Global Underwater Explorer Conference

The Global Underwater Explorers conference was last weekend in Mexico. We abandoned our room for the weekend to check into the Hotel Catalonia Tulum, where the conference was being held. We had never stayed in an "all-inclusive" before and I have to say, it wasn't that bad. Others had commented that the Catalonia is a smaller property than some of the others in the area and that may make a difference. Anyway, it was a nice change of scenery for a few days....

The conference had some informative and interesting presentations. A few of my favorites were: Cenotes in Maya Ideology by Dominique Rissolo; Researching Shipwrecks/Locating and Surveying using Sidescan and ROV's by Richard Lundgren: Guadalcanal by Liam Allen; Remote Sensing and GIS by Sam Meacham and Why Sidemount by Steve Bogaertes. There were others that were equally interesting but these were my favorites.

There was alot of social time during the weekend and that was fun too. As a side note, I won one of the silent auctions so I now have a really nice Silentplanet heated vest....yeahh for me! Can't wait to try it at the lake over the holidays with my dry gloves that I haven't had a chance to try yet either,

The conference ended on Sunday at Chikin Ha with a BBQ, and some workshops. I had never been to Chikin Ha cenote and I will have to go back to dive. Since I had signed up for some workshops, John and I decided not to dive. Also, the fact that we closed the Pub in Puerto the night before may have had something to do with that. In signing up for the line workshop, you might scratch your head...since I already run line. But I wanted a refresher, which turned out geat since I was the only one signed up and John and I got to spend about 30 minutes with Christophe Le Malliot asking him whatever we wanted. Chris is a GUE instructor and a avid cave exlporer. It was well worth it. The other workshop was an intro to survey conducted by Fred Devos, another GUE instructor and cave exlporer. He always does a great job and we learn something new from him everytime we talk. I just need to talk John into taking the 5 day class...or just take it on my own.

The workshop ended as we were about to lose daylight...and for the last 15 minutes of the class we were dodging bats and I am not kidding. They were flying around right through us. Fred finally agreed that the mosquitos would start coming out and we may get swarmed before we could get back to our cars....so the day ended. lots of folks were still diving, but we said our goodbye's and beat feet.

We headed back to Tulum and had a nice hamburgesa de res right in front of our room, which was nice because John and I were both really tired and just wanted to get some sleep.

Until tomorrow....here are some more pictures of Chickin Ha. There are more than 1 cenote in the Chickin Ha area, however, I don't remember which one is which....but they are all nice. And an altar at the back of one of the cenote areas.