some dive videos

Cenotes - a complication of the beautiful peek throughs of sunlight entering the cenotes from above


Sea Turtles - compilation of videos taken of sea turtles seen during various dives:


Lionfish video:

5-7-10 last dive day, last day in Mexico :(

Today was our last day diving and in Mexico. I can't believe it's gone by so quickly!!

Yesterday, I found out about this dolphin trainer for a day program they have in Cancun where you can play with dolphins and learn what a trainer does for 8 hrs. I had originally thought this would cost a ridiculous amount of money but learned yesterday that it's less than $200 in Cancun which is many times cheaper than the US programs offering similar packages or lesser packages. Now I regret not having known about this earlier and having signed up. I guess I'll just have to return to Mexico for that.

Today we went on 2 ocean dives with Condor - our favorite dive master. He's quirky and fun but most importantly knows where all the fish/marine animals are. During our first dive, he promised a loggerhead turtle and voila, there it was! Then for the second dive I requested lots of turtles so he said at least 4, and indeed he pointed out 4 separate turtle sightings (though I suspect we saw the same turtle twice) - but still, incredible!! We saw lots of lionfish again, many lobster, and really beautiful schooling fish. Some pictures from the dive:
loggerhead turtle -
Angelfish -
Condor welcoming lobsters out of their cave -
Lionfish camouflaged -
Trunkfish -
One of the many turtles of the day -
"Yum yum" - says the feeding turtle

I can't believe my 3 weeks have flown by so quickly. Especially these Mexico days - it's gone by faster than usual. It was a lot of fun of course but maybe I did too much diving and not enough relaxing.

Back home tomorrow. Thanks for following my blog. Until next vacation!

5-6-10 two cenotes and a night dive

today was spent mostly diving. We did 2 cenotes this morning - Dos Ojos Barbie Line and Bat Cave. The cave formations were really beautiful. Sorry no pictures of the great stalactite and stalagmite structures - not very photogenic.
great view of cavern opening from underwater -
Barbie line -
Bat Cave -

Our night dive was fabulous. We saw an unprecedented number of lobsters - made me very hungry for lobster and sushi afterwards. Some highlights below:
really big
hermit crab -
Dueling lobsters -
Squid -
Octopus -
Now who wants Tomoe? Pulpitos? lobster? all yummy options. Unfortunately, none of these were options at the dinner buffet.

5-5-10

Apparently, it's cinco de mayo but I didn't know that until just now when accosted by some clowns in a corridor of the resort, making balloon animals.

We went diving again today, yay!! It was pretty awesome. Our 2 sites were Morgan's Reef and Lobster reef. We saw a turtle of course, Akumal being Mayan for turtle place. We saw lots of lobsters at lobster reef. And most importantly, I figured out what was wrong with my strobe flash so my pictures have improved some. Enjoy!
Requisite turtle photo -
beautiful lionfish shot -
Lobster - really close up!!
peek-a-boo fish
Lily fish
I saw a wedding party on the beach today. Apparently one of the sunbathers complained that they were ruining his vacation by being on the beach and disturbing his tranquility - dweeb.

We went to one of their a la carte restaurants for dinner - Don Pablo - really quite good. I've actually been generally impressed by the quality of food here so far. Plus it's all free!!

More cenotes tomorrow, and a night dive. Will be a busy day!

Gran Bahia Principe Tulum

So I'm staying at the Gran Bahia Principe Tulum (not sure if I already mentioned this). It's a massive resort 90 min south of Cancun, Mexico. My question is - why is this place so filled with Europeans?!? Many French, Italian, and possibly Spanish. It's so far away from Europe - it just seems odd. Are there no all-inclusives in Europe? or the Maldives? Why Mexico? It seems an odd choice. I'd say maybe 25-35% of the people here are French or Italian. Most are American but there's a good number of English and Mexican too. If you know why the French and Italians flock to Gran Bahia in Mexico please comment.

I've just never seen so many Europeans in the Caribbean - except for the Dutch in the Dutch Antilles of course.

