The Local Experience

I am all in favour of investigating the Local Experience when living in a place different from your own culture. That doesn't mean finding yourself in a Turkish prison just because you are in Turkey, but when I visit a culture that has cuisines notably different than "home" I want to try all kinds of new foods.

There is something to be said about a local place that is patronized by locals. In my family we used to say that if you go to an ethnic restaurant and it is filled with people of that ethnicity, it MUST be a good place. Well, here in Cozumel there is a place in the central Plaza called Raspados. The Plaza is very popular during the day for tourists and Raspados makes a killing selling ice cream (three words: Location, Location, Location.)

But on Sunday nights the cruise ships are gone and the locals all come out for a night of fresh air, music, and... apparently... whatever Raspados sells. For four years I've watched as a l-o-n-g line of people, 98% locals, would wait patiently at Raspados. I always thought it was for ice cream. But last week I discovered it was for something entirely different: styrofoam cups full of boiled corn! In the local tongue it is called "esquites" and it originates from central Mexico.

Tonight, I decided this was a "must do, must try" local experience. There were 40 people in front of me in line. As I slowly crept forward, the line never got shorter... more people always queued up. By the time I got to the front, 35 minutes had passed. These were some of the most patient people I'd ever stood in a queue with. (Pardon the bad grammar.) Anticipation built with every step -- as did the wonderful aroma of the fresh corn.

I can tell you the ingredients that went into this cup (in this order): corn, mayonnaise, sour cream, salt, picante seasoning, lime juice. I can tell you the cost: 14 pesos (roughly US $1.28) But I cannot describe for you the rainbow of flavours that danced on my tongue with the first bite! Somehow the sour cream and lime juice just WORKED together to make this incredible flavour that enhanced the corn in such an amazing way.

Esquites at Raspados: two thumbs up, and now on Alex's List of "Things You Must Do When You Visit Cozumel"

Dirty Lens and other Lessons Learned

One of the best ways to learn new things is to watch other people. During the cave tour week I was in the company of six other highly experienced scuba divers, five of which were open water Instructors! That's a humbling experience. But the one lesson I wish I'd learned was: Ear Drops. Some of the divers were religiously flushing their ears immediately after each cenote dive. Admittedly, the water in some cenotes doesn't look too good, but I'd never gotten an ear infection from cave diving before.... until now.

On Wednesday, a good five days after my last cave dive, I came down with a really BAD ear infection, the kind that is so painful you can't sleep at night. Fortunately some scuba friends recommended "Oto Eni" a strong antibiotic solution that would be prescription (and very expensive) in the U.S. It worked like a charm and four days later I am almost 100%. Even did three dives yesterday in salt water with no problem ear clearing and no pain. Lesson Learned: use ear drops after fresh water dives. And be careful of Cenote Calimba!! I am pretty sure that's where the bad water is.

Dirty Video Lenses

For two months now I've been using a Light & Motion Stingray II underwater video system both in the ocean and in caves. The system used to belong to John Mildenberg, friend of Andrew whom I'd mentioned before. John passed away last summer and his wife Maya, who came down last October with Andrew to Cozumel, sold me the kit. It's been a lot of fun to learn a new form of photography and to have a new "toy" to play with underwater.

The results have been pretty good, although I know that I am only beginning this learning curve towards "movie quality" composition. For now, it is a great way to document the places I'd been in caves and to capture moments in open water like "let's see how close I can get to this shark" and "what's that octopus eating?" and "look at this beautiful drum fish swimming out in the open at nighttime." The idea behind video is to tell a story in so many minutes but so far I am missing the script. Along the way I'm getting a lot of nice scenes though!

On yesterday's first dive we went to Palancar Bricks. Vis was less than average, maybe 60-80 feet. The view through the camera lens was even worse!! It looked like 10-12 feet. Ever since I'd gotten the video it seemed like something was not right with the optics but I'd put it off to lens flare. When I got home, I took a good hard look at my optics to discover that the flat port on the housing was filthy. You know how windows made of two sheets of thin glass will get foggy on the inside? That's exactly how this looked. Question was, how to open the flat port?

