Extremely soft sand near Coconut's bar.

Click continue reading for the rest of the trip:

The First Week

My friend Nolan and I arrived a week in advance so we could complete some scuba training with the very best scuba instructors, Kari and Matthew Atkins, and so we could tour around Cozumel Island and do touristy kinds of things before the rest of the group arrived. We worked with Kari to complete our Fish Identification and Underwater Naturalist certifications. We were ready to visit the reef when the rest of the group arrived!

Nolan saying hello (Kari in the background).

In addition the the dive training that Nolan and I did on the shore of Blue Angel, we also did a tour of the island. We rented a Tuk-Tuk (roughly translates to 'Death-Death'), and rode out to visit the San Gervasio ruins and visit the east coast of the island. In addition to dining at the finest restaurants we could find (I ordered a cheeseburger), we took the Tuk-Tuk out at 5 in the morning to see the sun rise over the ocean.

Driving a Tuk-Tuk through the city.

Gateway to San Gervasio (blur courtesy of our terrible tour guide).

View from Coconuts bar on the east coast of Cozumel Island.

The Second Week

The second week of the trip marked the arrival of the rest of the U of A Scuba Appreciation Club. In total we had 15 divers that participated throughout the week. Many of the divers were working on certifications of their own, some doing the Night and Deep specialties, while others completed their Advanced Open Water certification. I finished a total of 7 specialties and my divemaster course.

The U of A Scuba Appreciation Club ready for another boat dive!

Group shot on Palancar Bricks.

Nolan hovering about the sand at Paradise Reef. Best UW photo on the trip.

It was nice to have finished the Fish ID and UW Naturalist course before the group arrived, since it meant that Nolan, Kari and I were the de facto experts on IDing fish, coral, and anything else people asked about. For the most part I think we did a pretty good job, and we added a lot of different fish to our list. We saw a number of nurse sharks, turtles, seahorses, eagle rays and large groupers, in addition to the gamut of Caribbean fish that frequent the reefs. Some of the rarer fish included juvenile Drumfish and a few Splendid Toadfish.

The Last Days

The second week was filled with diving and studying and resting and eating; it didn't leave a lot of time for exploring the city with the rest of the group (who I hope had enough spare time to get some solid touristy stuff in). But the final few days with the group were action packed. For an extended surface interval before the group returned by plane we planned an excursion to Kari's secret tidal pool on the east coast.

Kari and Nolan protecting their beer in the tidal pool.

After the rest of the tour left, Nolan and I returned to the mainland to spend a few days before returning home ourselves. One of our big attractions was visiting Xcaret. Nolan spent a day visiting Chichen Itza, but you'll have to ask him about that.

Simulated Mayan ritual at Xcaret.

Sunset at Blue Angel.

I can't wait for next year's trip!!

A Conch shell and bottle on the Blue Angel shore dive

A Sharp Tail Eel hunts among debris on the sandy bottom

A peaceful Yellow Ray that I accidentally disturbed displaying his spine

A Spotted Eel watches curiously from his hidey-hole

Nolan did his first night dive with me, followed by massages on the beach to cap things off.

On Tuesday we rented a vehicular death-trap: the Tuk-Tuk, and did a tour of the island, stopping at the San Gervasio ruins, and continuing on to the east side of the island to see Coconuts bar and the beaches.  Thursday morning we got up early and headed back to a beach on the east coast to watch the sunrise. The Tuk-Tuk was returned (thank Ixchel!) sans incident, except for running out of gas that left us stranded no less than a single block from the gas station.

Here's a picture from the Prima Trattoria restaurant on Wednesday morning to give you guys a better look at the downtown and port of Cozumel.

The view from the Prima Trattoria of downtown Cozumel

The weather there looks pleasant enough too.

We've been working hard on making this trip very affordable for students and members of the U of A Scuba Club and we're happy to announce that the price this year will be $650 which includes all hotel costs, diving costs (not including rentals) and breakfasts for 7 nights at Blue Angel Resort. To break it down a little further, the details are as follows:

- 7 nights at Blue Angel Resort in a shared room (choice of roommate available, added cost for a single room)
- 7 buffet style breakfasts at Blue Angel's amazing restaurant (note: this isn't a cheap continental breakfast; bacon, eggs, pancakes, fruit, coffee, etc... are all served!)
- 10 boat dives on Cozumel's protected reef, along with unlimited shore diving

The dates for the trip correspond with U of A's spring break, which falls between February 20th and 27th for the 2010/2011 academic year. The days are are also nicely aligned with a Westjet Edmonton to Cozumel direct flight, which avoids many of the travelling pitfalls we experienced last year due to travelling through the US. In any case, you are free to choose your own flights, but if you're interested in staying up to date with deals, I will be looking for specials on the Westjet flights mentioned previously. At the moment, these regularly priced flights are about $450 each way, or $900 total. I expect to get these flights half-price when the come on sale towards the end of the summer. In terms of renting gear, our sponser Ocean Sports is providing us with a fabulous rental deal over the course of the week. For last years trip, all told the rental was around $100.

