See the YouTube version of these dives here!
Blue Life in Playa Del Carmen is a dive shop located a couple blocks towards the beach from the end of Quinta Avenida. I reserved two reef dives ahead of time. To get there I just walked from my Airbnb and met my dive guide Pierre who will be my dive buddy as well. I meet two other divers from Houston that will be with us. We gear up and walk out wearing our gear a couple blocks more to the shore where we wade into the ocean and hop onto a small boat.
Our first dive site is called Cueva Del Pargo (cave of snappers). The water was about 81DegF and visibility was fair. The water on the surface was a bit choppy. Only a slight current underneath. For our second dive site Moc-Che we had already drifted underwater to the site. We just climbed into our boat which met us there for a break and get fresh tanks.
Pierre points out a school of fish. I have my brand new GoPro Hero 10 using it for the first time. As I took video only rather than pictures I couldn’t help but wonder about how these will turn out. I could see the video on the small screen which seemed good and I was hopeful.
I swim in fast to take video of the beautiful schooling of fish and notice the small lionfish hanging out upside down. As I zoom in on the lionfish he does this little rotation dance.
Pierre points over to the large moral eel. I race over and get close for the pic. Pierre taps me on the shoulder to back up a little. I didn’t have any fear of this moray eel, I’ve seen quite a few, just never got a chance to film one. If he decided to bite me he would only succeed in biting my camera on a stick.
We happened upon the artificial object underwater. I could not tell what it was. Later I discover it’s a statue called Virgin De Caracol. She’s wrapped in what appears as a conch shell.
Our dive time for each site was about 47-48min with a maximum depth around 40ft. After returning to the dive shop we have a a beer and discuss our dive, then say our goodbyes.
After getting back to the Airbnb, uploading my videos and editing with the GoPro Quik app I was surprised at the ease of editing and the clarity of the video. I was able to capture frames for photos easily.
As I walk back down Quinta Avenida I stop at a restaurant called Mi Jardine Secreto which looked inviting. I sat upstairs with a view of the street and had a margarita, guacamole and a quesadilla.