Manufacturers of dive gear are a strange bunch. They have EXCELLENT marketing staff and SUCKY technical writers. It's not just one brand, it is ALL of them. They write their manuals as if their only customers were 10 years old. They have no belief that any of us could be mechanically inclined enough to perform our own service work. I'd read the entire Light & Motion booklet and was disappointed many times over that there were lots of questions left unanswered. What to do with the flat port was yet another to add to the list. I got frustrated. I got angry. I got creative. I poked and prodded the inside O-rings with sharp objects in ways people say you shouldn't... and I persevered! Now my optics are crystal clear for the first time ever, and I'm seeing the world in a different way! What I thought was lens flare was in fact all the filth inside my optics.

Lesson learned: Don't assume equipment is 100% just because it works. Learn about it and understand it like a techie; don't be afraid to poke around.

Suunto Cobra Resets

Scuba diving is FUN. Diving to 130 feet doesn't scare me. Seeing sharks twice my size makes me want to get closer to investigate, not run away. Going 3,000 feet into a cave where there is only one exit (3,000 feet behind me) doesn't make me worried, it only makes me want to see what's beyond the next bend. Having my dive computer reset on me... that's a PROBLEM that doesn't get ignored.

On Tuesday, my Suunto Cobra (which I got of eBay and I've used for six years and three batteries) ran flawlessly on the morning dive. Just before the 2nd dive I'm setting up the Nitrox and as soon as I do, it resets!! No nitrox, no time-of-day, no memory of the last dive, nothing. So I set Nitrox again. It resets AGAIN. Scary. On the 3rd go, it sticks and I decide to dive anyway, not having an alternative like my spare computer. The manufacturer(s) and dive organizations say when you get erratic computer behaviour, you should cancel your dive.

Those of you who know me know I'm not big on taking unwarranted risks. On this dive we were going to be 50 ft maximum (40 ft average) and I had a 36% Nitrox tank. Even at worst case that gave me over an hour of bottom time. Without a computer, there's no real risk on this profile. What should I worried about? If the dive computer is failing because it was flooding (I'd replaced the HP hose seal the day before) then diving with it again would only make it worse.

Off we went. It worked great for almost the entire dive, and then coming out of the water right at the end, it resets while I'm checking the bottom time and temperature. Weird!! Back at home, I start surfing the internet for probable causes. Google: "suunto cobra resetting" and some interesting results pop up. Turns out that Lithium coin cell batteries are not always consistent and although you can have a "good" battery indicator on the computer, it may be at the end of its service life. This battery I'd been using for about two years (150 dives?) never registered the full 4 bars on battery test - it always registered three. I guess that was a warning sign in and of itself. But... 150 dives? I never worried about it. However some posts were saying the battery should be replaced after 100 dives or two years... oops.

That night I replaced the battery with a fresh new Energizer CR2450. The old battery was a mystery brand I picked up at a local camera store on Cozumel. Now I'm reading 4 bars again and the computer has worked perfectly for yesterday's three dives. I hope anyone who has come across this website because of a similar problem will take heart: If your dive computer is resetting and the battery is a year old or older, try replacing it with a name-brand battery. But do so only if you feel competent to keep all the seals clean.

Lesson Learned: Use only name-brand batteries. Change it after 200 dives, 200 hours or 2 years.

DiveRite H10 HID canister light

Dive Rite has been around a while and they make a wide range of products specially for the technical diving market. It is no surprise that among cave divers, you see their stuff all over the place. Most specifically I use their Transpac harness, Rec Wing bladder and H10 canister light.

On this particular dive trip (80 days in Cozumel, 8 days in Akumal) I've had more equipment problems than I care to remember. But the most annoying has been the H10 canister light. As you can guess the light is the heart of a cave diver's arsenal and although we carry backups, these powerful HID lights are extremely important towards our enjoyment of cave diving. When they quit working, we have a bad day.

I purchased my H10 about 2-1/2 years ago. It has been with me over 100 dives though probably closer to 150. Dive Rite makes good products but I feel they don't always use the best materials; case in point is this light. I have what is apparently known as the "infamous orange cord" a water-proof 2 wire cable that links the battery to the light head. In incidents barely a week apart, the wires BROKE inside the plastic in two places: near the canister and near the light head. Fixing this in the field involved extremely delicate surgery with a lot of tools and several hours' labour. I am enormously thankful I brought those tools with me, one of which was a soldering iron! The cable is now six inches shorter and it will be sent back to Dive Rite to be replaced at the end of this trip. Considering that this cord is notorious to fail, and that a cave diver's light is considered SAFETY equipment, I am both surprised and annoyed that Dive Rite did not post a recall or even an advisory on this issue.

