Diving in Key Largo

I'm slack. It's been a month since I came home and I've just got around to sorting my photos from diving Key Largo. Just the one day of diving - 4 shallow, easy dives, fabulous for fish and soft coral in particular, with some other features like big morays, nurse sharks and spotted eagle rays - no photos of the bigguns I'm afraid, although I got some on film, including some big midnight blue parrotfish which its a shame I didn't get in stills.

       

I met a lovely woman and her 15 year old son, who had just completed his open water certification and was on his first fun dives. Turned out they were staying at the Hampton Inn and leaving next day so they kindly gave me a lift back from diving as well as back to Miami airport the following day. We had dinner together and I very much enjoyed their company and was very impressed with what a polite and well educated young man Aidan proved himself to be.

The manatee eluded me for the entire stay, fronting up on this day as well according to Dianna at the front desk, who drove me to the dive shop when my taxi didn't show and returned to find reports from other guests of the manatee socialising in the bay. That was really my only disappointment, having the trip salvaged by my day of diving and meeting  the lovely Kristen and Aidan.

Dive sites were Eagle Ray Alley, Permanent Ledge, Snappers Ledge and The Aquarium. I missed out on the famous wreck dives for which Key Largo is known, which were booked the previous day but cancelled for weather. Alas, it seems I will have to return.

The food post

It's been storming all day so not much to do but blog and work. Some random food items over the course of the trip.

                              
                      Cuban fare in Miami                                               Quesadillas in Cozumel

             

Prosciutto & melon, caprese salad and garlic bread
Ricardi's in Cozumel

Here in Key Largo they like sandwiches. I say 'give me what you most recommend on the menu and I essentially get a fancy fish burger. Huge, generally. So I've taken to having a piece of fruit and coffee for breakfast and one meal a day, usually mid afternoonish. 

                    

                 Mahi sandwich with key lime sauce at Hobo's Key Largo; Baked grouper sandwich with artichoke
sauce, Catch of the Day Key Largo

 I occasionally choose my own non sandwich item.

Reputedly the best restaurant in town

Baked snapper in tomato, basil and capers
The Fish House 

 Seafood sampler, Catch of the Day

 Oysters Rockefeller, Catch of the Day

Hampton Inn Wildlife

Since I've been here there have been sightings and interactions with a manatee down at the hotel beach. But not by me, so I'm on a mission. Yesterday I went down early in the morning, when I got back from the hospital, and in the evening before I went to dinner. When I got back from dinner a storm was brewing and I went via the beach to try my luck. There was a bloke there watching the storm come in, we got to chatting and conversation turned to the manatee. He must have been a marine biologist or something. As sheet lightning lit up the sky and thunder rolled across the night I wondered aloud if manatees seek some kind of shelter in storms. In his southern drawl he said "they go deep in a storm, like most other fish".

Despite the manatee's elusiveness, I have enjoyed plenty of wildlife sightings around the hotel grounds, so a very good choice.

 Today I spent most of the morning snorkelling around the sea grass in the bay where sightings had been made the day before, while the manatee apparently snuck around the place behind my back. After a couple of hours and no sighting I paddled back to the beach and was told some people had seen it go past and head into the lagoon about 20 minutes before. So I snorkelled up the lagoon until it got to feeling a bit like gator country, came back ungratified and went to lunch at 2, after about 4 hours in the water. 

Just for 1 hour, and when I came back the guy who'd also been down at the beach all morning regaled me with stories of the hour he spent playing with the manatee while I was gone! Verified by other witnesses. I saw one fleeting pass underwater after that, while I was still on land, and then despite another couple of hours in the water I have still not come close. Tomorrow I have 4 dives booked so not likely. I will have one more chance the afternoon of the next day, after a morning of diving. Fingers crossed!

 

Whalesharks!

A mix of 6 very excited photographers and wannabes met in the hotel lobby at 6.30am to make the trek to find whalesharks. We'd been warned it would be a long day, with a 45 minute ferry trip from Cozumel to Playa del Carmen, an hour drive to Cancun, and could be anything up to 3 hours to find the sharks on the boat. We were prepared, including having dosed up on seasick tablets for the high speed boat ride.

