Meanwhile back at the Ranch....

the friggin gates were locked...with an actual padlock. For the entire 2 months we have been here there has been a guard, or the gates were tied together with some twine, or they were wide open. Since we had paid in advance, we just let ourselves in. Not today....padlocked closed, with no guard and no way in. Guess our advance payment has been used up...or something. But let me go back just a bit.....

In my last post I wrote, " The air conditioning will be repaired today"...hahahhaaaaaa....good one. We were hopeful, but we forgot we are in the land of manana. When it wasn't fixed the other day, Fernando's reply was " It's Mexico". So yesterday when John hadn't slept in 4 days (so we couldn't dive), and at 3pm Fernando was holding the circuit board to our broken air conditioning....we decided we would just buy a new one. John and I beat feet to Playa Del Carmen to buy one we had seen at Soriana (a Walmart type store ). We had actually come to that conclusion over a delightful curry lunch at the ocean breezy restaurant of the Mezzanine, before we had spoken with Fernando. Best decision we ever made!

So we were well rested and ready to look for new leads in the cave. You can imagine our disappointment when the place was locked up. Now what? I was very insistant that we dive today....anywhere. We headed back to Fernando's, unloaded the rebreathers, scooters and stages and grabbed a plain 'ole set of doubles. Carwash was the new plan A. We entered at the new cenote (Luke's Hope). I can't remember what the new name is. We had an awesome dive!! Jumped over to the Room of Tears and then up to Dreamland. Dreamland is cool because it is really tannic (brown and hazy) so it has an eerie surrealnes to it....plus it is really restrictive....LOVE IT!! Our dive was a bit over an hour, but completely enjoyable. After diving the rebreathers pretty much exclusively this trip, it was a pleasure to breathe off the doubles. We also noticed that we were on top of our BC inflation for buoyancy way earlier than before. By that I mean, the buoyancy on the rebreathers is all drysuit or BC...no breathing induced or lungs for buoyancy....so it was noticeable when diving open circuit again.

Tomorrow we are headed for the Ranch again. Hopefully Fernando was able to contact the owner. If not, we will be grabbing doubles and a stage.....Minatauro, Dos Pisos, Chacmool, Dos Ojos and even Gran Cenote are all possible options for our Plan B. That is after John fixes both my wrist seals which have major leaks...oi.

Less than one week left. We plan to return next Thursday.

Karen and John