The Dive Evangelist

I know, I know. I never finished the tale of the Floridian Cave Diving classes. Mea Culpa, I am sorry. I will finish the third and final installment of that story in short enough time. But, there are more urgent matters.

I am currently writing from the white-sanded, beach bar of the Villa DeRosa in Akumal, Mexico. The same crew from the Floridian trip (minus Larry, plus a certain ScottD) has congregated here to dive arguably the most spectacular caves on this planet. Or, in this planet, if you want to be literal about it. This is too good to not be reporting live.



The Villa DeRosa is an oasis of genuine comfort along the shore of gaudy, ostentatious hotel facades of the Riviera Maya. A family-owned collection of 28 suites the Villa DeRosa caters primarily directly to divers. Instead of being greeted with all the pomp and pedantry of a cavernous lobbied resort, we were instead greeted by Tony DeRosa himself, long blonde hair nearly forming dreadlocks and a smile that says, "You brought shoes? Why?" The main suite is large and airy with the breeze off the Caribbean blowing shotgun from the back balcony facing the lullabaic sea to the front balcony opened to the heavily bougainvilleaed courtyard and pool.

While “home” may be cozy, we got our fair share of cavernous.

Our first dives were into Carwash Cenote. So named for a weekend tradition among Mexicans to park just beside the water's edge, swimming in the cenote, and then washing their cars using the fresh water. A short ride from the hotel and the van pulls into what could be a state park, or possibly a rest area. What gives it away as one over the other is the great pool of crystalline water the van stops beside.

“Cenote,” is a Mayan word. Best I can figure it means, “Great, big, monster, giant hole in the middle of the damned jungle full of pretty, sweet-tasting water that you can clearly see all the pretty freshwater fishes in, even though said fishes are about 40 feet underwater.” The Mayans were a concise people. They did, after all, invent Zero.

Our eagerness overshadows our practice as it took the lot of us just shy of an hour to make it from the van into the water. But once in the water…

Our first dive took us deep, through most of our’s first halocline (more on that later) to a place called “Firepit.” Supposedly, this was a place where, during the last ice age, when all the water that is currently filling the cave was busy being locked up as an ice-cap and the cave was dry, some cavemen used this particular place to cook. I could kinda, almost, but not really buy it. There’s some cabonized something scattered around. But the last ice age was about a jillion years ago, and salt water eats everything quickly.

Whatever. Anthropology aside, it was a cool place. Stalctites and stagmites everywhere (“tites” hold tight to the roof, “mites” stand mighty from the floor. That’s the way I remember it. Scott has some method that involves the number of Ts in their name. Sounds contrived to me) and you’ve got to swim between them like a slalom course.

For the second dive we went with purpose to get to a place called the Room of Tears. It is so called as the first divers ever to see this cavern reportedly burst into tears at the sheer beauty of the place. Ever. Really think about that for a moment. They were very likely the first human eyes ever to see the place since it was created some millions of years ago.

We got to go there.

I am glad I didn’t discover it. If I had, it would have been called “The HOLY F@&#!*% S#!^!!!! Room.” That was my reaction anyway. This is not to say the place isn’t stunningly, breath-stealingly beautiful to the point of tears. It is. It has been agreed among the bunch of us that the Room of Tears is one of the most beautiful places any of us has ever been lucky enough to see. I just tend to react to such spectacular places first by cursing to myself, next by just floating in wordless awe, THEN and only then, by starting to tear up. Then I had to catch up with everyone.

After our first two dives of our first time down here Paul and Anna, the two who know the place only smirked at the rest of our excitement at what we’d seen.

“Yeah,” Paul said, “This was OK.”

OK?

Great Googly-Moogly, if this was OK, what’s great?

Guess we’ll find out.