Puerto Vallarta, June 9 - 14, 2002

Wednesday, June 12, 2002

We returned to the hotel, had lunch and decided to get in a bit of swimming. This was the first time we were in the pool area at 2:00pm when they had their regular 'free scuba lesson' scheduled, so we took that. Within thirty seconds of being in the pool with all that gear, we were both hooked. Traci, the scuba instructor at the resort, talked to us about scheduling a dive while we were here, and we went over our schedule and realized we couldn't fit it in. She asked us to wait a bit and made some calls, and arranged for us to go on a dive that very afternoon.

So we hurriedly had our one-hour lesson in the pool, showing us how to handle everything, communication, etc., and then grabbed a bus to the Blue Bay Club to meet up with the actual instructors for our dive. We met Lutz, who has been here from Germany for about 8 months, and a really great guy, who outfitted us with gear. Traci had told us we could pay them with a credit card, but discovered that would not fly, and so we stopped at an ATM for me to withdraw 1500 pesos -- the dive for us was 1100, and I figured 400 extra would be a good idea in case there was anything else we wanted out there.

The three of us then hop back on the bus to go to Mismaloya, where Klaus, the owner of the dive shop, meets us in his VW Thing (I love those cars, and they are all over Mexico) with all the gear. We are introduced to Manuel, who is piloting our boat, we pay our 1100 pesos, and hop aboard. Almost too quickly, we're out at Los Arcos and ready to dive.

I put on all my gear and sit on the side of the boat, and I'm running through all the things Traci had told me to do, checking out what I was going to do, and I guess Klaus and Lutz thought I was getting nervous, so they prod me to jump on in. I do... and completely forget about the "hold your regulator and mask in place" instruction and end up with a very disorienting gulp of salt water that sort of set me up to be a bit nervous throughout the entire dive. It took me a bit of time to get calmed down from that. But then I put my facemask down into the water and saw all the fish and was just spellbound.

Lutz and Dawn at about 30 feet.
There goes Lutz as we try to follow.	The rope to the surface.
Dawn signals she's a-ok.	Here I am swimming by.
I'm reaching out to a fish	Another image of Dawn

We dove to 45 feet, stayed for about 30 minutes. I had a great deal of trouble establishing neutral buoyancy. I kept drifting above everyone else. Very disconcerting. But it was terrific.

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