Lesson Learned: If you own any Dive Rite canister light with an orange cord, GET IT REPLACED. NOW.

Nohoch nah Chich - The Giant Birdcage

Here I am .... last day and I survived, much to the relief of my family and at least one of my web clients who knew I was going on this trip.

Nohoch nah Chich as it is known in Mayan means "giant birdcage" which I am guessing is because many of the cascading rooms of floor-to-ceiling stalactites give the diver a feeling of being inside a giant birdcage. My last trip was with Glenn and we did a different side passage but not as far a penetration. The most bizzare stuff I'd ever seen in a cave was there, and of course my camera strobes quit after four pictures so I have nothing to show. Well, we didn't go down that same passage today so I still have nothing to show. I've vowed to go out again with Glenn in a few weeks and dive it until we find it.

But today we did go a very fun circuit for a 114 minute dive, up one side passage past a tiny cenote (large enough for two divers) and then further along to an air bell where we made the turn at 60 minutes (it was either turned at 3rds or 60 minutes this time). Maybe a penetration of about 2,500 feet with 4,000+ feet covered overall. Max depth was a screaming impressive 23 feet, and I think average depth was all of about 12 feet. This cave system is none too deep!

Cave diver's joke:
Q: Why do cave divers carry snorkels?
A: To slurp up that extra air stuck to the cave ceiling.
(technical note: cave divers do NOT carry snorkels! I don't think I've even carried a snorkel for an open water dive unless it was required for a PADI class.)

I took the video camera this time, figuring this may be the only time I will take video in this cave. Unfortunately two of the best shots I lined up to do I had brain farts and apparently had the camera in "standby" mode instead of record mode. I am too tired to review the tape just now but I know the first half of the dive should come out pretty nice. A lot of formations show very well when presented in 3-d motion, I think it is the only way to truly show their depth and shape.

However, I feel this cave looks better in still photography as many of the formations and rooms are so big that video perspective just gets lost. The main passage was so big that even with my powerful 10w HID set to the tightest spotlight, I still couldn't see the far wall. Visibility was a factor, though; it was a bit lower here than in other caves, even though it was entirely fresh water. Next time I will take the DSLR, armed with two big honkin' Ikelite 400's. I'll need 'em!!

Tomorrow it is home (or temporary home) back to Cozumel. I'm looking forward to diving in open water again, even though I will have to do only night dives for a while until my eyes readjust to the light.

Truthfully, as I look back on the past week, I have to say I love cave diving even more than I did before the trip. The tours have provided me with some new challenges, including the problems associated with diving with large groups. And diving with one person I don't particularly like. I am extremely thankful that all of our dives were uneventful -- no panics, no equipment problems, no lost or misplaced folks, minimal confusion with communications and no broken gear. Just fond memories of some great caves.

Will I do it again next year? Maybe.....

Calimba to Bosh Chen

Just a short entry today because tomorrow is the last dive, a long one in the wonderful world of Nohoch Nah Chih. But I'm getting ahead of the story....

Today our group of six (lost the seventh to exhaustion, I think) visited Calimba (or Kalimba) for two dives. I took the video camera on the first dive after assurances that there would be enough room to maneuver. The selling point was being told by Connie "you'll regret not bringing it." She was right.

For the first dive we took the mainline towards the Paso de Lagarto line until we reached it. Then two quick jumps (one of which was a snap-and-gap) and off we went towards cenote Bosh Chen. Boy! Some of those passages were tight. Considering I was pushing the video camera the whole way I think I did really well with the restrictions. We reached the 4th jump but then confusion ensued: Connie was trying to establish with the rest of the team whether or not anyone had reached 3rds; one diver tried to state "turn around" as a question and that got interpreted as "yes, it's time to turn around" so turn around we did. I still had 350 psi before my turn-around, I could easily have made it to Bosh Chen.... but there's always next time. We did miss some of the larger and more decorated rooms which were just ahead.

The second dive was after lunch, and this time it was a right turn on the Lagarto line, with no further jumps afterwards. I didn't take the video this time. Yow! Right after the jump onto Lagarto we were doing sandwiches, vertical ascents and descents, really tight squeezes through delicate stalactites. Remember me metioning a rhino in a china shop? Ditto for today! Dive was turned (predictably) at about 40 minutes, for a total dive time of around 82 minutes.

