In Reply to: Re: Re: My year behind the lens. posted by Merry on March 01, 2014 at 19:31:20:

COZUMEL – JANUARY 2020 – BIRTHDAY AND EAGLE RAYS


http://scubaclubcozumel.com

Jim – “Deborah, your birthday is coming up. Is there anything you would like to do in celebration?”

Deborah – “I would like to go back to Cozumel to dive with the spotted eagle rays.”

Jim – “That sounds like a great idea.”

(photo by Scott Webb)

The gods must be against us:

Friday night

I found a nail in one of the van’s tires the day before we were to leave. Rush, rush to get it fixed.

Waiting for the limo to pick us up and take us to the airport a smoke alarm starts beeping. I got out a ladder and replace the battery. Deborah went to set the thermostat for while we are gone – blank screen. I replaced batteries. That’s three…right? No.

Ten minutes before we are scheduled to get picked up, limousine service calls us. “Hello, we have had an accident and an ambulance is on the way.” I make a frantic call to a taxi cab service. “Can you pick us up? Now? We have lots of luggage, so send a larger vehicle.” “We can be there in ten to twenty minutes.” Forty minutes later the cab shows up and it’s a Prius. We struggle to cram all of our luggage and ourselves into the vehicle. The clock is ticking…

What? No traffic jams on the 405 freeway? What? No traffic at LAX? We arrived in plenty of time before our 1:30 AM red-eye flight to Dallas. Maybe our luck has turned for the better…or not.

At LAX, we breezed through check in with American Airlines, there’s no wait in TSA PreCheck, our gate is just around the corner, wonderful – or so we thought. After a few minutes, I walk over to the “big board” to check the status of our flight. WTF? Flight delayed until 6:00 AM! That means we won’t make our connection in DFW for our flight to Cozumel. Damn!

So, we gather up our stuff and rush to find the so-called help desk where there’s already a long line of passengers trying to sort out problems with their flights/connections. Everyone is on their phones to AA trying to change flights, etc. but to no avail. After a long, long wait we get to talk to an agent who issues hotel vouchers and gets us on a later connecting flight out of DFW. We take the shuttle to a hotel near the airport and are able to grab a couple of hours of sleep before taking the shuttle back to the airport only to find our flight has been delayed even more – departing at 7:00 AM. That leaves us with only 30 minutes to make our connection in Dallas, which as you know, is not going to happen. After much discussion with the ticketing agent, we decide to gamble on stand-by on the earlier 5:30 AM to Dallas. It’s a risk but there’s a chance we can still get to Cozumel without having to overnight in Dallas.

You will never guess - they called our names and we got on the 5:30! We arrived at DFW in plenty of time, changed terminals, and found our gate. Things were looking good. The connecting flight was on time and we arrived in Cozumel a couple of hours later. Another plane had disembarked before us and there were many tourists in the maze getting through immigration. Not a problem, we were on the island! Yay.

After immigration we waited for our luggage…and waited…and waited. One of our bags showed up on the conveyor belt…but where are the other three? Still sitting in Dallas! We filled out the paper work – luggage to be placed on the next day’s flight and delivered to us at Scuba Club.

It was raining with strong winds out of the north – a classic “El Norte.” Port closed. No diving. What more can go wrong??????

Sunday – The port is closed due to strong winds out of the north. At lunch it was announced the closure had been lifted and they would be going out at 1:30 PM. Our scuba gear hadn’t reached us yet so we waved to Roger and Judy as the boat left the dock without us.

Monday – wind is no longer out of the north and the port is open!

“Yes. My name is Sandy. How did you know?” Splendid toadfish (Sanopus splendidus)

Reef Star with Nestor, Scott & Margaret, Mark & Lucianna, Roger & Judy, Mike & Jana, me & Deborah.

(Nestor says the park rules now limit dive masters to eight divers. Deborah and Scott volunteer to go with the other group on the boat.)

Palancar Caves – great visibility (over 100 feet), warm (81 degrees F) water, almost no current.

Earlier in the fall, the government closed the southernmost reefs due to a coral die off. We had heard horror stories about how all the coral was dead, the fish were all gone, etc. I had seen no pictures and am skeptical of social media posts, so I was curious to see what all the fuss was about. I was very relieved to find a few encrusting corals were dead or dying but 99% of the reef is still alive and as vibrant as it was when we were here last August.

Healthy reef!