Playa Del Carmen – Dive Report

Jan 182012
 

It’s been quite some time since I blogged anything substantial, so why not start the New Year off with a dive report? Two days after New Years, we packed up the family and headed back to the Mayan Riviera. We stayed at the same resort that we did last year, the Azul Sensatori just outside of Puerto Morelos. If you have children (or even if you don’t) it’s a fantastic place. I have to make a shout out to Miguel, who worked at the bell stand, and went out of his way to make our stay a good one.

My only complaint about the resort was that it was a bit far from Playa Del Carmen, and when in the area, I always dive with the Abyss Dive Center – I originally certified there, and have done all of my certifications there since. Also diving with me this time was my son John, and our good friends Allyson and Rich.

Around December-March every year, bull sharks can be found right off the beach in Playa Del Carmen, and last year, I had hoped to see a few of them. Alas, at the time, they had left the area for some inexplicable reason, only to return after I had come home. This year it was different. This time I got to dive with them twice, and each time there were between 10-20 checking us out. One morning we saw 5 at one of the regular dive sites. All of my diving pictures for the trip can be found here but just to highlight a few…

To celebrate my reconfirmation as MVP on Jan 1, I had my son take the shot of me below

Swimming with the sharks - literally

A few other shots of the attractions in question:

Bull Shark

Bull Shark

Bull Shark

In addition to the photos, I wanted to try out the video capabilities of my Canon T2i. From the footage, I was able to put this video together:

Swimming with the sharks

 

In addition to the sharks, on our last diving day, we headed inland to the cenotes. For those of you that don’t know, cenotes are underground rivers that only exist in the Yucatan peninsula, and you can dive in them. Since there are frequent openings into air, it’s not quite cave diving, but it’s close, and on a nice sunny day, like the one we had, the light show can be spectacular.

Ally and Rich - Ponderosa Cenote

Ponderosa Cenote - Looking Up

Ponderosa Cenote

Ponderosa Cenote

Guardian of the Ponderosa Cenote (driftwood)

Tajma Ha Cenote

That pretty much wraps up the fun for this year – now it’s back to work. I have a mountain in front of me and a lot of writing to do to!

Happy New Year

Wakatobi Dive Resort, As Good As It Gets

Mar 012011
 

This is one of those occasional diving related posts. If you’ve been following this blog, you’ll notice that it’s been pretty quiet for the past little while. That’s because been lucky enough to have been in Indonesia at the Wakatobi Dive resort, and blogging was pretty far from my mind. I just got home a few days ago, and what an incredible experience.

Wakatobi is well hyped. This can be very risky for an attraction. I had extremely high expectations going in, and they were all exceeded.

Wakatobi Dive resort is located just off the island of Tomia, in South East Sulawesi, in Indonesia. It’s a bit of a haul. My experience (from Toronto) was that it took about 25 hours of travelling to get to Bali, overnight in Bali, and then another 2.5 hour charter flight to Wakatobi.

It’s worth every minute.

Map picture

 

I was too tired on arrival in Bali to really see much of it, but if you have the time, it’s quite an amazing place. I did get to spend a day on the way back with a pretty incredible tour guide, Komang Wardiapa, owner of Bali-Go-Round Tours. If you’re in Bali for any reason, I highly suggest that you contact them – it will be well worth your while.

Once at Wakatobi, I was escorted to my own cabin by one of the many Wakatobi dive guides, and was given the ins and outs of the stay at the resort, including where my personal storage for my dive gear was on land, on the boat, my allocated area in the dedicated camera room, and the dive site schedule for my stay. I should mention that once my luggage was tagged by the greeter at the Bali airport, I never needed to touch it again until I was unpacking in my room.

Wakatobi operates a fleet of six 70 foot custom built dive boats. While I was there, they were operating three for 35 guests. If you’re counting, that’s fewer than 12 divers per 70 foot dive boat, and there were at least 2 dive guides per boat. This was extremely comfortable boat diving. Of course, if the boat diving is too much, you can dive the best house reef in the world anytime you wish.

The instructors, like all the rest of the staff were extremely helpful, and highly professional. Their focus was on the diver, but they never let safety get ignored. I had requested to use Nitrox during my stay, and was asked for my certification card. I’ve NEVER needed to produce that card before, so I stopped carrying it, and didn’t have it with me. It was quite clear that they’d need to see proof of certification before proceeding, (which I very much appreciate) but no problem, they went ahead and contacted the agency and got the requisite proof with no further input on my part.

I could go on and on about the facilities, the staff, and the way that they run their operation. Their web site, as nice as it is, doesn’t even do it proper justice. I was made aware (by Komang, mentioned above) of the fact that they were recently featured on a dive travel show, “Into the Drink”. if interested, you can watch the entire show here, it’s about 20 minutes long. I was struck by how the hosts impressions mirrored my own, both of Bali and of the resort.

I had a nice plus in that I had the opportunity to attend the Ikelite Photo School, put together by Frank Owens and Steve Miller (no, not that Steve Miller…). As you can see from previous posts on my blog, I have had some experience with underwater photography, but with just a couple of days of instruction (over drinks in most cases!), and I was quickly able to produce images like those below. I’ll let you be the judge of how successful it was.

