Hell yes! Back to Coz again! We can’t seem to stay away. And we love it just a little more each time we go there. Once again we were glad to have our buddy Claire join us for our fifth journey to the magical land of Coz. Claire grabbed us a nice condo at Residencias Reef, just a short trip south from Costa del Sol, where we stayed on our 2nd trip down. Being early March, the weather was mild and warm with a few windy days thrown our way. As always, the water was clear and warm.
As we love to do, we got to hang out and dive with our great friend and DM, Kim Rogers of Dive GalaxSea Cozumel for 13 dives over 6 days, with some excellent standouts. Wind at the southern end of the isle shut down a few spots on a couple of the days we dove. That, along with the rotating closures of certain spots in the marine park, made for a few dives where we ran into other dive groups, however there were plenty of times we were still feeling like it was just the four of us on our explorations.
A little on the selfish side, we decided to leave the cameras at home and just enjoy the scenery without looking through a viewfinder. When you do that, naturally you’re gonna get screwed and see some amazing things that you can’t prove without pictures or videos. Fortunately, Kim still had brought her camera (the fool!) and captured some underwater memories for us to revisit. So no video for this trip, but please look back at trips 1- 4 if you need a video fix. You’re gonna have to settle for the stills on this one.
We dove many of our favorite spots from previous trips, and a few we had only dove perhaps one other time. I had asked to go back to the wreck of the Felipe Xicoténcatl (zhee-co-Ten-cat) or C53 as many call it, because clearly, there seems to be a lot of ways to pronounce Felipe’s surname based on my interwebs search. Settled on the sea floor at 80 feet, it has three decks to explore and a few interesting resident schools of fish hanging out in the more protected portions of the ship. As we were coming up from the third deck for our requisite porthole photo op in the wheelhouse, we heard the persistent whine of electric motors. Once through the deck hatch, we were greeted by a big white submarine parked about 30 – 40 feet from the wreck with a bunch of people waving at us from thirteen big portholes along the side. My mind was officially blown! Surreal was the only way to describe it.
The other stand out on this journey was our trip back to Eagle Ray Wall. Toward the north end of the island, the current runs much stronger as the strait between Cozumel and the mainland narrows. There is place where you can duck out of the current, right at the edge of steep wall, and watch the Spotted Eagle Rays at certain times of the year. At 80 feet you chew through your air much faster, so the trick is to cruise in the current at about 20-30 feet and then drop down to the notch at 80 feet as quick as you can and hug the bottom so the current doesn’t send you on your way. Clearly timing is everything so you don’t miss your mark. Kind of like dropping a bomb, except you’re the bomb. We had an excellent guide who got us into position perfectly. From there you wait. We were fortunate to have a flight of 12 eagle rays come by in various formations, with the current and back against it. While we are just inches from the sand using our fingers to dig in to keep us from being dragged away by the current, the eagle rays were moving into that same current as if it didn’t exist. Effortless and graceful, it was like watching a slow motion airshow. They would come by en masse or split into a couple of groups with another pair, moving at angles and buzzing over us. It immediately reminded me of flight demos by the Blue Angels or Thunderbirds. The best part is we got to do this dive twice and on the second dive, they got much closer, coming within just a few feet of us. These were the last two dives of our trip and it was a spectacular way to finish our week of diving.
Topside, we did some excursions around town and around the island. We spent a lot of our after-dive evenings at the Sunset Restaurant & Bar, enjoying Margs, fantastic sunsets, and chowing down on tacos. Lots of tacos. So many tacos. Tacos every night. Tacos Arrachera. Tacos Al Pastor. Tacos Pollo. Tacos Camarones. Tacos Vegeteriano. Por favor, no mas tacos!
After every trip to Coz, the questions comes into our mind – could we live there? We love the island, we love the people, and most of all we love the diving. Aside from that, there are plenty of reasons we keep going back. Did I mention the tacos?
