January '04

Note:
When you see this arrow >>-->, please scroll right to view the full picture.

My $10 room, looking NW.

My room, in green,  looking SE.

Looking West towards Oceanfront Street with Playa Del Carman just on the horizon (~9 miles).

Oceanfront Street, looking South, panning to west.
The armed Army guy happened to walk by on his way to work.
The bike has low enough gears that the 150# trailer and hooka gear pulls
pretty easy, if slow, plus there are no hills here.
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I was locking my outfit up to this street sign with a cable but discovered
it is against local ordnance so now I use a nearby palm tree.  =)
This location is on Oceanfront Street just above the beach I dive from.
It's a little over three miles South of my place.

The beach club and beach I use is on the right of the pier I'm standing on
in this next panorama.
The beach club is named Lapalapita; roughly translating to little grass shack.
It is across the street from the Villablanca Hotel.
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The beach club owner, Isaac, is cosmopolitin and well traveled.
He has even visited several towns in Minnesota.
This next pano is another view of his beach, this time from the beach.
Several dive operators use this site for their "pool" exercises
during their diver certification classes.
The previous pano was taken from the end of the pier on the right
with the white arch over it.
My hooka is set up at one of the few sand entrances to the sea
on the typically sharp rocky shore.
At the far right are the steps up to the street and, hopefully, my bike.
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My hooka setup is factory built in Fort Lauderdale and known as Brownie's Third Lung.
A 3 hp gas engine drives a 2 cyl air compressor.
The motor and compressor are bolted onto a reinforced fiberglass pan
that rides in the center of a float.
There is a thick skinned skirt on the float to protect it from the rocks.
I flop the deflated float down on the beach
and set an upside-down 5 gallon pail in it's center.
I then set the compressor pan on the pail and start it up to inflate the float,
 shutting the motor off when it's full. Next I strap the float up onto the pan.
A thick black air hose goes directly down through the pan into the water
to keep it cool in use.
The black hose then attaches to a 30' or 60' yellow hose which ends up attaching to
a special SCUBA second stage regulator I breath through.
When the hooka is all set up I get into my wet suit and other gear. I usually get a volunteer
to help me carry the hooka off the pail into the water. It weighs about 100#.
I've had to do it alone and it is doable but not pretty to watch.

Why do I wear a full rubber suit and hood in 84 degree water?
It's like wind-chill. After a half hour
I really start to feel cold without my rubber suit.
There are several innocent looking stinging things
in the sea and the suit helps protect me from them too.

I brought my Mac laptop computer along to Mexico and I use a photo editing program called
"Photoshop Elements" to work on these pictures. (work, work, work)   =)

Some times it can be a real chore tryingto pull all the colors
out of the blue of the sea water.
Here is a before and after example of the same picture..

The spidery little Arrow Crabs have blue tips on their pinchers.
The white specks in the foreground
are very young fish. I found clouds of them around certain coral heads.

Can you see the little fish in the center of this picture

This 'Sand Diver' is one of the few fish that just hangs around. The rest are usually so busy
trying to earn a living they are difficult to photograph.

This is a 'Stoplight Parrotfish'

If this Yellow Stingray hadn't been moving I never would have seen him.
It's easy to see how someone could step on one and get a painfull spike from its tail.

This is a popular aquarium fish called the "Sergeant Major" keeping company with some
cousins called "Damselfish"

I think this fish is called a "Spotted Trunkfish"

These "Grunts" are actually more yellow than green. The silver and black ones I can't identify.

We are still only in 10'-15' of water and mostly a sand bottom. As we go out into 25'-35' water
the coral heads become more frequent and start forming 'patches' of coral.

The fun part for me is working on the pictures afterwards and finding out what
I was actually looking at down there.

This is a small section of a larg patch of coral in deeper water.
On my third day out with the hooka it ran out of gas with me at 35'.
I made a controlled ascent to the surface without any problem but
towing the outfit to shore was a long slog.

At the end of the dive I look for another volunteer to help drag the outfit back up onto the pail
so I can deflate and unstrap the float. The beach club has a fresh water tub for rinsing
the saltwater off the rest of the gear and an outdoor cold water shower for oneself.
I like to have a glass of iced seltzer with lime, lay in the sun, and read or chat, as the gear dries off.
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Later on in the afternoon I start lugging everything back up to the trailer and paddle home.

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