5-4-10

Finally, today we were able to go diving in the ocean. Not sure if I mentioned but we had be landlocked because of the high winds and therefore perilous conditions on the sea. I think underwater should have been ok but the high winds meant low visibility underwater.

It was so great to be in the ocean again, loving it!!

(must apologize for quality of pictures, still trying to relearn how my strobe works, maybe take a bit before the colors are brilliant, the decreased visibility underwater doesn't help either)

Our first dive was at Tortuga - turtle!! Yes, we did see a turtle, a cute little green turtle. The colors weren't as brilliant as at Bonaire, but after the weather we've been having it's not surprising. I can only hope it will be better day by day.

lobster out for a walk -

turtle #1

The place where our dive shop is is called Turtle Bay - it's where many turtles go to lay eggs in August. It's also where many turtles can be found poking about. During our surface interval, I decided to go snorkeling for turtles and found one!

Turtle #2
Our second dive was more shallow in a place called Redes (sp?). This was an amazing dive - abundant fish, beautiful landscapes, 1hr bottom time.
lionfish (I was told that these are not native to these waters but generally have escaped from aquariums during hurricanes) -
Fish saying hello -
Fish hiding from camera -
Stingray (hard to make out but if you look closely) -
Turtle #3 with some cleaner fish -
Turtle says - Dude, I was trying to sleep!! Stop hitting me with your massive strobe flash!
Our divemaster - Condor - was spelling out his name at 50 ft below

I love diving!! Can't wait to get back in the water tomorrow!

5-3-10 evening

Today was an eventful day.

There are these large sandbags placed in the ocean in front of the hotel to break the waves before the beach, but they look like rocks (featured in one of my previous pictures). A fun game to play is to climb atop one of these sandbags. A few challenges you face are the ocean waves and the significant slipperiness of the bags as they are covered in algae. I finally made it after many tries - victorious!!

Later in the day we went to the cenote - Dos Ojos. As we were getting ready to go snorkeling, I did a super stupid thing - locked the car keys in the car. Stupid stupid stupid. After much fretting about what to do, a couple Mexican guys came to help. After many different tries, we succeeded in breaking into the car ! It was awesome, almost worth it (almost!). Snorkeling in Dos Ojos was great, though we snorkeled in the scuba entrance instead of the snorkel entrance, another stupidity.

couple getting married at Dos Ojos -




We had dinner in the Japanese restaurant of the resort tonight. They took many liberties with what they defined as Japanese cuisine but everything was yummy.

Some of you may be happy to hear that I've had to resort to walking around barefoot mostly because my shoes are just not conducive to long walking, especially when sandy beaches are involved.

5-3-10 morning

Today is our day off from diving. So it's a late start, maybe some cenotes snorkeling in the afternoon, but pretty much mostly chilling out.

I walked around the resort and took some pictures though:

Did I mention it's super hot here? It's super hot. And AC is lacking in their food places - thus hot hot hot!! Lots of icy gazpacho required!!

Mexico with a Mexican -
They press designed into the sand daily -
Iguana found something yummy -
One of the many pools -
morning beach -
bird -

a couple more pics from 5-2-10

A couple more pictures from my phone from yesterday:
where we had lunch -

my plate -
where we had dinner -

5-2 Mexico

I have arrived in sunny Mexico.

Arrival - that was an ordeal!! Direct flight, on time, what else could you ask for right? Well, how about NOT standing in line at immigration for 4 hours?!? Literally, we landed at 4pm and did not get to car rental until 9pm. Apparently, the combination of a national holiday and new computer program lead to a complete breakdown of the immigration process. The room was so packed many people took pictures/videos of the room. It was insane!! Then after the immigration line, there was the insane search for our bags which had all be taken off the conveyor belts and formed little islands throughout the room. Then of course was the customs line...

So we didn't get to our hotel until after 11 I think. We were so exhausted we didn't even have dinner. Oh, plus my rental car totally sucks - no power steering!