Talk about tight... This cave emphasizes the "O" in Overhead Environment.

Wait until you see the video!!!

Labna Ha

If I have my story right (and mind you, I may not be 100% accurate) a small group of entrepreneurial foreigners bought 124 acres of scrub land in the middle of the Riviera Maya... with the purpose of discovering, exploring and exploiting for tourist trade the caves known to be in the region.

One of many discoveries was the underwater cave system now known as Labna Ha. It is very exclusive; you can only dive there with an owner or a highly trusted representative. There is no underwater photography permitted. Photography above water is permitted but only without a tripod. And I've heard that you may be charged as much as US$150 for one cave dive. The owners now boast that the property was recently appraised at $7 million. With the growing popularity of cave diving and other forms of tourism in this region, I think they were very smart to do what they did.

Today we split into two groups of four; those who'd been to Labna Ha previously went with Pep, one of the owners, to visit side passages off the main line. I was in the group led by Connie as we would do a long penetration along the main line only. We made it 62 minutes into the dive (approximately 3000' or so) before one of the team called on thirds. I was still about twenty minutes from calling thirds myself but that's okay. We ended with 120 minutes total dive time according to my watch -- that's a LONG dive.

Labna Ha is not a big cave in terms of cross-sectional area and there are many tight restrictions where I felt like a rhinoceros trying to walk gingerly through a china shop. I will proudly say that I hardly touched a thing; without a camera I could dedicate all my awareness to maintaining perfect trim. Unfortunately I witnessed periodic damage being done by others on the team (I'm sure I wasn't 100% perfect either) as fins brushed against those delicate formations. Oh well. I have always accepted that it was one of the sad truths about this sport. You cannot make a cave better by diving in it, only worse.

After the dive we were treated to a lunch of barbecue chicken and chorizo, Mayan style. Afterwards we shot down a zip line to a dry cave to tour there. The owners lit it very nicely with coloured lights. Even though we were not allowed tripods, I would set the camera down on the wood walkway to get the 2-3 second exposures needed in that amount of light. The results were spectacular. The photo above is one of the best; be sure to click on it to see it in full size. I uploaded the original JPEG for you to enjoy.

Labna Ha was talked up all week as one of the best caves to visit. Although I saw some really awesome formations, it would not be my #1 choice for a return dive. Not really disappointed, just not as impressed as the hype led me to believe. IMHO it isn't even as fun as Sac Aktun. And in Sac Aktun we're allowed all the photography we can manage!

Mastodon Bones

Welcome back to my journey through the Riviera Maya cave systems. Today was a l-o-n-g trip to Cenote Tux (or Tush) Kubaxa (pronounced toosh ku-boh-sha). Getting to the site was the biggest challenge as the entrance was about three painful, rocky, jarring, untamed miles through the jungle. We were fortunate, actually, as the road didn't exist until recently and the only way previous to this "road" was by horseback. Nonetheless, my back is still very sore from the trip. I'm badly in need of a chiropractor to un-jam what was jammed and I'm concerned how this may affect the rest of the trip.

But being underwater in scuba gear is a near-weightless experience and lets me forget that I have to take the same road to get back out... at least for the 90 minutes of the dive.

I have to step back a moment and describe the group. Connie LoRe is the organizer and host; she does these week-long tours several times a year mostly in wintertime. Her normal job is a manager of the well known cave dive site Ginnie Springs in central Florida. There are two couples, one from Ohio and the other from New York, I think. I'm here by myself and so is Sandra, my cave partner for the week, shown in the picture above. She's almost two decades older than I am and probably in much better shape than me. For this dive I loaned her my video system while I took my DSLR for the first time this trip. This is also the first dive I took my recently acquired Ikelite 400 strobe into a cave.

