Diving the Devil's Throat - Monday

Monday morning - we got on the dive boat to head to the Punta Sur Reef System, the southernmost reef off of the Cozumel coast. We planned to dive the Devil's Throat, a world famous cavern/cave system on the Punta Sur Reef. It is in about 120-130 feet of water, and it is arguably one of the nicest dives in Cozumel. You need to have a dive light to go through the caverns... otherwise you are gonna hit your head on something because it is so dark. We forgot our lights, but Giovanni (our divemaster) knew the layout pretty well. The coolest part of the dive is when you are navigating the cavern in the dark, and then all of a sudden you see the opening... a beautiful blue glow of clear water. You come out on a wall that goes down into darkness. It was the nicest Punta Sur dive I can remember. Saw some pretty big barracudas on this dive too. The Barracuda is by far my favorite sight under the water... they are so calm and nonchalant maneuvering through the water, even though with their razor sharp teeth they could most likely shred anything that gets in their way. Every year I get close enough to touch one, but I pull back right when I think it might decide to turn around and cut me in half. This year I have resolved to touch one... Giovanni gave me the ok as long as I don't make any sudden movements. If you don't hear from me again after this week, you'll know I died a man's death.

Dad found a new restaurant inland, which is a big deal because we pretty much know every restaurant there is. It is called HC, and it was some kind of Mexican steakhouse. Man, they had some big fat steaks there! It was pretty good. We like to eat at the local non tourist places... kind of a way to experience the culture here. There is certainly quite a few of the tourist restaurants here... brought about mostly by the cruise ship industry. We kind of roll our eyes at the cruise ship people who are roaming the island... they are usually wearing balloon hats, halfway hammered, and they always eat at the Senor Frogs or Carlos and Charlies or Jimmy Buffet's Margaritaville, so we try to avoid those places.

We learned this year that Cozumel is the most popular cruise ship stop in the Caribbean. It sure has changed a lot from the virtually unknown diving spot that it was years ago. Change here is inevitable, I guess, because now it is acknowleged as one of the top couple of diving destinations in the world.