I managed to get in two dives during our brief stop in Cozumel. This place has some of the best coral and dayglow fish in the Americas. They take us to very good spots but not the best available.
On the first dive I'm a little surprised to see a silent submarine glide past. It's the Atlantis, I think. They take tourists to see the reef and fish.
It rained all day yesterday in Costa Maya. No pictures. Finally saw some sunset pulling out of Cozumel and steaming back to Tampa this evening.
Some of the newer cruise ships displace more tons than the Titanic. They are really unsinkable unless you have a Greek crew watching the soccer games instead of the reefs.
The dive boat takes a funny list when one 200 pound diver switches sides to get water leaving four on my side and two on the other.
The Mexican Divemaster asks how many dives I've done and I tell him probably over 1,000. He's about four feet tall and almost as wide. A few minutes later he catches me trying to put on my wet suit backwards and hoots and threatens to inspect my C-card. He's been diving two years and he tells me he has done about 80 dives. I started diving in 1964 (before air pressure and depth gauges or buoyancy vests).
It's getting harder as I approach 70. My age and extra weight, the strokes and the joint pains are all starting to add up. Strapping on 80 pounds of dive equipment and climbing back on the boat requires a lot more effort.
The first dive at 80 feet is on the Pallancar Caves. We swim in and out of caves formed by towering coral heads for forty minutes. Back on the boat we have a surface interval of an hour and then do a second drift dive along a lovely wall formation for another forty minutes at 40 to 60 feet. I see turtles and beautiful parrot fish and a grouper.
We were definitely bottom fishing on the Norwegian Dawn out of Miami. We got a 60% discount on the five day cruise. The cost per person was less than $50 a day before taxes, port fees, tips and drinks. The thing I liked the least was the ship's library which was only open three hours a day. I've had better food on other cruise lines. Notwithstanding, if I never dive again, this was a good way to end it.
We drive around the Island and park the rented jeep on a dirt road in the jungle. Alfredo steps out of the jungle and offers to be our private guide to the pyramids and ruins. We are alone here with him. He has a clipboard.
Before we start down the trail Alfredo announces that he is of Mayan ancestry and tells us that the Mayans were very advanced and, for example, used the base 20 numbering system. Alfredo begins to teach us base 20, using his clipboard.
They had 20 symbols for numbers. They had a zero and 19 other symbols (dots and lines).
They stacked their numbers. The first row would represent the numbers zero though nineteen.
The next row up used the same symbols but had place values of 20, then 400 then 8,000.
5 (The symbol for five is a horizontal bar)
0 (Zero looks like a toothy smile)
8 (Eight is three dots over a horizontal bar)
Alfredo challenges us to express the current year in base 20.
I write the answer:
4 = 1,600 (four dots)
19 = 380 (four dots over three horizontal bars)
16 = 16 one dot over three horizontal bars)
Satisfied that we are worthy, Alfredo leads us to the ruins. He has a collection of documents that helps to explain what we are seeing and how this sacred place was used to worship Ixchel, the Moon Goddess. All Mayans were expected to make a pilgrimage here once in a lifetime. We wonder what forces drew us here for ours.
Later we stumble upon a remote festival in a tiny town. It is a Cinco de Mayo celebration. There is a bullfight. We are the only tourists. It’s a little like a county fair without the rides, 4-H exhibits and Italian sausage vendors.
Later we stop on a wide, white sand beach in a solitary tent restaurant for margaritas and cheeseburgers.
We pick up two young hitchhikers for the long ride around the island back to town. On the lonely jungle road, a squad of soldiers with sub-machine guns wave us to a stop. They don’t speak English. Our hitchhikers talk to the soldiers and they wave us on. The hitchhikers tell us that four divers were lost yesterday, sucked down the wall by kind of a downdraft flushing action. One was a divemaster who was reported to be last seen chasing three foolish touristas. The soldiers just want to know if we’ve seen any bodies or dive gear washed up on the beach.
The next day we dive the wall. Mrs. Phred wants to stick close to the Mexican divemasters. I tell her if they look like they're getting flushed, we're out of there, rules or no. The towering pillars of coral are like nowhere else.