Today we got up early to head over to the dive shop to get set up so we could do 2 ocean dives this morning. That was the plan at least. But apparently there's monster winds in Mexico right now and no diving/swimming allowed. It's ok, we dove anyway - in the cenotes - underground river caves. It was a really cool experience. There weren't any pretty fish to see but there were stalactites and stalagmites (however those are spelled). In addition, the view of openings where the light peers through is amazing. There is also the weird refractory phenomenon of where the freshwater mixes with the salt water - if undisturbed, it's just a line, but usually you see the blurring/mixing of the 2 and everything goes blurry. Very weird.



The rest of the day was spent chilling by the pool and the ocean. The high winds were great for lying by the water as they kept me cool as I listened to the crashing waves and read on my kindle.

The resort I'm staying in is massive!! It's a 3-part resort with >10 restaurants and 3 trolley systems. I'm not sure if it's really my thing but the beach is beautiful and the pools are great, not to mention the great all-inclusive deal!

We're going to take a day off from diving tomorrow and maybe take in some ruins. The weather forecast predicts that the ocean will be good for diving on Tuesday - keep fingers crossed!

Mexico!!!

After a swift unpacking and repacking - off to Mexico!!

4-29 Barcelona – last day in Spain

Today is the last day of my European adventure. We stayed in a hotel outside of Barcelona and went into the city by train, which was surprisingly easy. Our first stop was La Sagrada Familia – the perpetually under construction church that was designed and started by Gaudi. They made significant advancements since I last saw it in 2000 but still unfinished of course.

Then we took a walk down through Passeig de Gracia – the street where many of Gaudi’s works are – down La Rambla – a super touristy big pedestrian-friendly street where we ended up having lunch. It’s been a challenge finding the perfect restaurant since so many of the restaurants around here have the tacky multi-lingual menus and the cookie cutter Paella pictures. We picked what looked like a decent bar/tapas restaurant. Little did we know that the man who runs the front of the house and was likely an owner of the bar was a complete madman. After making the bad choice of this restaurant, we then made the bad choice of sitting by the entrance where the madman reigned. I would have much preferred to have had one of the regular waiters in the white shirts and black ties. So not only does the madman get our order wrong, but then he yells at others for the mistake and talks to me like I’m a complete idiot. The food was satisfactory I suppose, although covered in grease. We had the pleasure of sitting next to an Irish couple though, who did not speak any Spanish but were nonetheless amused by the antics of our madman.

Next, we walked down to the port where the weather was so nice we had to spend some time just sitting by the water. It was there that we met Larry the Banana. He was a self-proclaimed vagablogger who was travelling through Europe on the donations generated from the website where he blogged about his travels (much like this blog, maybe I should collect donations too!). His gimmick was dressing up in a banana suit and having people photograph him along the way in his travels – that’s where we came in, we were asked to take a picture of him.

After chilling by the water for a while, we headed by into the city and wandered around a bit in the Barri Gothic. We visited the food market of Barcelona and there we were swindled for 5 euros for a sugar apple – granted, it was a huge sugar apple, super ripe, and super yummy – but still, highway robbery! This was the first time Antonio had a sugar apple though, and it’s always good to try new fruit.

Having missed out on Park Guell due to traffic issues yesterday, we took a second shot at it today. We were successful and had a lovely time sitting in the park listening to some random musicians.

For dinner we went to the Barceloneta which is a stretch that projects into/along the sea. While most of the restaurants seemed touristy, a particular one caught our eye, or more precisely the New York Times review posted outside this restaurant caught our eye. After all, if I’m willing to take Times’ advice on food in the US, why not outside the US too. It turned out to be an excellent choice. We had some tasty gazpacho de buey de mar (crab soup) to start followed by some truly yummy paella with shrimp and squid accompanied by some lovely white wine that our waiter recommended. The paella at this restaurant definitely rivaled those we had in Valencia. In short, I highly recommend this waterside Barcelona restaurant – La mar salada – a fine dining experience for a reasonable price.