One Last Blast in Coz

OK, mostly packed and almost ready to leave Cozumel on Monday... but wait! It's Sunday night and this means there's a party in the Plaza. There's always a party in the Plaza on Sunday. But what I forgot is that Cozumel is now in the throes of one of its most flamboyant celebrations: Carnaval!!

Tonight on the stage in the plaza, blasting away at 20,000 watts of sheer ear bleeding PA power, was the costume/dance competition. Or at least I think that is what it was. My comprehension of Spanish is not at all good. Anyway, there were six contestants, three male and three female. All of them had the most amazingly elaborate costumes. The competition format seemed to be: dance for 4-5 minutes on stage, then dance 2-3 minutes more with an enormous headdress on. And when I say headdress, I mean these gorgeous wing pieces that were strapped to their shoulders! The stage was barely large enough to showcase some of them. The one in the picture above was the largest of them. The one to the right was titled "Africa" -- at least I understood that much from the MC.

My poor six-year old camera battery... I was taxing it pretty heavily with all the flash photography and rapid shooting. I was certain it was going to cut out at any moment. But it held out and I got shots from every segment of the programme.

For most contestants dancing is a liberal term. It was more like shimmying across the stage, especially when they were burdened with the wings. Even through the stage fog machine's smoke which hindered good photography, and being pelted in the head with candy by one contestant (are sweets some kind of bribe?) the show was mostly entertaining.

In my opinion there was one clear winner. This girl (top and bottom photos) came on stage with the best presentation, the best posturing, the best dance movements; she exuded confidence and sex appeal... and then did one great thing that none of the other contestants did: she Sang -- Beautifully! You could hear men's hearts melt in a two block radius. I was totally enthralled.

What a fantastic send-off from Cozumel.

And the line for esquites at Raspados Tropicales still had 50 people in it when I left...



(Photos taken with the Canon 300D Digital Rebel, with a 24-105mm f/4L lens, mostly at ISO-400 (flash) and ISO-1600 (no flash) in the "P"rogram mode, RAW format)

Credits and Thank-Yous

Our trip to Cozumel is coming to an end; the curtain of night closes on the last evening I will spend in a tiny flat on Calle 5 in San Miguel... at least until next December. Three long months on Cozumel have gone by like... well, three months. Not too fast and not too slow. I have many people to thank for the success of this long venture.

How I Did It

Before I roll the credits, here is a brief description of "how I took all those photos." Seen here is the Aquatica A300 with the flat port (hidden behind the strobe arm) and a Sea&Sea YS-90TTL strobe. Those four pieces were long-term loaned to me by Andrew, a most generous friend, a great diver, and an excellent underwater photographer himself. Also shown is the Canon 24-105mm f/4L lens with a 12mm extension tube attached, and two 6061-T6 aluminum zoom gears I machined myself specificially for this lens... for with and without the extension tube.

If you look carefully inside the housing you will see two homebrewed electronic doo-dads: a flood alarm (which thankfully never went off) and an in-water reset device for the Heinrichs-Weikamp eTTL converter... which never quite stopped malfunctioning but at least the problem was manageable. Also shown are two necessary tools of the trade: a paintbrush to knock off the daily layer of Cozumel dust, and a Giottos air blower for quick cleaning of lenses and drying of electronics ports.

On the right is how I stayed in touch with the world and fooled(?) my clients into thinking I was still home in Maryland. Call it "The one-chair internet solution." By special arrangement with our dive shop, I had excellent high speed internet service 24x7, with enough bandwidth to feed a Vonage phone. By forwarding the office phone in Maryland to this phone, we rarely missed a beat in the business world. Our calls back to the U.S. were cheap, too. Only 4 cents a minute. And believe me it was worth it, I consulted with one client for many hours!

The set-up may look hokey, but it is pretty powerful. That's a 14dbi unidirectional antenna going through 6 inches of concrete, to hit an antenna 300-400 yards away. Even through pounding rain I did not see degradation in bandwidth. There were times of the day where phone quality was less than adequate but for the most part it worked great.

And now... The Credits

In no particular order... Thanks!!!...

To all the divemasters of Aqua Safari, particularly Mariano, Asuncion, Miguel, Jose, Polo, Roger, Orlando ... sorry I cannot remember everyone's names!

