There’s no poker content here. Just some reflections on the aftermath of hurricane Wilma.

I was reading a story today about the last hotel I stayed at when I was down on Cozumel; The Hotel Barracuda. It’s a nice place by diving standards. By that I mean that most diving is done in far-off spots and in many places that either teeter on the edge of third-world or are smack dab in the middle of it. A nice hotel is one where they have electricity, air-conditioning, and a television. Of course, one can always find a mega-resort hotel catering to the wealthy but for hard-core diving enthusiasts; you want to be at a hotel that’s close to boat pickups so you can catch that early morning boat for a two tank dive before lunch.

Cozumel is a diver hotspot. It’s a short flight (relatively) from almost anywhere in the US and the diving is dirt cheap. Situated off the coast of Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula, Cozumel provides a diving experience unique to the area. As Gulf currents shoot past the continental shelf they are forced into the narrow gap between the island of Cozumel and the mainland. This makes for great drift diving. Drift diving is where you leave the boat at Point A and the dive boat picks you up at some other Point B. The currents are so strong it would be futile to fight them. Instead, you simply drop down to around 60 feet or so and just float as the currents whisk you past the coral reefs. It’s like watching the countryside go by as you travel past in a train.

Cozumel also has one of the more advanced dives available to novice divers; the Devil’s Throat. You drop straight down to 80 feet where you’ll find an entrance to an underwater cave. The cave is covered in all sorts of beautiful sponge coral and other natural decorations. As you wind your way through the tunnel it continues to take you deeper and deeper until you exit on the other side at around 130 feet. For most recreational divers, this is about as deep as they’ve ever been. On the other side of the Devil’s Throat, depending on air supply, you can either head back to the surface after an extended safety stop or you can wind your way back through another mini-cave. If you go for the later option, you can be assured that your dive computer will be beeping like mad as you start to ascend. A full decompression stop is mandatory.

The Hotel Barracuda was a diver’s paradise of sorts. The accommodations were nothing special. A hard mattress bed, no carpeting, and cramped rooms but she was so beachfront she had her own pier just steps out of the back lobby. One could easily roll out of bed, drudge downstairs for breakfast, grab your gear from your gear locker and walk right down to the pier and wait for the morning dive boat.

Better yet, the hotel built an amazing little pool just left of the pier where sea water came in and filled up the basin so scuba instructors could offer the “confined water” part of the training course. Going to the edge of the pool, you simply slipped over the side and dropped off into about 20 feet of water which gradually slopped away from the island to about 40 feet. For a California diver like myself who is used to battling 3 – 5 foot surf with a 7mm wetsuit into 58 degree water, casually walking down a few steps with nothing but a pair of shorts and your scuba gear and then floating over a wall into 80 degree, crystal clear seas was just this side of mind-blowing.

My last trip down to Cozumel was in 2002 with a group of divers I dove with regularly here in California. After two tanks in the morning we would generally head into town and veg out shopping or eating. As night settled in we would go next door to the scuba shop and grab some tanks for a night dive. With an average depth of about 25 feet, an experienced diver could easily get almost an hour and a half of dive time off one tank and we stretched it to the max every night, only surfacing when we had nearly drained the tank empty.

After a quick shower it was a 10 minute walk to the local cantinas were we drank beers, had tequila concoctions poured down our throat by drink girls, and swapped stories about the cool stuff we had all just experienced. Then we would stumble home and repeat the experience the next day.

I have mentally made plans to get back to Cozumel several times over the past few years but I’ve either not had the time or other adventures called out to me. Unfortunately, when I do return next, The Hotel Barracuda will not be available as a possible place to crash my dive weary body. The entire hotel was reduced to rubble in hurricane Wilma.

I’ll certainly miss that place.

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