Mexico Diving - Playa del Carmen

People always ask, “How was the diving in Mexico?”  Well, it’s not exactly a simple answer.  One of the things I like most about Mexico is there is a wide variety of diving, especially in the area around Playa del Carmen.  You of course have the reefs of the Mesoamerican Barrier Reef off the coast of Playa del Carmen, but you also have a completely different style of diving an hour ferry ride over to the island of Cozumel.  But that (in my opinion) isn’t even the best of the diving that Mexico has to offer – that being the Cenotes.  Let me elaborate a bit on each.

PLAYA del CARMEN

We did the bulk of our diving during our internship on the reefs just outside of Playa del Carmen.  The reefs here are what many refer to as carpet reefs.  This means you don’t have much in the form of walls or spectacular topography, but rather flatter reefs sometimes with gently sloping coral mounds.  To be honest, the coral formations weren’t that exciting.  The health of the coral was so-so, as well as the variety.  A bit surprising, the variety of fish and other swimming life was really nice.  There is quite a bit of schooling fish, green morays and spotted morays nearly every dive, turtles every couple of dives, southern sting rays every few dives, and on pretty rare occasions a spotted eagle ray.

 On our second to last dive we did on the island we were even lucky enough to see four huge bullsharks!  Bull sharks are much more common during the winter months – in fact they have special bull shark dives where they take you to a sandy spot to look just for the sharks.

Most of the diving in and around Playa del Carmen is drift diving.  Some of the sites have ripping currents.  The type of current where you get yourself neutrally buoyant then sit back, relax, and enjoy the ride.  These are fun but you really have no chance of looking for small things, taking your time on pictures, or showing anything to anyone as swimming against the current may not be possible.  There are also a few sites that don’t have any current at all.   There is a wreck on the south edge of Playa del Carmen called the Mama Viña. The wreck is alright, pretty good for Playa standards I guess.  There is usually quite a bit of life around it including stingrays, eels, groupers, and usually a nice school of glassy sweepers on the inside.  It’s possible to penetrate the wreck, but not all that spectacular as the ship isn’t very big.  Nonetheless, it’s still fun to dive the wreck to mix things up a bit.  The visibility is generally pretty good, but not spectacular.  On a good day I’d say you can see 75’-100’, and on a real bad day maybe 35’.  Surface conditions vary, but typically not very smooth.  It was not uncommon for the port master to shut all the diving down due to the waves becoming too large.

So what’s the bottom line of Playa del Carmen diving?  It’s a good place to dive if you are more of an intermediate diver.  The reef itself isn't that spectacular, but there are quite a bit of fish and other wildlife.  Drift diving makes a not incredible dive a little bit better.

Cost of one tank: $60-$70 with equipment rental.

Stay tuned for my thoughts on diving in Cozumel and in the Cenotes!

Bolera

Every couple of weeks, a group of us decided to do something different and go bowling! Yes, there’s a bowling alley in Mexico! We took a collective to Centro Maya where the bowling alley was located. The setup is the same as in the States. We rented our shoes, picked out our ball and ordered a beer and burger from the concession stand. By the way, the burger was delish and the beer was huge and cold! We all divided into teams and started the game. Let me first say, there are people from all over the world bowling with us and that in itself was a sight to see. Some had never been bowling before and weren’t sure how to do it and my gosh it was hilarious. Marc dominated the game with the UK Mark coming in a close second. Our good friend Adi, from Israel, had no idea how to bowl and made the loudest bang when he threw the ball down the lane. 

The ride home was just as fun as bowling. We all piled in an old collectivo with a few locals. Very good times!

Hurricane Ernesto

So it’s been a while since we’ve last posted on here. Our apologies. We’ve been really busy and diving a TON but our new year’s resolution is to put a little more effort towards the blog so here’s a toast to a new year and more posts!

We were in the middle of hurricane season when Hurricane Ernesto decided to creep up on us. Projecting to be a category 2 hurricane coming straight for Playa, we did the best to protect the dive shop from any major damage. The waves were getting bigger and stronger and the clouds were rolling in. We had all planned for a hurricane party and were ready for Ernesto’s debut. Marc and I were both working at Paraiso that day and were doing our daily demos in the pool. There was no diving because of the waves so that meant pool demos ALL DAY (can you hear the joy in my voice). When we finally came back from our demo, we noticed everyone except our base leader and his wife had gone home. No one had decided to come get us and tell us we could leave. Our ride had left so we were going to catch a ride home with our base leader. The only problem was we had to wait for our big boss to come. He soon came and saw that this might be much worse than he projected so we needed to move the kayaks and catamarans more up the beach, tape up the windows and move everything to higher ground. By the time we finally got out, it was dark and we were starving.

The boys waiting for Ernesto!

That evening, everyone from work had planned to meet at The Roof Bar, our local hangout. We started the hurricane party there and proceeded to bar hop the rest of the night. Hurricane Ernesto’s path had changed since we left work and now was going to hit a little further south of Playa. After the bars closed, Marc and I decided to walk home on the beach and check out the waves. As we were walking, the rain started coming. By the time we got to our street, it was pouring rain and we were drenched. The streets were completely empty and all you could hear was the sound of the rain coming down. We walked slowly home and took in every bit of it.

The aftermath of Ernesto wasn’t nearly as bad as projected. A tropical storm per say. Diving was bad for the next couple of days but that’s pretty much it. 

Ernesto's aftermath...