Shannon, Jakob (Prorec) and I (JC) decided to do one our monthly deco dive in Cenote Zapote, Puerto Morelos, a little further than we’re used to and get to know a little better some of the Cenotes we don’t get to dive so often.
We take a stage tank in matter of gas volumes and just for practice but we will be diving air to a maximum depth of 45m and a “deco gas” EAN30 just to practice the gas switch procedure and a longer ascent but of course we could have done it way more efficiently. We were just on the budget those days and we had all the time in the world so why not?
As we descend, the cave gets smaller and smaller and it feels that we are diving in a funnel.
Once we reach the smallest part of the cave, it opens at about 30m depth on a massive room highly decorated with mineral bells in a hydrogen sulfide layer.
We cross that layer and get to our maximum depth.
The cave keeps going down to about 60m or a bit deeper, where a giant sloth skeleton is laying but we don’t get to that par as we didn’t plan to go down there. Remember, plan the dive, dive the plan.
While we swim around that massive depression we admire that beautiful bell graveyard covered with white silt in this spooky atmosphere. Those bells are massive, I’m glad I wasn’t down there when they collapsed and hit the ground, can’t event think of the mess it made down there.
As I was leading we turned around the Cenote, back and forth all along the walls admiring all the different shaped bells and their sweet little details from above and under.
When we hit our bottom time limit, we started our ascent back into the funnel. Not a great place to look at each other, face to face in diamond position while ascending on that tight cave but the more we ascend, the more comfortable it gets. It’s good practice to not move our fins too much and keep the awareness of our environment.
The deco went smoothly, our last stop at 3m as there are no waves at all so it was easy.
Fun easy little dive, we’re happy to have driven this long way, even for this tiny dive, as long as we don’t do it every week hehe.
Good day!
JC.
