Learning to Dive

Our good friend, Benito, is also a dive instructor. In addition to enlisting his help to make the crossing from Key West to Isla Mujeres we also had him certify/ re-certify us in diving.

He started by teaching the basics about the gear while we were underway.

Then once we arrived in Puerto Aventuras he had us start all of our dives. One day he took the kids out in the dinghy to shallow water for their confined space dive. The hardest part of all of it was the dinghy; standing in a rocking dinghy, wearing fins, with a tank on your back, trying to help others get the tank on their backs, then doing a purposeful back flip off the dinghy into the water.

Then we went to Cozumel to do additional dives. First we went to a shallow snorkeling place that is right next to wear all the cruise ships dock.

The kids did multiple exercises, first in relatively shallow water, then more at the drop off into deeper water. Benito was impressed with how quickly they caught on, he said they must have gills. We figured they would, they have been swimming since infants and snorkeling for ten years, but nice to know they enjoyed it as much as Kim and I had anticipated. I had snacks ready for everyone when they came back on board.

After lunch, Kim and I went down in the first shallower snorkeling area to review our basic skills. Then we went to a local marina and picked up a Captain to help drive our boat. We took the boat to the other side of Cozumel and the five of us (Our family + Benito) did a drift dive while the captain we hired followed in our boat to pick us up at the end. There is a 2 knot current, nice to be able to not worry about fighting it. It reminded us of the Virginia Creeper trail, not much real exercise involved. But it was beautiful, we were about 60 feet deep with tons of fish and coral heads. Benito harvested some conch for us.

On the way back from Cozumel we hit some rain with wind and waves on the beam so it was a rocky soaking return.

Benjamin and Benito cleaned the conchs on our way back.

We still had one more check out dive to do. After Christmas we took the boat just outside of Puerto Aventuras and anchored, the five of us were able to dive together. Benito had suggested doing this in the dinghy, but he has never seen me try and get myself back in the dinghy from out of the water and I would like to keep it that way. I’m as graceful as sea elephant trying to climb onto an iceberg. Santa had brought us a new underwater camera for Christmas so we were able to get some shots this time.

Benito taught Benjamin how to harvest conchs underwater. He uses one conch to break the others shell to loosen the hold it has, then he is able to pull out the conch meat and put it in the pocket of his BCD. Once he gets back on board he cleans and trims the meat and puts it in the freezer. He makes it look easy.

Ready for Belize!