IMG_2310 (3353x2296)

IMG_2471 (2574x1688)

IMG_3047 (1400x1874)

IMG_2810 (4144x2500)

IMG_3476 (3993x2492)

(Top to Bottom: False Clown Anemonefish, Hairy Squat Lobster, Colman’s Pygmy Seahorse (about 2mm), Blue Ribbon Eel, and Willan’s Chromodoris Nudibranch)

You can view the entire gallery on Flickr here

Steve and Frank will be offering the school again this summer – I highly recommend it. If you’re interested in other dates, I know that they’d be happy to consider them – you can contact them via the links on the school’s page.

I’m still buzzing from this trip. It has quite literally been the trip of a lifetime, and the best dive resort that I’ve ever seen. I’m already plotting how to get back there.

It’s now back to work for me. I should have an interesting announcement posted here shortly.

Nice to be Away, and Good to be Back

Jan 122011
 

I’ve been a little quiet here of late. First was because we were uncharacteristically busy during the month of December, and recently because I was able to take a well needed rest with my family to the Mayan Riviera in Mexico. Because in my banner header I threaten to blog about diving, I’m going to go ahead and do so now, and share out a few images.

My wife and I and our two kids stayed at the Sensatori Azul resort, between Cancun and Playa Del Carmen. Frankly, I really don’t like the whole all inclusive resort thing, I much prefer to get a more local flavour, but when travelling with family, these things make too much sense. I was however very impressed with this resort – they have an excellent kids program, the food is fantastic, and you feel much less like cattle, as you do in most resorts. My only problem was the location,which was a $40 cab ride away from Playa Del Carmen,which is where my favourite dive shop is located.

The Abyss Dive Center, in Playa Del Carmen, is where I originally got my Open Water dive certification back in 2003. Since then I’ve done my Advanced, Navigation, Nitrox, and Rescue Diver certification with the Abyss. I really can’t say enough good things about these folks. Operated for 15 years by Dave Tomlinson, an expatriate Canadian, they have exactly the right mix of fun with a focus on safety. They manage to do this without cramping the style of advanced divers. While the staff at any dive shop turns over fairly quickly, I’ve always really liked everyone there, and have been friends with several after they have left. This time was no exception.

II was pretty excited to try out my new camera gear, a Canon EOS 550D (Rebel T2i) which shoots lovely stills and full 1080p HD video, along with a couple of lenses, a 60mm macros and a wide angle that was borrowed from a friend.  It’s bull shark season down there, but unfortunately they weren’t there when I was, and it wasn’t for a lack of looking. My first day we headed to Tiburon Flats and while we were skunked on sharks, I managed to see these two interesting guys:

Southern Stingray

 

They grow large remoras here. Given that these guys hang around sharks, we were hopeful, but no dice.

Both of these were shot with a wide angle lens at about 80 feet.

As for stills, I can’t really pick out one favourite picture from the trip. So I’m posting two:

IMG_1715

Lionfish are an invasive species, only appearing in the area in the past year. They’re a scourge, but they sure are pretty,

IMG_1813

On the other side of the attractive scale, scorpion fish are very adept at disguise, and pretty dangerous. You don’t want to touch one, or you’re off to the hospital. Actually both fish in these two pictures are poisonous, which is not the norm for the area.

These two were both shot on the same dive, at around 40 feet with a Canon 60mm macro lens. If you’re interested in seeing other shots from this trip, you can check out my Flickr Photo set.

I’m pretty happy with the way that the camera performed, but the real test will be next month when I dive at the Wakatobi Dive resort in Indonesia. I’m very much looking forward to it.

That’s enough fun stuff. I’ll be back to some technical posts shortly!

Diving Pictures from Grand Turk – Nov 2008

Apr 292010
 

We were lucky enough to make two trips to Grand Turk in 2008. Unfortunately, the second one was only one month after Hurricane Ike, which pretty much devastated the island. We were some of the first tourists back to the island, and the first ones to go out diving with Oasis Divers. The really big plus was that for the entire week, my son and I had Mackie all to ourselves!

We stayed at the Osprey Beach Hotel, which had definitely felt the effects of the hurricane, but did everything they could to make it a pleasant experience. When (not if) I go back again, I’ll be staying at Osprey, and diving with Oasis.

Pictures are available on Flickr here, and slideshow is below.

Cabo Pulmo 2009 Dive Pictures

Apr 242010
 

After the SharePoint 2009 Conference last October, a few of our crew took a detour to a very tiny town at the end of the Baja called Cabo Pulmo. It was my third trip there (more pictures to come..) and obviously I highly recommend it. This time we stayed at Reinhard”s Rentals and completely loved it. I’ve stayed there previously. We dove with the Cabo Pulmo Beach Resort and they were excellent once again. Every time I’ve returned they’ve had a different staff, and each time they were great. I think that speaks to an excellent dive operation, not unlike my friends at Abyss Dive Shop in Playa Del Carmen. You can see the pictures on Flickr here or view the slideshow below.

 

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