Another dive adventure at one of our favorite stops, Cozumel. Five days of diving with our friend and divemaster, Kim Rogers, owner of Dive GalaxSea Cozumel. This trip we brought along one of our newest dive buddies and gal-pal, Claire, for her first tropical dive experience. The weather was Africa-hot and the viz wasn’t as great, but we still had spectacular diving, day and night.
The main reason for our trip at this hottiest (it’s a word . . .now) time of year was to snorkel with whale sharks. Kim arranged for a trip with her friends and excellent hosts, Rolando and Julie, to be our guides to the congregation of whale sharks, twenty miles off the northern tip of Isla Mujeres. Ferry at 4 AM from Coz to Playa del Carmen and then an hour north via cramped shuttle to Cancun. We motored out to the whale sharks on a spine jarring high-speed boat ride that left us all a bit shell-shocked. The sharks were amazing… and huge! The sheer size of some of the sharks was awe-inspiring. One that I estimated at about 35 feet had a tail that was taller than me.
Fortunately, despite the mass of snorkel boats at the site, the amount of people in the water was tightly regulated. One guide and two snorkelers per boat at a time. We all got to go in multiple times until it was time to go back. Our return trip was a mirror image of the trip out, with all the pain points, stopping the boat only for the crew to make us all some delicious ceviche just off the shore of Isla Mujeres. It was a welcome snack after the grueling boat ride. The only thing missing was a beer, or three.
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It was a cool bucket-list experience, but we all agreed that we probably wouldn’t do that again. The group of Brits that shared our tiny shuttle bus from Playa and back had booked with a different guide. They had a similar hellish boat ride but went to a different spot. They saw no sharks, only the contents of their stomachs spilling into the sea. It’s a lot of pain to come up goose eggs. They were not happy campers and we were thankful they did not smell of their misfortune.
We returned worn out and tired to our digs at the Occidental Grand and headed home the next day. We had spent yet another week in Mexico without illness only for Shelli and Claire to get sick from some tainted cilantro at one of the restaurants at the Houston airport. Ahh, good times. 🙂