Saturday, April 19, 2008

Main Squeeze


It’s a hard life we divers lead sometimes. This morning was particularly a struggle for me.

At about 7:00 the sound of the lapping sea spilled from my dreams into my waking consciousness. Somehow, in the back of my sleep-addled mind I knew the alarm was going to go off soon, but that didn’t matter. I smiled as the sound I was hearing and the sweet, light smell blowing through the room refined themselves together to remind me where I was. It was the sound of clear blue water lighting on soft white sand and the smell of the islands blowing into Mexico.

The lot of us met for a breakfast of scrambled huevos rancheros, spiced black beans, fresh tortilla, watermelon, and fresh pineapple juice in the dining room of our main suite.

Yes, a hard life we divers lead.

Breakfast done, though, we had to hunker. There was a bit of work ahead of us. As I’ve mentioned before, for cave diving there is lots and lots of heavy gear and before we got to do any of the day's diving, we would have to move said heavy gear from the locker room into the van to the dive site. So we thought.

Roger already did it. The van was packed, all we had to do was pick a seat and get in.

Not me, Roger. Our driver, Roger. The man is the Scuba Fairy. Every time I turn around, my gear is not only already set up, but set up precisely where I would have put it. Coming up from our first dive of the day, we'd found that Roger had already humped fresh tanks for all of us down the longish flight of stairs to the entry site. I sort of wonder if I wish during mid-dive that I had more air, whether Roger wouldn't just show up around the next turn wearing only a snorkel and some loud swim-trunks with full tanks.

The drive to Taj Mahal Cenote was… bumpy. The land these sinkholes populate are owned by family collectives called ejidos and are not the most developed corners of the planet. Lizards skittered out of the van’s way as we made our slow progress over great, rocky swells in the dirt road through the jungle. Roger pulled the van so that the back doors faced a sketchy looking, steep set of stairs cut straight into the limestone.

Curious as to just what we had gotten ourselves into, I followed the stairs down and found myself on the set of an Indiana Jones movie. Or possibly a documentary about bats or geology or ecology or something. My efforts as a photographer are lamentable in capturing the karma of the place. Between the ancient formations, the mysteriously deep shadows, and the reflected light from the pristine water it is easy to see how the Maya found the cenotes to be holy places. Such mystical serenity.

Our first dive we swam towards the Juma River. The distance between the underground Juma River and the Taj Mahal Cenote was incredibly tight and not for the claustrophobic. When I say, “incredibly tight and not for the claustrophobic” I mean, “One could easily get a bunch of friends together and drive the entire Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade through these tunnels and not worry about even putting the slightest knick in Snoopy.” Without any exaggeration, the Holland Tunnel is a covered bridge in the middle of Vermont compared to the size of these caves.

The second dive was a little more tricksy.

Halo: Greek for “salt.” Cline: derivative of Kevin Kline. He, being terribly divisive on good acting, has become synonymous with “place where two things separate.” Salt water, since it is full of salt, is a little heavier than fresh water. The added weight settles itself to the bottom of this or that place while the fresh water sits on top. Where the two meet is called a Halocline. It’s like a parfait, but saltier.

Haloclines are tricky bastards. They barely look like anything at all. Only if you're paying attention and look at it from an angle does it look vaguely like a shimmer of water already underwater. But, as you pass through it the whole world goes scrambled. You can tell that the water is gin clear, but it seems you have a lahsa-apso in each of your contacts, so you can’t focus on anything.

“There is a little bit of a tight area that is all halocline before we get to the Chinese Garden,” warned Victor, a local cave instructor and friend of Paul's who is joining us for a few days.

It was an understatement.

It was a tunnel that I and my tanks just barely fit through together. As each diver in front of me swam straight into the halocline, it was as though they had swum into an alternate dimension. It was a sea of vaseline. Sometimes I could make out fins a few inches in front of me. Mostly I couldn't. More than once was the introduction made, "Rock, meet head. Head, meet rock."

Then it stopped.

Viz opened up. Instead of a tunnel that made you feel like toothpaste, there was another of those vast hangers full of so many cave decorations as to stun you into absolute reverence. A pillar from the ceiling to the floor, 40 feet below, must be 15 feet around. Drip and drop by drip and drop that great formation created itself over the course of millions of years. There is one stalactite (tight from the ceiling) hanging down at least twenty feet through the water. And among those singular formations there are countless thousands of “soda straws,” stalactites uniformly thin as straws and impossibly long.

It's a hard life we divers lead sometimes, and as I exchanged glances with the cats down here with me I could see that, just then, we were all comfortable bearing the strain.


Greetings from Mexico


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.


Friday, April 18, 2008

Follow Gaelin Rosenwaks' expedition

The guest speaker at our June Happy Hour will be explorer and marine scientist Gaelin Rosenwaks. Gaelin is currently on an expedition in the Bering Sea, studying the effects of climate change on the Bering Sea ecosystem. If you'd like to follow her adventures on the Bering Sea Ice Expedition, log onto her blog.

And be sure to come to the June happy hour to meet Gaelin and hear about her expedition!

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