Cynthia and Miguel were our guides and Jaime our skipper - all wonderful, knowledgeable and very attentive. As it turned out, by the time we got to Cancun they told us they knew exactly where the sharks were and that there were heaps of them. A very exciting, bumpy ride for about an hour and we arrived to find about 20 boats surrounding numerous whalesharks in the 8-12m range!

On the way out Cynthia had told us the strict guidelines that if there's a shark only 2 people + the guide would be in the water at any one time with it. But when we got there and there were so many, they said we could all just get in and didn't need to get out, with the only restriction being that each boat is limited to an hour in the area.

We slipped over the side of the boat. "Follow me!" said Cynthia and 4 of us swam like buggery to meet up with a shark on its feeding course. "There's one over here" someone called out, and as we watched our first shark's tail disappear into the distance we turned tail ourselves and headed for the call. We positioned ourselves on whichever side of the shark was closest and madly started finning to the call from the various skippers of vessels "swim, swim, swim!!!". As that one swam through and overtook us in a jiffy, and we stopped to rest and decramp, I looked around and saw a fin coming straight towards us. I put my face in the water and sure enough "one coming through here", I yelled.

Initially we were all being careful not to hog or to get in the way of others' shots, but then we realised there were so many that even with all the other boats there was no shortage of whaleshark for everyone. I worried momentarily about whether we were stressing them out but watching them as we tried to keep up they didn't seem fazed at all. Often you'd be swimming beside them and they'd veer towards you and seemed to just expect you would clear the way - which of course we did, many a time kicking each other to avoid making contact with the shark.

When our hour was up we were exhausted from trying to maintain the pace of whalesharks and climbed back aboard our boat feeling very gratified. Grins from ear to ear, even my dive buddy who got a tad seasick on this leg couldn't stop grinning through the suffering. Jaime sped us off to Isla Mujeres for an in water lunch (delicious ceviche and beers) and we headed off for the 10 minute ride back to Cancun just as a downpour came through. Perfectly timed and a fantastic way to end the Cozumel leg of my trip.

I have only the slightest pang of diappointment that I had initially had another one of those trips booked when I first arrived before the rest of the fiesta crew turned up, and it was cancelled for weather. Of course I would have loved to do it again, but the other time may not have gone as clockwork as this one either, and I feel pretty damn lucky to have swum with whalesharks at all, let alone in two different countries now and with so much shark on this particular trip. I remind myself that many, many people never get this experience at all, and count my lucky stars.

Little hotel delights

So I thought they just did this as a matter of course, but when I was talking to some others it seems not. Apparently it pays to tip your housekeepers daily, this is what you get in return, a different one each day...

 

Rest day

Today was the last day of diving in Cozumel and reluctantly I sat it out to give a dodgy ear a rest so I don't overdo it and ruin my chance for diving in Key Largo. So I saw them off on their dive, wandered into town for a leisurely breakfast and came back to do a spot of work and review some photos.

The dive boat

Jeanie's for breakfast

 

The diving has been fabulous - the boat leaves from the dive centre directly across the road and its all drift diving so once on the reef it drops you in at one spot and follows you down the current to pick you up at the other end of your dive. Some of the Americans on the trip are saying it's not great. I don't know if they just have higher expectations or they've seen deterioration over time but I've found loads of beautiful and interesting things to keep me happy on every dive. I also feel as though the tips from the professionals have really helped improve my photography so the trip has been well worth it.

Pic of me taken by my dive buddy

 

 Me in the bat cave - mid point in Dos Ojos Cenote dive  

Off tomorrow for a long day to hopefully swim with whalesharks. We've heard rumours of there being between 15 and 50 in the area and bigger than those usually trekking up the WA coast so I'm very excited.  After that it's off to the Hampton Inn in Key Largo. One of the girls on this trip has contacts in the industry there so she's going to hook me up with a good operator and recommend some good dive sites.

Some last Cozumel photos from the diving yesterday. Went back to macro given gear and talent limitations 😏.