Additional meals at Blue Angel's restaurant are extremely affordable. If prices remain similar to last year, you can eat happily and healthily over those 7 days for about $200 per person (about $15 per meal). I highly recommend this option, because it takes a load off in terms of planning, shopping for and storing groceries when on Cozumel Island.

A conservative estimate puts the trip cost around $1850 plus certification fees, although this can be as low as $1500 if a good deal on flights comes around. If you know you'd like to join us on the trip, please contact me using this address (cozumel@uofascuba.com) so I can arrange payment of your deposit to Ocean Sports through Megan Plemel (megan@oceansports.ca). Please feel free to address me directly with any questions. I hope you decide to come, it's a ton of fun!

Here are a couple of images from last year that might entice you a little... This first one is a group shot on our last day in the dive shop where we'd store our gear and get set up for our daily dives.

Here's a shot of the restaurant with the dive shop below. The view from the hotel is incredible: facing west you can see the sun set every day, along with the ocean and multiple cruise ships that amble by to stock the island's resorts with eager tourists.

A group shot on the boat, taken candidly. We're on our way back from two dives.

Enjoying some local entertainment while out for dinner in downtown Cozumel.

Preparing for a night dive off the beach at the resort.

Heading into the darkness!

First of all, let me say that the dive resort we stayed at was beautiful! There wasn't a beach, per se, to lounge on, but there was plenty of space to lie out in the sun. Our fantastic photographer, who graced me with his pictures, (I broke my camera two days into the trip) took all the pictures that I've posted here. On the right is a photo from the hotel overlooking the restaurant (above) and dive shop (below). The light blue water was the shore dive domain, and in the distance you can see the fence of the ray pen of the neighbouring property. The package we booked with Ocean Sports and Blue Angel included unlimited shore diving, even at night. There was a tonne of life at every dive site we visited, due mostly to the fact that the area was designated the Cozumel Reefs National Park by presidential decree in 1996. Also included in our package were two boat dives a day for five days with additional boat dives at $50 for two. Over the course of six days, my dive number more than doubled, with 18 logged dives by the end of the week. As a group, we had four divers earn their PADI Advanced Open Water certification, with Peak Performance Bouyancy, Underwater Naturalist, Underwater Navigation, Deep and Night dives. We also had one of our group complete his Night specialty. Our instructor for the week, Kari Atkins, who is in the photo above as well as the videos below, was pure, 100%, FDA approved AWESOME! I'm getting ahead of myself a little bit, so before I bore you to death with all the little details, get comfortable, maybe have a bathroom break, and when you're ready, hit up the two videos below along with the commentary below. Both were produced by the Talented Randy Travis of RandyTravisUnderwater.com.

This first video is the Santa Rosa Wall, which was a little under an hour away from the resort by boat. As you can see, we descended to about twenty meters on the sandy shelf and then swam towards the wall, where the bottom slopes off into the deep. We were immediately graced by a nurse shark, which moved steadily against the current so that all of us had a nice view before we were swept away. The current was very strong, pushing us along the gallery of the reef. It was nice for me though, since I was suffering from blisters on my feet from all the activity earlier that week, and if you watch carefully you can see me with my fins crossed, still keeping up with the rest of the group. The dives on the wall were my favourites because of the large number of swim-throughs, small pseudo-caves made out of reef material, that were very interesting to explore and practice our buoyancy skills. Out of all the dives, this one was the most desolate of life, with a very low number of fish, eels and rays. You can compare this to the second video.

This second video was taken on Paradise Reef. This is where we did the Underwater Naturalist part of our Advance Open Water specialty. As opposed to the wall dive, this one was at a depth of about fifteen meters with a relatively sandy bottom. There was an abundance of life here, which was lucky since our requirements for the certification were to identify four types of vertebrate animals, four types of invertebrate animals, and two types of plants. You can see me and the other divers examining our waterproof identification booklets along the way, writing what we see on our dive slates. I bought my booklets so I could show everyone what we saw, since my camera was broken. It's funny what diving does to you; I remember being surrounded by dozens of species of fish and not being able to find any of them in the booklet, and at about fifteen minutes into the dive I hadn't written anything down. I was getting so frustrated and I finally recognised that I was stressed and came to a full-stop, took a few deep breaths and said, "I'm going to flip to a page in my book, and wait until one of the fish on that page swims in front of me." Sure enough, about ten seconds later I ID'd the first fish, and I completed the exercise over the course of the next ten minutes.

