I arrived at the beach with coffee in hand at 8:30 promptly to find as perfect of conditions as one could ask for. I was having a young lady from Boston named Amanda join me for a few days of diving. Our scheduled time to meet was 9:00. As time passed I began to wonder if she would show. Amanda had been staying in Cancun while doing her PADI open water course. Once finished, she had planned on checking out some of the other diving here in Playa del Carmen. And was she ever impressed! She got to see sea turtles from a whole new perspective.

After preparing equipment, I had found myself in a conversation in Spanish with the local spearfisherman. These guys are like 4 foot nothin’ tall, and hold their breath going from 40-130 ft. deep, spearing their catch. Today’s harvest included all barracudas and one grouper. They stood there very proud! I must say, I was impressed. You won’t catch me holding my breath and diving down to 140 feet of seawater. They took their leave and disappeared down the 2nd Street. No longer had they left my sight and a blonde young lady appeared walking down the hill towards us and the beach. I knew straight away that was our girl.

Amanda was enthusiastic and was ready to get going. I checked her card and log book and we were off. We headed south towards one of our premiere dive sites, Tortugas Reef. This is an ideal dive site for beginner to advanced because of the way the bottom slopes gently from 45 ft- 90 ft. Once at the site, it was go-time! Amanda put her fins on and I helped her into the equipment. I sat back and watched her buckle and clip everything. This is one way I indirectly assess someone’s “state” before making the dive. Once she was in her equipment, I went back over it to make sure all was ready to make the dive. I donned my equipment then slammed on my fins and was ready to go.

-Three

-Two

-One

Splaaashhh!

We both bobbed right up to the surface and checked our equipment again. I signalled all was a go, and we deflated our jackets. As we drifted towards the bottom, you could already see to condions underwater were going to be as good under as on the surface…Gorgeous! 50ft between us and the bottom and we could easily see everything. As we neard the bottom, I spun around to make sure she was adding air to the jacket to make her weightless. And right on cue, she was filling the jacket and cruising over a lush bottom in pure weightlessness. For the first ten minutes I kept a real close eye on here. Once I felt comfortable with her diving ability, I began to lead over the good sections of the reef. We slid across the current down the slope to about the 70 ft. range. Here is an area packed with nooks, crevices and over hangs, which provide a home to an outstanding number of animals.

I flipped around to check on Amanda’s air. She was smiling happily and signed her pressure to me and we continued diving. We had came across a few turtles and all was going good when up in the distance I saw a school of….something. As we drifted closer I could see it was a massive school Atlantic Spadefish. I motioned for Amanda to get lower to the ground and hold onto a rock so we could watch the massive school of triangular fish. The spadefish swarmed all around between us and a couple other divers. We could see the big groups of divers from the cattle boats up the slope. But the dive guides had their hands full and obviously could not dare be bothered with swimming their group down a bit.

After a couple minutes there we released our hand-hold and continued drifting along the ledge. We ran into a big green moray and a few more turltes before heading up to the safety stop area. We floated along just under the surface off-gassing, then proceed to make our way to the surface. Amanda was amazed! She couldn’t believe how close you could get to the feeding turtles. I bounced into the boat and helped her out of her equipment so she could get in. Once she boarded the boat, I told her sit down….for a lil’ chat. She sat there waiting and wondering what opinions was of her new diving skills and training. I gave her two thumbs and up…” You did real good!” She just grinned real big and said “So we on for tomorrow?”