Well the next morning I tried to straighten out my regs, which had began leaking from the inside of the 1st stage. Without having solved any problems I ran down to the boat with a set of rental regs where the rest of the divers were waiting for me, the last person to be ready. Turned out I wasn’t even ready, I’d forgot my computer and had to run back up to our room on the 4th floor to retrieve it. This start to the day was a sign of things to come. I did remember to wear my Lavacore hoodie though. Everyone scoffed at me when I bought that, but it sure kept me toasty warm under my wetsuit yesterday!

We headed out for our first dive and once again I found myself overwhelmed by the reef, it’s really something! You have to see it for yourself. We met more turtles and technicolor fish as we swam through the towering pinnacles and rolling hills of the pristine seascape. As usual I fell comfortably behind the group, talking to fish and looking for mermaids. Luckily I was close enough to see the divemaster motion for me to hurry up when he started frantically banging his tank and pointing at something ahead. I went into hustle mode and started using my fins to catch up rather than slow down. When I rejoined the group I saw what we were looking at and and began swimming even faster, it’s very unlike me to go anywhere fast but yesterday I had a good reason. Four eagle rays were gracefully soaring above the reef heading away from us. I’d never seen eagle rays before, wow they are beautiful. They make underwater propulsion look so effortless! I tried to catch up with them enough to get some good pictures but I’m far too clumsy and useless underwater to keep up with such creatures. It’s almost as if they’ve spent a while adapting to their environment--to glide effectively through it undetected. Pretty neat.

After a surface interval parked at a jetty off of a white sand palm tree postcard beach we set out on our second dive. We did another shallow reef dive, navigating between turtles and sharks. If I could describe the endless variety of corals and sponges to you I would, but I can’t so like I said before, you will just have to come see for yourself!

I was feeling pretty elated about the undersea wonders here and when we got back to the resort I planned on taking a lunch break and then doing some nice long shore dives. My mother, who is footing the bill for the trip, had other plans. She had rented a scooter and wanted to go exploring. I like scooting, and exploring, but I really want to go diving and I voiced my disagreement. I didn’t want to have an inevitable tourist scooter accident and hurt myself out of my diving. I should’ve trusted my own instinct I guess, because after visiting some beautiful beaches and getting a bit lost sure enough, as predicted, we had an accident. I landed on my right wrist and my head and also my back sort of. All I could really think was, “this better not stop me from effing diving!” It did though. I didn’t want to go see a doctor because I didn’t want to find out that something was broken and I wouldn’t be diving at all for the rest of the trip, so I didn’t. But this morning when my wrist was still swollen and sore I decided it would be better to get bad news and take care of it than go diving with a fracture and be at a higher risk of DCI.

The hospital down town here was great! It was quiet, the doctor saw me right away and I had x-rays done within half an hour. After a small conference, in Spanish, the doctor and x-ray technician assured me that nothing was broken. Oh the relief! And what’s even better, I got to keep my x-rays as a cool souvenir! Although I can’t really use my wrist and hand for anything without shooting pain running up my arm, I think I’m going to try diving again tomorrow. It would be worth a bit of pain, really. Cozumel really is an undersea paradise. Although, there are worse place to be rendered a virtual invalid. This resort, Blue Angel, sits on the water, its small, the staff are very friendly and the food is delicious. There’s a pool and a bar and decent wifi. When I come back here for my Cozumel do-over trip, I would happily stay here again. I mean, I haven’t taken advantage of the free shore diving at all and that makes me very sad. Very sad indeed.

Check out this lovely place: http://www.blueangelresort.com/