All in all, the week passed very quickly. Scuba diving tires you about pretty fast, and two dives a day is more than enough for most people to be asleep before their head hits the pillow, especially when you're wrestling with current on the majority of the dives. On top of the dives, we would walk into Cozumel city and get dinner and drinks.  Luckily, while we were there, there was a three-day parade many kilometers that went back and forth along the main drag in the evening. We all went out one of the evenings and enjoyed the festivities (and $1.50 one liter beers)! The restaurant at the dive resort was phenomenal, and even more impressive than how delicious and filling the meals were, was the final price, which hardly put a dent in my overall trip budget!

There is much more to say, but I'll stop here for now. If you're interested in more details of my trip, feel free to contact me or leave a comment below. I can't emphasize enough how much fun I had on this trip. I volunteered to organise the trip again next year with the help of the Scuba Club and Ocean Sports, so I count myself very lucky to be able to have another awesome experience next year!

The ATM cave was so cool that I'm going to hit you with a read more link to get the rest of the goodness, see you after the jump!

Let's get straight down to buisness. The ATM cave is formed by a system of streams that flow through the ground in the Tapir Mountain Nature Reserve. To get there our tour group took an early morning van ride from San Igancio into a region that was covered by orange groves. We had a short stop at the last sign of civilization, only to find the most foul-mouthed parrot I had ever heard.

From there is was only a short drive to the edge of the jungle and the path that would eventually lead us to the entrance of the ATM cave. If you are planning on doing this trip, it takes up almost a full day. There's about an hour hike to the entrance of the cave through the jungle, which is full of very interesting plant and animal life. For the most part we only saw insects, but our guide knew a ton of stuff about the plants. Along the way, it's necessary to cross a stream several times. I say stream, but I was given to believe that it was at it's lowest point of the year. Our knees got wet, but it wasn't much of a challenge to cross.

Before we entered the cave, our tour group served us a horrible lunch of tuna and cucumber sandwiches, so bring your own snacks. We also had a chance to have a dip in the pools which formed at the mouth of the cave. The water was refreshingly chilly, since it was incredibly hot and humid. I also noticed schools of tiny fish, which looked very close to the aquarium style Tetras you can buy here in Canada.

After lunch we got suited up with our helmets and our headlamps and it was off to the races. The entrance of the cave was a deep pool, that we had to swim across. Oh, and advice to weak swimmers, bring along a strong swimmer. In most cases the parts of the cave that you have to swim across are short and shallow, but occasionally there is a very deep pool, so it helps to have someone who can help you along. There was a 60-ish year old woman who was with us that wasn't a swimmer at all, and the tour guide gave her assistance along the way (needless to say, she didn't make it all the way to the end of the cave, so she turned back when we met up with an earlier tour group on their way out).

Only a few dozen meters into the cave the darkness started overpowering our tiny headlamps. The following picture is looking across a large chamber towards the entrance of the cave. I tried getting a shot of the giant stalactite which the Mayans believed was the physical representation of the guardian of the underworld. It was a suitable symbol, but as you can see below, very hard to take a picture of (without a flash, of course).

The trek into the cave lasted for over two hours, and we had more luck with wildlife in the cave than we did in the jungle. Inside the cave we saw a blind cave crab and a few cave fleas, which I think are more closely related to crickets than they are to fleas. There was also evidence of bats everywhere, although I didn't see a single bat along the way. In the picture below you can see an awesome limestone formation in the foreground. In the background of the image you can see the ceiling of the cave, along with some strange holes. The holes are actually formed by the bats. Apparently when they are hanging from the roof and they poop, some of their poop hits the roof above them and slowly dissolves those holes into the roof. I have no idea how it works.

So after about two hours hiking, swimming, scrambling we come to a point where there is a giant ledge, about 5 meters high and a single boulder that reaches up to it. This it the most challenging part of the hike, since it's a wet, slippery, and wholly eroded rock that stands between the cave and an incredible cathedral underground. This is where the 60-ish year old woman got turned around. She spent about 15 minutes trying to climb this rock, but kept getting freaked out by the height. It was entirely psychological, since about a dozen people were giving her help. I felt incredibly bad, because as soon as we had climbed onto the ledge, out tour guide started pointing out signs of human life, notably sacrificial pottery.

