Not for me, but for my dive buddy – Nancy. Let me explain:
I am probably only going to get a chance to dive once on this trip and that is here in Cancun. The locals won’t swim in the sea due to the sea serpent, but the dive master, Jack, said he had only lost one person in the last year and that it “should be OK”.
It was a beautiful day and the Caribbean was flat as a pancake. Our boat looked sturdy enough so I got excited about getting some pictures. If the wildlife was anything like we had seen snorkelling in Cuba, then the dive would probably be worth it. The dive day itself is stupidly expensive. People joke about the Mexican peso, but the thing is, if you add enough Mexican pesos together it becomes worth just as much or more than the Australian peso.
So I made my way on to the boat and as we left for our 10 minute ride to the dive site. What I’ve come to realise is that in Mexico everything runs on Mexican time. Everything is 10 minutes long or 10 minutes away or 10 minutes ago. The 10 minutes is not a unit of measurement, just an indication that you are talking about time. 10 minutes may be one minute or three hours.
The boat spewed out more black smoke than I had ever seen. I asked the driver if there was something wrong with the boat and he looked at me funny and said “no, why do you ask?”. I told him there seemed to be a lot of smoke coming off the engine and he says “today is OK, yesterday was worse.”
I usually don’t get sea sick but if I smell petrol fumes or exhaust, it will make me instantly sick. I hung my head over the side of the boat and spewed which I am pretty sure set off one of my dive buddies, Nancy, who hung her head over the side and spewed too. This was going to be an awesome day! I wish I was thinking about taking photos at the time – if there is anything I regret about this trip, it is that I didn’t take photos on the boat today.
The diving itself was good. Underwater my sea sickness disappeared and I managed to get a bunch of photos and videos. We only saw fish though – I was hoping to see turtles, sharks or sting rays but maybe next time…
There were also jelly fish – I tried to take a photo of them but they are transparent, so it didn’t work out. I’ve circled it so you can see it, but I would forgive you for thinking that it is just a smudge on the lens.
On the way up on our last dive, my poor spew buddy was stung by one of the jellyfish. They didn’t look big, but as we got on the boat she was screaming in pain. I told her that in Australia, we wee on jelly fish stings to stop the pain. She looked at me funny then asked me to do it – I was out, I had gone during the dive but Jack was on it and gave her a golden shower at the back of the boat. It didn’t help – I’ve always thought it was an urban myth, now I know it is. As we made our way back to land, Nancy spewed again which then set me off again. Poor Nancy got off the boat looking like she’d been in one of those videos you pay extra for on the internet.