To Bill Horn, for being both the Force and the Face that most people know behind Aqua Safari

To Joe, for fixing my (all too often) aching back -- I promise I'll stop wearing double tanks!! At least until next year

To Andrew and to Maia, for so many things

To Nemecio, for internet, for finding the impossible to find, and for just being a friend

To Connie LoRe, for leading a powerful week of cave diving in Akumal

To my wife, Tracey, for putting up with my bulky photographic gear

To Deborah and Peter, just for being themselves!

To Roberto, the "unsung hero" of Aqua Safari

To Gianni and Kathleen for an excellent week of diving and touring (let's do it again!)

To our apartment complex, for a clean and convenient place to live

...and all the geckos that crawled my walls and entertained me by their passing

To zolpidem, for letting me sleep when I REALLY needed it

To all the noisy street vendors of Cozumel ("Queeesooo, Waa-Kaa-Kaa", "Tweee, tweteeleeeooo" "Gas Gas Gas") for keeping Tracey's ears entertained

To La Choza, Manati and Prima for so many excellent meals

To Casa Mision for knock-you-off-your-feet margaritas and excellent seafood

To Sheryl for sharing REEF with Tracey

To Sac Aktun for showing me even more speleological wonders than I remembered

To Belinda and her captain, Augustin, for always being there when I surfaced

To Google, for helping me translate Espanol, find everything I needed on-line, and for providing Blogger.com to document these travels.

Things I Wish

There are a few things I wish Cozumel had...

More vegetables (easy to find in the markets, but ironically not in the Mexican restaurants)

Fewer mosquitoes and fleas (I *hate* flea bites!!)

A shop that sold car and moped mufflers, and a noise law that required them

A Greek restaurant and an Ethiopian Restaurant

A Costco (there's one in Cancun but it's too far away)

Decent bicycles for sale (or rent)

Four wheel drive vehicles that actually had four wheel drive

Hydroids (nasty, stinging fern-like corals) didn't exist

Some things I hope to do next year

Another week with Connie

HD underwater video

More dives with Nemecio

Enter and win some UW photography contests

Not touch any more hydroids on dives (ouch!!)

Macro Day on Reef Paraiso (Cozumel)

What a fun dive day. We did our two regular morning dives at Dalila and Cedral mediano -- both were excellent with good pelagic sightings and many lengthy turtle encounters. (Sorry, no photos as I was taking a photography stress break.) The third dive of the day is always done at Paradise reef (Reef de Paraiso) which is a popular spot mostly because it is very close to town... but it is ironically one of the best reefs for photogenic variety.

On this 3rd dive I finally did my macro set-up: Canon 300D with the 24-105mm f/4L lens and a 12mm lens extender, with a single Sea&Sea YS-90TTL strobe sitting almost directly above the flat port and at a 35-45 degree angle downwards. The extender converts my focal range from the normal 2ft-to-infinity, to a focal range of 2-18". Extreme close-ups are made possible with stunning results. Almost every picture I took (80 total) were keepers, a ratio unheard of with most lens set-ups. Here are a few:

Mantis Shrimp

I got one and exactly one photo opportunity with this subject; totally a luck shot. It appeared out of a hole, looked around for about four seconds (which allowed me this one amazing shot) and then POOF it was gone again.

Juvenile Drum Fish

-Extremely- difficult to photograph, these fish are not only very tiny but totally neurotic swimmers. They are always on the move; without a dSLR it would have been near impossible to get this kind of shot. Even with a dSLR, I had to constantly refocus and retry until the perfect side-on shot was made. This took about 5 attempts until I was happy with this one.

Look At Those Teeth

A spotted eel, taken at about a 6" focal distance. So close-up that I managed to do this at about f/22, which is why the amazingly good depth-of-field at such a close range.

Inside the Anenome

Anenomes almost always make good photography subjects. Look at the incredible detail you can get with macro!

Yellowhead Jawfish

The face only a mother (jawfish) could love! These are very shy; it takes several quiet moments to stalk them out in order to get one out of its hole. The current on this dive was making this extra difficult but I managed to get three nice angles of the same subject.