The number of artifacts in this part of the cave were staggering. The chamber that we were in could literally house the largest cathedrals that I had ever seen. Everywhere we stepped we had to plan carefully so that we didn't disturb relics of the past. We were even require to take our sandals off and walk solely in our socks, to prevent our sweat from damaging the artifacts and the interior of the cave. The cave was used about 1000 years ago as a place of religious sacrifice to the god of the underworld. There were even remains of humans that had been sacrificed, many of them bludgeoned on the head with special tools that had been found near their resting places. The picture below is a skull illuminated by a red LED. One of our tour members had strayed off the path and almost walked on it, but our tour group was watching everyone carefully, so there was no risk of damaging it.

One of the most famous features of the cave is know as The Crystal Maiden. It's a complete skeleton of a teenage female that was sacrificed in the cave. The skeleton had been covered with layers of calcium carbonate as the water levels in the cave rose and fell through the rainy and dry seasons over the course of a millennium. Our tour guide speculated that she had been hit in the face, because her jaw was inhumanly askew, and then left for dead in the cave. Her resting place is high up above the main chamber, which means it is possible that she was trying to find a way out of the cave when she finally succumbed to her injuries. There is a skeleton nearby of a very small person, who would have been her guide in the underworld, since she was likely to be a Maya royal. This point marked the end of the tour where we would have to turn around and head back to the jungle.

The return journey was an excellent way to reconcile how difficult it must have been for the Mayans to access this cave, let along discover and explore it in the first place! Several of our group member's headlamps had started to go dim (mine included) and luckily our group leader had packed some extra batteries for us. Can you imagine how difficult it must have been to accomplish a journey like that with only fire based light sources? You have to remember that we swam almost a third of the time we were traveling through the cave, sometimes through crags and cracks that were so small that our largest companions had difficulty getting through them!

By the time we had finished our hike out of the cave, we were exhausted. We were inside for nearly 4 hours, and in addition to that we had to hike another hour just to get back to the van. Before we packed up for the hike I had a celebratory swim in the entrance to the cave, to celebrate my return from the world of the dead. I'm looking forward to visiting again!

You can click any of the pictures to enlarge, and read a brief description of each one. If I had to say only one thing about my trip it would be this: I had an amazing time and there is more for me to learn in this part of the world. I will be going back time after time. There is one thing that I would have changed about the trip: either I would have done the whole thing without the benefit of the GAP tour company, or I would have brought along someone who could have joined me for the tour. Without the benefit of a partner in crime, it was a bit awkward being alone in a tour group.

On to the gallery! Enjoy!

Well, at least there aren't rules against drinking in public (or internet cafes for that matter), *sip* ahhh.

Every restaurant has the motto "slow down". Everyone here will tell you if you're walking too fast. I was told to relax by a chef on the street, and I was already pretty friggen relaxed. I'm burnt as hell, the SPF 45 is almost meaningless. Tomorrow I'm SCUBA diving in the Spanish Bay and having a night dive at the local reef. Today I snorkled with nurse sharks, eagle rays, sea turtles, and saw those neat fish in symbiotic relationships with other fish. There are thunderstorms over the horizon which illuminate the clouds shrouding the moon.

I don't think I've ever been so happy in my life.

So I'm not going to use the internet for the rest of the trip. We're leaving for Playa del Carmen the day after tomorrow, and I'll be home Saturday night. I'll do a big round up post, and a couple of packing advice posts about what I used and what I didn't. But other than that, I hope you've enjoyed the last couple of posts and I encourage you to post your questions or e-mail them to me so that I can answer them in the big round up.

The beer is beckoning. Over and out.

This picture was taken from the top of Temple I, Tikal, and as you can see it was pretty dizzing for vertigo sufferers. Luckily, though, we didn't take the stone steps up because people tend to fall off those and die. Instead, we took a steeper set of rickety wooden stairs off to the side.

Here's a view of the same temple from another angle, and as you can see it has been restored very carefully. Tikal was amazing in terms of it's resoration, and I got to see some workers actively chopping blocks under the direction of an archeologist for further resortation of the 1000 odd temples in the area.

We visited Tikal at 5:00am, in the hopes of seeing the sunrise from Temple IV, but unfortunately it was overcast. Luckily, one of the guides basically told everyone to shut up, and we got to sit peacefully on top of the temple and listen to the sounds of the jungle for a good 20 minutes. My camera did something weird in the silence though, it took completely green pictures when I tried to frame one particular part of the jungle (thrice repeated), even after subsequent normal pictures. No scientific explanation available.

In the afternoon we went to a nearby ziplining adventure company and did a tour of the jungle canopy with 9 different ziplines. I have a bunch of hiliarious videos that will have to wait to my return to Canada to become available. Here's a picture of those of us who did the ziplining:

I got a lot of enjoyment out of teasing Francesca (the blonde in the middle) over her unhappiness about heights by doing this:

As you can see, I'm having a ton of fun, and the next stop is San Ignacio, where I plan on spending a night in the jungle, exploring caves and camping with bats!