Muchachos cenote closed..."es occupado"

Our task yesterday was to repair the ladder and find wood "madera" to rebuild the deck at the cenote. Sounds easy enough, but our main translator Fernando had escaped to Cancun so were left to figure it out for ourselves. The ladder was easy enough...we retrieved it from the cenote and brought it back to Fernando's so John could add more rungs. Then we had to figure out where to get wood. After much hand wringing on my part, because I am the one who has to talk, we found a carpenter shop and we ordered the wood. You can't just have any wood, John wanted some that would hold out for a few years.....not pine or "pino" and zapote is too hard to nail. It will be here on Tuesday and they are going to cut it to our specifications....whew that was a load off. We will rebuild the deck next week. John fixed the ladder and we replaced it in the cenote. My job was easy, since a McGyver type I am not, ,my part was to follow directions while McGyver John went to work.

That was yesterday, today we set up the rebreathers for our first easy dive in Centoe Camillo. You guesse it...foiled again. We had paid for entry, but when we got back to the cenote there were already cars ..and we knew they weren't diving cars. I may have neglected to mention that near the cenote there were cardboard boxes with targets.....and holes in them. We found out they are training private security guards out at the ranch. So when we arrived today to dive....we were met with some polite introductions followed by, "cenote es occupado"....after that statement a few shots were heard and we understood! So it is "occupado" until Monday when we can dive again.

Off to Gran Centoe we went. We did a really long rebreather dive past the Kolimba T. Rebreathers are different. I won't lie, for the first hour I hated it and obscenities were flying...luckily no one can hear...that much. The thing breathed like crap and your buoyancy is all wacked because you can't control it with your breath. After that I settled down and thouroughly enjoyed the time. John had no issues and was doing fine. You swim alot slower because the thing has more drag but you aren't worried about running out of air (have to keep the head games under control though). We only used like 900 psi out of a stage. For those non-diving folks reading this, that is a really small amount of gas compared to open circuit. It is hard to believe you can dive a single stage for something like 7 hours on the rebreather.

We met another rebreather guy from Germany I think, he was really funny. He and his wife were diving in Camillo last November when we were there and he remembered us. He has a really small rebreather and I think he was trying really hard not to make fun of our tank like ones. But we had a good time with him and had a few laughs. He asked me about the She-P because his wife hasn't made the switch yet....so that was fun talking about too. His wife was at the beach due to sinus squeeze, so she wasn't diving. The She-P is a fabulous invention for women who wear drysuits and do long dives. The previous alternative was to use diapers....bleck. Never got into that, I would just dehydrate myself so I didn't have to go....which is bad news, or freeze while diving a wetsuit. The She-P is wonderous. Thanks to Heleen and Sander from the Netherlands for inventing it!!

Of course, I left the camera in truck so no pictures to show.

Who knows were we will dive tomorrow...maybe Chac Mool?
Miss everyone.

Karen and John