I Hate Sony

Long, long ago I used to have more than a few Sony products: tape players, minidisc recorders, Beta machines, even a Vaio laptop. That was before I learned about Sony's true anti-competitive practices and evil marketing practices. That was before I had my first-hand experiences with their brain-damaged customer service system. Now, knowing the Evil Empire that Sony Corporation really is, I have refused to buy Sony products of any sort for over 10 years.

Three months ago I bent the rules a little bit and bought a used Stingray II video housing with a Sony DVC-TRV11 digital video camcorder. The source was a good friend of a good friend and everything seemed to be in working order, except for some dirty optics on the housing which I have since cleaned. I figured that if I buy a used Sony product, that doesn't actually support Sony financially in any way. I even bought Fuji and Panasonic video tape... not Sony's.

The camera worked more-or-less okay, until last Monday. It just... suddenly... inexplicably... stopped working. I think the power regulators are blown, because it will power up for 1/2 second as it attempts to boot up, then goes totally dark. The cassette magazine is hanging out so I can't close the lid. The battery doesn't charge. The reset button does nothing useful. It's just a useless piece of Sony garbage!!

Now, I have four options:
(1) Sell the underwater housing and camera, either as a whole or in separate lots. In all likelihood I could sell the bits for more than I paid. A lot more. But I kind of enjoy taking underwater video and I'd have to start from scratch.

(2) Send the camcorder to Sony service and have it fixed. I estimate this will run $200-300. It also gives Sony money and pretty strongly offends my budget and principles.

(3) Buy a TRV11 or TRV20 off of eBay, approx cost about $200. (The housing is made for both camcorders.) This is my simplest option and I'm watching eBay auctions casually. This option still bends my anti-Sony rules, but not all that much.

(4) Buy a Canon HV-20 and retrofit the Stingray housing by replacing the control electronics and re-machining the camcorder mounting plate. Pros: I get a great camera (HD 1080p at that!) and no more Sony junk. It also means I am using latest greatest technology and not 8-year old stuff. Cons: tricky, retrofit not guaranteed to work. Cost: $680 for the camcorder plus many hours of my time to reverse engineer the Canon remote controls and adapt the video output for the LCD backplate on the housing.


I love Option (4) and may wait a few months to think about this before undertaking the project. The reason I don't want to part with the Stingray II is because it is a beautifully designed unit, in great condition, virtually leak-proof, and I believe a retrofit with at least some kind of HD camera is possible. It also came with a pair of 20W halogen lights which do a fabulous job both in the open ocean and in caves. Unfortunately I haven't heard of anyone doing retrofits for this kind of equipment. The underwater video folks are not a large community; most people would rather sell their old equipment and buy new, than try to do difficult upgrades.

Down with Sony!
Long live Canon!

To be continued... months from now.

Nohoch nah Chich (revisited)

If ever you wondered WHY I do this cave diving thing, the picture at right will speak a thousand words. Occasionally I come across stuff in the caves which is so utterly mind-blowing that it exceeds my understanding. These ARE stalactites. They ARE underwater, probably about 20 feet down but 2,500 feet from the nearest entrance. I KNOW that they formed during the last ice-age, but how?? How long did it take? Were air currents involved? This set of columns covered an area about 5x5 feet... not terribly large but amazingly complex. Click on the picture and see up-close for yourself how bizzare these are.

On Saturday, Glenn and I rented tanks from Villas deRosa and made two long cave dives into Nohoch nah Chich. Yes, this is the same cave system I blogged about earlier when I took the tour with Connie LoRe just three weeks ago. But this time we were there to have FUN. And I was armed to the hilt with camera gear! On this trip I had the Canon 300D in an A300 Aquatica housing, a 10-22mm f/3.5 lens, one Sea&Sea YS-90 strobe on the left side and a big honkin' Ikelite 400 cranked to full power (400 watt-seconds) on my right side. In addition, I put my second Ikelite 400 on Glenn's back using a remote sensor. The strobe points backwards and the sensor points forwards. This is a common configuration among underwater cave photographers and if you look closely at some of the best-looking cave photos you'll see these back-mounted strobes subtly in action. Hey, what the pros can do, I will try to do too!

The good news: It worked marvelously. This was my first time ever having both my 400's in the water, and the results were excellent. Not spectacular, yet, but it was definitely another big push forward in my underwater photography skills. The bad news: the remote sensor on Glenn's back flooded during the dive and malfunctioned horribly. But not before getting at least a dozen really nice shots. The sensor is probably toast; but what the hey. It was a $25 purchase off of eBay.

