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...

Getting into the swing of things

After a couple weeks into the internship, Marc and I had settled into the Playa life. We got local cell phones, purchased from the convenient store, Oxxo. The cell phone system is pre-pay, you purchase credits as you go. You can buy the credits from any Oxxo. We bought the cheapest phones we could get and were suddenly back in the early 00’s with T3 version of texting. At first we didn’t know how to work the phones; it’s amazing how far technology has come. Marc was transferred to Playacar because they were short on staff. Taxis to Playacar for “locals” (yeah we were now locals and paid the local price everywhere we went) was 40 pesos, which was still a couple dollars. After a couple days paying for a taxi, we decided the most economical way for Marc to get to work was by bicycle. We were working 6 days a week and had one day off to get what we needed to get done. On our day off, we walked to the bicycle shop, which was a couple blocks from Mega. Marc got a brand-new fancy bike with a lock!  The new bike with lock ran us just under 1,500 pesos ($115 or so US). Little did he know at the time was he would eventually be doing the grocery shopping with his new form of transportation! We didn’t have a kitchen, just a hot plate we bought at Wal-Mart. Yup, there’s a Wal-Mart in Mexico. We had found our way around Playa and were really enjoying ourselves. 

Our Fellow Interns

Our “first” real day of the internship was a breeze. We were told which locations we would be placed and started reading the Dressel Divers “bible”, their version of an employee handbook.  We left early that day to get settled into our new room-a step above the room we stayed in the first night. It was a simple room with a double bed, a single bed, bathroom and mini fridge-the ones you have in dorm rooms. Our front door was actually French doors that opened to a small patio with a path that led to the pool. We left the doors open for ventilation. The day was coming to an end and as we were finishing unpacking, the other interns came home from the day’s work. All Dressel interns lived at Hotel Casa Tucan. They stopped by and introduced themselves. Sebastian was from England, Josef from the French Indies in the Caribbean, and Csaba from Slovakia/Hungary. The three of them lived in the room next to us.  Then there was Brent, the southern boy from Athens, Georgia. Sitting at a patio table outside, drinking a beer and eating tuna directly from a can, Brent gave us the lowdown of the internship. He told us about each location we were going to be placed, and the daily routine. There are three Dressel Divers locations in Playa Del Carmen: Playacar, Paraiso, and Barcelo. Iberostar Paraiso was the biggest of the resorts with five resorts combined into one. Sebastian and Josef worked at Barcelo. Csaba and Brent worked at Paraiso.

This is Brent. The crazy American "ladies" man. 

The next morning we showed up at Playacar and were told which location we would be working which was Paraiso with Csaba and Brent. We got in a truck with one of the Mexican workers and were on our way to, what we thought, would be both of our permanent location.  We were introduced to our Base Leader and then handed the “bible” to finish reading (to this day, neither one of us have finished it). That afternoon, we went to the pool to conduct demos and sell.  The demos ended at 5 PM everyday and it was time to close up and catch the bus to go home. When we went back to the dive shop we met the other employees, the instructors and PR people. We all walked together to the “employee” entrance of the resort and got on a bus to go back to Playa. It was an eclectic group with all different backgrounds comprised of Australians, French, English, Colombian, German, Israeli, Hungary, and the good ol’ USA.  The bus ride back to Playa was about 25 min (not the short walk we were told). It dropped everyone off at Mega, the main grocery store in Playa Del Carmen and we all walked our separate ways. The walk from Mega to Casa Tucan was roughly 10 minutes, depending on how fast you walked.

The rest of the week, we arrived at Mega at 6:45 AM to catch the bus to work. We ate breakfast in the Comedor, the cafeteria for the hotel workers, and did the 10-minute walk from the Comedor to the dive shop. We geared up for our “fun” dive of the day and got on the boat. After the dive, we would go to the pool for morning demos, then the hour lunch break at the Comedor, then back for afternoon demos until 5. Let me tell you a little about the Comedor. I thought this was going to be the same type of food the hotel guests would eat. Was I completely wrong! Rice and beans seemed to be the only edible thing served each day. There were a lot of dishes that you weren’t sure what it was. The fruit was from a can (occasionally there was fresh fruit and we’re living in a tropical place!), and the milk was served warm.  Occasionally we would have pizza or hamburgers and the Comedor would be in complete chaos. Seriously! There was no order in the Comedor. No lines. No excuse me. NOTHING! I will have to say the one good thing about the Comedor was the ice cream served at lunch everyday. My diet consisted of rice, beans and ice cream!

Part of our amazing team at Paraiso!

Each person was assigned a closing duty and all duties had to be completed before we left to catch the bus back to Playa. This was going to basically, be our routine for the next six months. Though we had our doubts, we were still optimistic and we had met some really cool people that all had interesting stories.

The interns and friends hanging out at Hotel Casa Tucan.