93.10: CANCUN: July 2008

July 11, AM.

• We're headed back, now in Campeche again, next stop Cuidad De Mexico

• The top row of pictures was taken on July 9, with a watertight 35 mm point-and-shoot camera. The film was developed overnight by the folks at AquaWorld and photos printed on paper (how quaint). I laid the photos out on the hotel sink counter under a fluorescent lamp and clicked the photo at the top left. The others in the top row are cropped from the first one. PhotoShop enhancement brought back some of the color.

• So anyhow, the top row is our jungle tour, outboard-motor-driven jet-ski-wannabe, snorkeling adventure. The fish were sort of colorless and tended to blend with the sand.

• The next day, July 10 was our full-blown scuba outing. That's the bottom row of pictures.

• It was an early rising day, that's the sunrise in the east (duh) over the Golfo De Mexico. We got some sand on our flip flops to prove that we were there.

• The first part of the scuba thing is a lesson. A video, followed by swimming pool instruction from a no nonsense instructor named Irma. How to operate stuff. Hand signals. Shallow water first. Then to the bottom at the deep end. There are no pictures of that sequence. It was time to be serious.

• But afterward we had an hour to kill. We met this green feathered staff member and we got to know some of others going out with us. There was a family from Odessa, Texas. Middle aged mom and dad, college age daughter, pompous boyfriend, ditzy tagalong girlfriend.

• And we met a father / daughter pair like us, Santiago and Fernanda. In May she had her sixteenth birthday, she's holding her birthday present, the identical camera that Hannah got early for number 15. Very nice people. English good. She learned in school starting at age 7. He sells cell service by the sea shore. Not really. They are from a town outside of Monterrey Mexico, which is inland.

• There were three dive groups with three instructors. We dived with Santiago and Fernanda, the instructor Karla making it a five-some. The little guy, Mario, seated, took pictures of all three groups. He really had to hustle because we were spread out over the reef. Afterwards he downloaded his cameras. His co-workers onshore burned a CD for us and got us going in 10 minutes flat. Amazing.

• The reef was fantastic. Much more alive than the one off Key West. The instructor took us to a rock overhang and pointed out barracuda and angelfish and others. The hand signal for barracuda is a pretend hand puppet teeth munching thing. For angelfish it's praying hands. When we got back on the boat, there was nothing but white teeth grins all around. Even the instructors were jazzed. And they do that every day. Dream job.