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.