Isla Mujeres Diving
MEXICO
A Diver's Dream
By LYNDI
Tuesday, July 18, 2017
Now that our whale shark swim was successfully out of the way, we were free to use the rest of our time (and savings) diving in the Mesoamerican Reef. Also known as the “Great Mayan Reef”, the reef stretches from the Yucatan Peninsula down to Honduras – more than 600 miles – and ranks as one of the world’s largest reefs, second only to the Great Barrier Reef in Australia.
We had signed up for six tanks with Mundaca Divers – we had visited probably every dive shop on the small island during our scooter tour a few days prior – and Mundaca had good prices, good equipment, and some really passionate dive masters that loved and respected the ocean. So after lounging around in hammocks for the first part of the day, we headed out for our first dive at MUSA, the Museo Subacuatico de Arte.
In order to divert divers, boats and careless tourists from their treasured reef, Mexico invested in an underwater museum that would attract divers looking for something a little different. I was really looking forward to MUSA, considering I had first seen it in my dad’s National Geographic magazines sometime in the 1990s, but it was pretty underwhelming to be honest.
It’s a pretty shallow dive so you can swim underwater seemingly forever. You pass by statues of humans, sunken cars, and villages – all intentionally created to serve as a tourist attraction and a way to increase biomass and habitat for marine life. Cool idea, but in reality it was just “meh”.
The best part was probably a big pufferfish stuck in a Volkswagen Beetle – at some point he must have swum in through the narrow windows, puffed up, and now lives in a self-imposed hippie prison. He’s a pretty major attraction for divers, gets plenty of food from fish food passing through the Beetle, and has a microscopic brain anyways, so it’s a win-win.
But after MUSA, our dives continued to get better and better. The Great Mayan Reef is by far the best preserved and most diverse diving I have ever done – and that includes dives in Australia, Thailand, Zanzibar, Malaysia and Honduras. The coral reef is amazingly well preserved – on one drift dive I just floated sideways past the most incredible underwater life I’ve ever seen. I felt like I was in a fish tank – I floated right through schools of butterfly fish, watched angelfish and bonefish hunt and chase each other. The color of the coral penetrated the ocean’s depths and the micro-universes that live within the reef played out in front of us.
We also had the chance to do by far the most technical dive I’ve ever done. The Juan de la Barrera battleship was intentionally sunk in 2000 and now sits 80 feet below the surface. Wreck diving is inherently tricky – narrow passageways and dim lighting make for pretty advanced maneuvering, but this one had me really concentrating on my breathing to avoid full-out freaking out.
Since it was sunk less than 20 years ago, the ocean has yet to do too much damage. The hulls and hallways are pretty much intact, meaning you swim through narrow and dark corridors. Dive groups normally stick pretty close together, so in the limited space you are desperately trying to make sure another diver doesn’t kick your regulator out of your mouth, since there’s literally no way out.
Add to that a pretty intense current, and I was terrified of being swept through one of the portholes into the abyss or having my source of oxygen kicked out and no way to find the surface. Yikes. But what an experience! The ship’s haunted passageways and eerie staircases were pretty cool to navigate. Every diver knows you aren’t supposed to touch anything underwater, but with the strong current and the unsavory outcomes outlined above, everyone was holding on to rusty railings at some point – and the fire coral taught us a lesson about the delicacy of underwater life. Fire coral rips through your skin and lives up to its name. All of us divers had scrapes and cuts that felt like heat was melting your skin – so definitely a nice souvenir.
Of course, I tore through my oxygen since I was more or less (okay, definitely more than less) freaking out, so it was a pretty quick trip at the bottom – maybe 20-30 minutes or so of bottom time altogether.
Our final dive was a night dive – something I hadn’t done since Koh Tao in 2004. We went through Jardines – a pretty shallow dive – but watched as the moonlight lit up the ocean and the underwater life came out in full force. There were enormous lobsters everywhere I looked, and I had to duck to keep from being rammed by leatherback tortoises swimming by with no fear. The ocean at night is incredible – and completely different than what we experience by day – so it was nice to get a new perspective for our final dive.
Between dives, Aaron and I enjoyed plenty of rum cocktails in hammocks, on our porch, and even on the sidewalk of the main strip in town. The local dive bar, Hemingways, served ice cold beers for 25 pesos (compared to 60 pesos at most other places), so we were just as happy as could be. We even did an hour timeshare tour of the Hotel Mia so we could enjoy their endless drinks, buffet food courts, paddle boards, kayaks and snorkel gear for a full day before finding couple massages on the beach with the ocean breeze gently rolling through our tent.
Isla Mujeres was quite a departure from vacations that Aaron and I usually take – but the combination of our demanding lives at home and time available for vacations made this the perfect escape.
I think a normal person would look back fondly and appreciate the time away. But we’re not normal. This vacation was exactly what we needed, but also a reminder of the life we used to have. I’m not looking for another life on the road, a bare-bones budget or a lack of any property or possessions – but it is nice to remember to slow down, enjoy one day at a time… and get a margarita while you’re at it.
