Labna-Ha, yay!

Another beautiful (though mosquito infested) day at Labna-Ha, diving Sistema Caracol. Both Pep and Sergio were on hand to welcome our group of eight cave divers with open arms and T-shirts to buy. The mosquitoes have been bad at most places, it is apparently their last big-bang before winter hits so they want to get all the human blood they can, while they can. Labna-ha is not better or worse than other sites. But boy, they are bad! I came prepared this year with two bottles of 100% DEET, a head net, and a bed canopy net. The latter I haven't had to use yet, thankfully.

This being my fourth visit to Labna-Ha, I wore for the first time a Labna-Ha T-shirt which I bought on my third visit. Pep was quick to say "Oh! You have the old design. You need to get the new one now!!"

On to the cave dives.

First dive my team consisting of myself, Sandra, Sandra and Dave, went with Connie up the main line. We went up exactly 60 minutes before the dive was turned on 3rds. I'd been this way twice before, so it was nice but not noteworthy.

Second dive we were allowed (*gasp*) to take teams in by ourselves! No guides! This I thought was unheard-of. So was taking cameras inside the cave, but one of our team had a camera on the first dive and Pep only gave some extra cautions in its use. I guess that Labna-Ha is relaxing their very strict rules on cave divers. Or maybe it was because all of us had dove there before at one time or another.

Sandra and I went by ourselves, one of only two pairs to go back into the cave. Two people just did the cavern dive, and two others didn't dive at all. Our plan was to find the side passage at the 3rd jump to the right, and follow it until we either hit the main line or 3rds or until the time seemed to be getting late. I'd been up this passageway too, last year with Sergio and Michael M. So it was also nothing new. But being in a team of only the two of us (and no guide!) made it seem much more intimate. We had a little trouble (6 minutes' worth) finding the side passage but once on it the way was easy going. Sandra was lead diver. I found the tiny cenote that Sergio pointed out last year, at about the 30 minute mark. At 46 minutes Sandra called the dive on time, since she didn't want the dive to run longer than a total of an hour and a half.

Our total time that dive was 87 minutes, and very enjoyable. I discovered we were the last out of the cave system... by a long shot. I tried not to think that the other divers were not giving us evil looks because they were being eaten alive by the skeeters. At least no one said anything about it, so I feel no guilt. It was an excellent day of cave diving!

Thanks again to Sergio and Pep for being excellent hosts, and making this beautiful cave system available to us.