Now I need to step back yet again, this time to talk about strobes. Two years ago I was shooting with a Canon S1 IS using its built-in strobe. In darkness it had an effective lighting distance of about two feet... but in daylight the camera itself did a wonderful job. We still have it and sometimes use it. Last year, Andrew gave me his old DSLR set-up on long-term loan which I am still using. The strobes on this system are Sea&Sea YS-90's with an output power of about 67 watt-seconds. Most underwater strobes are in the power range of about 50-100 watt-seconds. The biggest ones currently made are roughly 150 watt-seconds and they're pretty big size-wise. But the king of commercially made underwater strobes is (or at least was... they're no longer manufactured) the Ikelite 400 which can put out an amazing 400 watt-seconds of power in one burst. In a cave where there is absolutely no natural light, you need this kind of power to get any sense of depth. Last year when I used two YS-90's the result was... nice... but wanting. Today, using one YS-90 on the left and one Ikelite 400 on the right, I got really GOOD results. Leaning towards the kind of results I have been looking for in underwater cave photography. I still need to fine tune my camera settings, fix my dome port (I scratched the inside of it last month trying a mutant lens set-up) and connect the sync cord directly to the strobe instead of trying to use slave mode. The reason for the latter is very technical and I'll skip it for now.

And of course, why have one Ikelite 400 when you could use two! Yes, I have two of them but they weigh so much (8 lbs each) that I haven't bothered to set up the camera rig with both at the same time. But *sigh* I am dreaming of the thought of 800 screaming watts for wide angle cave photography. Maybe the end of this week. We'll see.

Carrying a camera (still or video) with you on a dive is troublesome. It throws off your balance, it causes a LOT of drag, it adds a heavy amount of task loading (non-tech diver folks can simply read that as "stress") and in a cave environment it is a bulky part of your profile that you have to push... ever so gently, for the sake of the cave and the camera... through every tight passage you will face in the cave. I always burn a lot more air when I have a camera; there's no way to relax on a dive when carrying one. But when everything works: when the camera doesn't leak, when the batteries are all charged, when the camera itself doesn't keep resetting on me (another story for another day), and all the settings like aperture, shutter speed, ISO, sync rate, strobe angle, angle of reflection, subject distance.... you get the idea.... When all of that is working, the photos are wonderful memories of where I've been.

So. Today. We went to Tux Kubaxa to see mastodon bones. If you look in the picture above just behind the video camera you'll see the biggest bone of the lot. The picture at right is the best close-up I got. To get to this spot we swam for about 40 minutes, then spent three minutes crowding around getting in each others' way... three of us taking photos and video. I had a bad moment not being able to back up and though I wasn't near any panic, I was thoroughly annoyed that my delicate buoyancy control was out of whack. (My cave partner has it on video, it's most embarrasing.) Too many divers in too tight a spot, so says I. But we all survived, I got good pictures of the bones, Sandra has nice video especially on the way out as she was gradually mastering the nuances of the video housing.

Connie calls Tux Kubaxa a "Power Cave" with emphasis on the capital letters. It is big, it has lots of huge rooms that remind me of Mammoth Cave in Kentucky. Except these are filled with water of course. It has gorgeous white limestone formations all over the place. What else can I tell you? It was impressive.

Cave Diving with Connie

About two months ago I was actively looking for new venues to do cave diving, particularly in the Riviera Maya region of Mexico. I was flipping through the recent issue of Underwater Speleology (the rag put out by the NSS-CDS) and came across an ad for a week-long cave "camp" hosted by Connie LoRe, a well known personality in the cave community. Sounded perfect to me, so after a few quick correspondences I plopped down a hefty deposit and waited patiently for the trip to start.

The base of operations is at Villas deRosa in Aventuras Akumal. Aside from some staffing problems having to do with the cooks, the operation at Villas deRosa runs pretty smoothely. Connie's group is six divers, three women three men and (as I'm getting used to in this business) I am the youngest. There is another larger group here from Alabama, a combination of open water and cave divers. This hotel caters specifically to divers and appears to be a popular vacation spot, ideally situated on the ocean and within a half hour's drive of some fabulous caves.

I'm now in Day #3, having completed four wonderful cave dives in: Grand Cenote Paso de Lagarto, Grand Cenote Cuzan-ha Loop (and one jump beyond), Vaca Ha, and Minotauro. Some details on each follow.


Grand Cenote I've visited many times in the past few years so I won't go into too much detail here. It is still one of my favourite cave dive spots and is currently ranked as the #2 largest underwater cave system in the world as Sistema Sac Aktun (it lost its #1 slot to sistema Ox Bel Ha last month).

This year I purchased a (used) underwater video set-up including two nice 20w halogen pod lights. The video was via a friend of a friend and although it is many years old, it IS digital and it DOES work very well. I spent the past six weeks using it on open water dives so bringing it into the caves was not my first attempts with it. I'm glad I spent the time in open water, because the resulting video footage I got yesterday in Grand Cenote was better than I expected... much of it will be useful should I edit down later.