Glenn and I understood before dive that we both had a lot to learn about composition and modelling and that this was to be a training dive. I set the ground rules: "when I target a formation with my light, I want you to swim over to it, point your tail at it at a distance of 5-15 feet and then face me so I can get a shot. If there is any risk of disorientation, we place a directional marker on the line before photographing." For the most part this worked really well, but I think I should've pushed for wider angle on the lens. Too much Glenn, not enough formation.

And point of note, since I never really changed my orientation it never became necessary to mark the main line. But it was really good we discussed and agreed on this protocol before we started the dive.

Our first dive was not quite to plan; we both had trouble finding the main line and ended up on a completely different line. No matter, our dive plan was straight-forward which would have been appropriate for any of the lines in this cenote. This line ended up being a loop which put us back onto the main line after about 1000' penetration. Laughing in my regulator, I surmised this to be the main line and shortly afterwards recognized the formations to our right. I told Glenn to go left when we "T"eed and we ended up at the NatGeo platform within a few minutes. This was a good opportunity to explain what had happened and discuss our plan of action. We continued to swim back to the cenote, this time on the main line, until it was in view. Once Glenn was convinced it was the main line we turned the dive reversing our path, picking up our jump reel as we hopped back onto our errant loop trail. Total dive time: about 112 minutes. There was PLENTY to see along this passageway and I'm glad it worked out the way it did because I would probably never have explored this part of the cave otherwise.

It was nearly 4:00pm by the time we started our second dive and we agreed to turn it at 45 minutes or 1/3rds whichever came first. We knew we'd be coming out near sunset and we didn't want to inconvenience the landowners if at all possible. Our plan: We were to take the main line (now that we knew where it was) until we reached the second visible jump to the right, then take that jump for however long we had time. My goal was to look for the same beautiful passageway that Dallas had taken us on last year... and to find the "spiny spines" as I'd been calling them since I saw them the first time. The spiny spines are in fact the photo above.

There is other bizarre stuff here as well. This photo is... well, I don't know what it is. It was just there along our way looking like a carved statue -- maybe this is the bird in the "giant birdcage?"

Anyway. Two more great dives in Nohoch nah Chich and almost 200 more photographs to enjoy and share with my friends. I only wish more of my diver friends were into cave diving....

Chichen Itza - Can't See the Forest thru the ....

Vendors... too many street vendors! Chichen Itza is one of Mexico's most popular tourist destination and it has been overrun by its own success. There were vendors along virtually every section of walking path between the archaeological ruins. Pervasive. Annoying. Necessary? The entrance fee for Chichen is a very modest (US) $10 so I am guessing that the park service gets a kickback or substantial squatter's fee from all of the vendors. But I'd be happy - VERY happy - to pay more money for an archaeological site like this without the excess of mercantilism.

Last Friday, the four of us (Tracey, Kathleen and Giancarlo Antona and myself) rented a nice Ford Ecosport mini-SUV from Playa del Carmen and trekked the three hours to the site. Good easy drive, great weather all around. In fact, I cannot think of a more pleasant day we could've visited Chichen Itza. We pretty much toured the whole grounds, with me lagging behind changing lenses every few minutes. This was a great opportunity to play with my new 24-105mm f/4L lens and the circular polarizer. (The picture above was taken with the older 10-22mm rectilinear wide angle lens.)

Okay.. what is Chichen Itza? I can't go into too much detail because I really haven't learned much about the history, but suffice to say it is an old (1000+ yrs) Mayan capital city that was abandoned, gloriously intact, by an old Mayan civilization for reasons unknown. What is left are many gorgeous monuments, temples, a sports arena, and of course the enormous Mexican pyramid which is famously depicted on many artworks... it is also the one in the picture above.

Until recently (2-3 years) people were allowed to climb up the pyramid and view the spectacular jungle landscape. But a year ago on our first visit this was no longer allowed and neither was it permitted this trip. In fact, since last year they have roped off even more sections of stonework courtyards and temples, making this site a little less fun to visit. But still... for $10 you get quite a lot of excellent sight seeing. (If you still want to climb an ancient pyramid, the one in Coba - about 100 miles southeast - is still open according to recent reports.)