous though, and sometimes we picked a place just off the cuff.

We stayed at Posada del Mar, not a fancy hotel, but nice enough. It's walking distance from the ferry and Hidalgo Street (where alot of the restaurants & shops are), and has an open air restaurant & bar with a nice view of the beach which is right across the street. I found a cool little boutique hotel, Casa Ixchel that I may stay at next time. It's a little ways from downtown, but with a golf cart only a short ride, and has a GORGEOUS view of the east side of the island with waves rolling in just feet from the pool & the patio.

We dove with Aqua Adventures. They were very nice, but I'd be inclined to try someone else next time. Even though our max depth on any dive was 43 fsw, we generally returned to the surface with half a tank left, and nobody was anywhere near pushing a no-deco limit, the DM's generally called the dives at 45 minutes. I'd hoped to dive with Enrique's Unique Dives, having heard good things about him, but that day got blown out.

Viz wasn't that good because of recent storms. I'd like to see what optimal viz is there. We still saw some cool stuff - an underwater sculpture garden, a few squid, the aforementioned whale sharks , some big friendly turtles and my first lionfish .

Topside they had some great stuff too, including a private island that was floating on 100,000 empty water bottles. It was small, but big enough for a house. We got to enjoy the prettiest zip line I've ever seen, going from the cliffs out over the water & then back to the beach. I was able to try my hand at conch shell trumpeting near there as well.

Definitely an island worth revisiting. I really liked the vibe!

The second half of the week was spent in Cozumel at Scuba Club. The resort is definitely family oriented and the guests tend to be, shall we say, "more sedate" than I'm used to. Food wasn't bad, but nothing to write home about. The dive op there was FANTASTIC however. We were never rushed to finish the dives. As people ran low on air the DM buddied them up, sent them to the surface and stayed down with those of us remaining. My last dive there, on Paradise was 71 minutes.

The diving never disappoints in Coz. We saw lots of big grouper, some good cleaning station activity, and a BIG puffer. The best though was on the night dive when we came across a tiger paw standing straight up on the reef spawning!

All in all, one heck of a trip!