Diving on Cozumel

Finally, after almost a week of waiting for being healthy (enough) for my dive in the Caribbean Sea 🌊 I could join Chris and his girlfriend Frida (from Mexico) for two pretty exciting dives. The day coincided with my birthday. So - in a way - the dives were a gift to myself, and it was a pretty good one 😊
The area around Cozumel belongs to the second biggest reef in the world - right after the Great Barrier Reef 🪸 in Australia. I was excited to see what it had in store for me.

We met in front of the dive shop in the morning at 8 am. After trying the wetsuit and fins on, César (the owner of the dive shop) drove us to the harbour where his cousin Manolo already waited for us in the boat. 🛥️ It was quite rainy that morning and I hoped that the sky would clear up so that we would have better visibility under water - a wish that was fulfilled later in the day. ☺️
We picked up a few more divers (in total we were 7 divers on that day) at another jetty before we went to the “Palancar Gardens” - the first of two dive sites for that day.
Only 5 min. into the dive there was already my highlight of the day - we saw a big white-spotted eagle ray majestically gliding through the ocean. Afterwards we saw a turtle 🐢 and countless other fish 🐠 hiding in or swimming at the impressively large and abundant coral 🪸 Later in the dive we swam through some narrow arches of the reef - just for fun. 😊
Then we had to go back to the surface. We went 25 meters deep and stayed for approximately 50 min. underwater in the first dive. This was already a pretty good start into the day. 👍
After lunch on the boat, we went to the “San Clemente Reef” for our second dive. This dive was not so deep (only 15 meters) but we spent a lot of time down there - 64 min. bottom time. This was the longest I had ever been diving. And again, the was a lot to see: for example we saw a moray eel, a sting ray and even an octopus 🐙 It was perfectly disguised as a rock. Only sometimes you could see it moving just a little bit. If César hadn’t grabbed me by my arm and pointed it out I would have probably missed it. 😅
In the second part of this dive we simply let the mild currents take us on a sight-seeing tour along the reef - a truly nice and relaxing experience.
After the diving, we sat for approximately 20 min. on the roof of the boat and enjoyed the sunshine ☀️ (meanwhile the sky had cleared and it was very warm).
As soon as we docked in the harbour,
I bought some beers 🍻 in a local shop to celebrate my birthday with our small group: Daniel (a diver from Canada), Chris, Frida, César and me. We started to drink already in the car since we were all quite thirsty. 😂
Back at the dive shop we went for another round of beers to the restaurant “Casa Cuzamil” which was just across the street. Chris, Frida and I had also a delicious 😋 blackfish for lunch there together. After lunch we all felt how tired we were from diving. So we went back to our hostels respectively hotels.
In my hostel I was warmly greeted by Irene (from the Netherlands). She had made a reservation for 4 persons for dinner at an Italian restaurant and I was invited. ☺️
But first I needed some rest. So, I went to sleep for some hours.
The reservation was for 7pm. Irene, Katja (from Germany), Laura (from the UK) and I had a very nice table in the restaurant “K'ooben Laab” and spent a great time with good food and wine as well as interesting conversations. 😊

I could not have asked for a better way to spend the evening as well as the day. My 42rd birthday will probably be one that stays in my memory for a long time. 🥳Read more