This morning (Monday 12/10 to be precise) we went to Vaca Ha, a tiny cenote on private property. It started as a difficult restriction then opened to a very nice, but small, cave. Most notable were the long tunnels with copious halocline. I say copious because, being 6th diver in a 7 diver series, the salt/fresh water layer was pretty well disturbed by the time I passed through. Going a few feet either up into fresh or down into salt made radical improvements in visibility. The halocline was at about 60-65 feet, I think. This cave system was pretty deep most of the way, making me thankful for having 36% nitrox. Fortunately no one on any of the dive teams hit deco or it could have been a much longer dive. Vaca Ha was interesting, but on a cave dive scale of 1-10 it only rates about a 3 or 4. In other words, I'd go again if that's where the group goes, but I wouldn't choose it for myself. I also didn't bring either video or DSLR on this dive choosing just to enjoy the cave.

The afternoon was at Minotauro. Also situated on private land, the cenote was large and beautiful. We were the only ones there. An extremely odd bird call taunted us as we suited up -- we never saw the bird but it was kind of spooky. The mosquitoes were also homing in on us quickly so suiting up and jumping in the water became a top priority for me. This time I had the video ready and started out by filming the cenote before diving in. Minotauro was fantastic - it had such a variety of everything any cave diver could ask for. Beautiful formations, ceilings coated with soda straw stalactites, breakdown areas, a tight restriction to squeeze through (only 18" tall!) and lots of halocline to play in. I got what appear to be really good shots of the halocline. I won't know until I can see the video on a larger screen. Believe me, it is very hard to film the halocline and the "green mirror effect." All my previous attempts at doing it using DSLR photography turned out meaningless. Video is the only way to do it.

Tomorrow we are off to Tush Xabaxa (pronounced "toosh kah-basha") where there are said to be mastodon bones. I will be giving the video a rest to do still photography instead. Hopefully I'll get some nice stills posted for you tomorrow.

Beyond Alaska

Oh, wow. It's been six months since I finished the Alaska tour and I never completed the story. Well for anyone reading this I'll have to summarise in the next paragraph. If we meet in person before I forget the details I'll be happy to elaborate with much enthusiasm on the following:

Juneau was pretty, and expensive. I will never forget that a salmon lunch at a remote cottage for two (accessible only by seaplane) cost $400. But the glaciers were most memorable and seeing them by seaplane was a great way to do it. Skagway was my favourite port of call: the town retains its rustic Gold Rush image. The White Pass train ride (diesel powered) was spectacular with fantastic scenery worth every moment sitting out of the car, getting vista photos with the wide angle. I even saw a working steam train in Skagway, doing maintenance duty and not pulling passengers, but running nonetheless! Ketchikan was a let-down partly because we arrived into port so late that the best tours were booked out. We did a last minute taxi tour just to do something and although I got nice shots of the bald eagles it was more disappointment than pleasure. For those who might go on this cruise in the future, save your money for Ketchikan. Some of the more unique local items I saw on the trip were sold there.

Since Alaska I've done the usual summer things, the two most notable being (1) I learned how to swim and (2) Pennsic War. It was uncomfortably humid at War this year, that kept most of the folks sweltering away in their tents instead of being out and about. For merchants that meant drastically reduced sales. No one wanted to think about shopping. Those of you who don't know, I am part owner of a merchant business at Pennsic: we run a cyber cafe for the masses. And I have to say we put a lot of effort this year into improving both appearance and services. It paid off. We did well despite the heat although I am certain had the weather been more tolerable we would have done much better. Anyway I am happy to have done as well as we did, and I personally want to thank everyone who patronised our business and appreciated our upgrades.

I'm back in Cozumel now, on a three month stay. Actually the truth is I am in Akumal a small hotel district south of Playa del Carmen as I write this. This blog took a back seat for too long and I needed to do some quick catch-up. I'd been on Cozumel for six weeks already, doing open water diving and whatnot, then started a week-long tour of cave diving. But that's for the next blog entry, starting in just a moment!

I'll have some nice pictures of Cozumel-so-far-this-trip after I've had a chance to slow down and post-process them. This trip has been somewhat difficult because I've been spending more time per week consulting than I do at home. Great for the income, difficult on the vacation part of my vacation. Oops, did I say I was on vacation?