Nohoch Na Chich

When I posted about Dos Ojos I shouldn't have used all those superlatives. Wasted too many "can't be beaten" when in fact it could. And what lies beyond the unpossessing entrance to Nohoch Na Chich ( Maya for Giant Bird Cage) you see above, is proof of that.

What a ride! A 2hour+ dive thru a magical kingdom. And we could see but a fraction. A tiny fraction.

The formations are out of "alice in wonderland". In places you face a forest of columns all the way to where the eye can see. In other places the light shines and shines and you can barely make up in the distance, large columns or the entrance to yet another tunnel. Still, in other places, you see nothing at all, so big are the galleries and wide the tunnels.

Luckily I managed to get the most of my modest photo equipment, and thus, being worth more than a 1000 words, here you go:










Many places like the two immediately above, can't but recall imagery of haunted places inhabited by strange creatures...



...and how improbable is such a column? By the way, it's 18,000 years old. That's how long it has been since the last ice age, when these caves were above water.




Even amongst all this beauty and wide open inner spaces, one cannot be too careful. The closeness of different lines is all but a reminder. You snap a pic, become distracted, and when you look you don't know which line you were on...


Below, Bernie, my buddy, a few meters back, 1 hour into the dive...




And before concluding this blog, or more precisely, suspending it until my next cave dive expedition, here goes a picture of the author amateurelishy silting up (see the backscatter?) his surroundings trying to stay level off the floor while doing a tie in to jump to another line... Note the personal round cookie I had just put on the line, cancelling the permanent directional arrow pointing to the opposite direction of our exit.

Ponderosa


This is where I started my training a couple of months ago. It's a quite popular place with snorkelers and other tourists and I wonder if one of the thrill seekers that jump to the water from the tree tops (like the guy in the picture did) ever landed on a returning cave diver...

The halocline is especially strong here, though I couldn't snap a good illustration of how it really looks down there. Due to the different refractive index of the fresh and salt water, you can clearly see the interface when looking from above. The feeling of flying over water is incredible when the conditions (clarity, decoration) are proper.

When you hit the interface visibility drops down to zero. It feels like someone has just smeared your mask with silicone.

If you try you may be able to see what I mean in the following pictures.

In this one you can see the halocline crossing the picture a bit above half height (click to maximize):




In this one you can see what happens when you shake and stir... On the right side the visibility is perfect. On the left side, in the wake of my finning buddy, it's nil!

Cave dive is equipment intensive. Life support is always paramount in any type of diving, but the inaccessability of an air surface during a cave dive requires a heavily modified configuration.

Mitigating the risk of loosing one's sight, thru light failure, siltout, disturbed halocline or mask loss, compounds the need for gear that is usually absent when diving in open waters.

When cave diving you carry two tanks, with independent air regulators. The tanks are commonly connected thru a manifold, in such a way that if one regulator fails, the gas in both tanks is still available thru the remaining functioning regulator. One of the regulators second stage is on a 2 metre hose, so that you can still share gas even if you are negotiating restrictions that do not allow divers to pass side by side.

Effectively you carry gas for you and for your buddy. So our systems are quadruply redundant from a gas perspective.

We carry 3 light sources each. So you would have to have a sextuple failure to be left in the dark. We carry safety spools or reels for emergency searches. We carry spare masks. We carry line cutters. We carry markers to bread crumble our way out. We carry dual depth gauges. We carry dual manometers. Decompression tables and computers. Slates to write and communicate.

You can see all the paraphernalia here:



This amounts to well over 30kgs of gear.The real risk of cave diving is not to perish deep inside a cave, but to break your back on your way in or out...

Car Wash

They did indeed wash cars in here in times gone by. The cenote lies a few meters from the highway and the water is virtually surface level. No wonder they put it to good(?) use. Anyway, these days, visiting divers and snorkelers are a wealthier source of income, and so the cars are out and the acquaphilliacs (a word I just made up) are in.

This is a bouncy ride. All up and down thru single file restrictions that open up to galleries. Couldn't shoot anything decent, so the pictorial content of the actual cave is even shorter coming than usual. Sorry.

What I can show for this is the eerie ambience of the basin. This time of the year, a green micro algae fills the surface, up to a couple of meters down, and builds an emerald cloud that turns the underwater world into a surreal place. You dive in close to zero visibility and two meters down the water opens up with total clarity. What an experience!

The cenote basin from above:



And from below:


The fallen tree trunks break through the cloud reminding you of a misty etherial morning in some forgotten land. It truly is magical.




The dive took us from the cenote entrance all the way to the Lotus room on the left hand side of the map. You can see from all the little "r"s signaling single file restrictions along the way, that this is a route better handled by contortionists. In places you had to wiggle thru, going up, down, and sideways. A bumpy ride indeed.

Going in:


A typical restriction:


Luke's hope, a cenote we passed on the way...


On return, the emerald basin was there to greet us...

The grim reaper... You can find him at the entrance of the "no daylight" zone. Not persuasive, enough, though, lots of untrained open water divers perish beyond these signs.

Mayan Blue





This is a deep cenote compared to most other systems in this area. Not that really deep compared to open water diving. But in the context of an overhead environment, depth brings another variable to the safety equation. Your normal 1 hour+ dives of other cenotes will send you into decompression obligations, which adds complexity. The higher rate of gas consumption at depth is also another item that must be considered.

The Surface


The tunnels we visited go down to 28 meters. To minimize our decompression schedule, we dove nitrox @ 41% O2. On the first dive, we went thru Tunnel B from the entrance. Click on the map to get a higher resolution view. I used a lot of gas as there was a little current running and turned around the dive before the agreed time was due.


Decorations on Tunnel B


On the second dive we took tunnel A @ 18 meters, made a jump down to the death arrow passage, which lies 10 meters below. The passage, filled with warmer salt water, was much clearer than the Tunnel A above. The decorations were chalk white and pristine. Beautiful place to visit. At the end we jumped up back to tunnel A and to a somewhat hazier, and cooler fresh water. Turned right and went for a few hundred meters before returning the dive.

Decorations on Death Arrow Passage

Dos Ojos

This is THE cave. I don't think this is the largest system in the Riviera Maya, but at over 50 kms of laid line, it is huge. The size of the main tunnel, the one where the IMAX picture Journey to Amazing Caves was shot, is large enough to accomodate a double decker bus, and a few other vehicles as well. Tunnels shoot off in all directions. The formations are of olympic size.

Unfortunately my small camera cannot capture that grandiosity. I would need the lighting of a football stadium to make justice to it. This is what I've got:

The entrance (with Bernie, my buddy & guide, patiently waiting for me, while I blind her with my flash ;) :



The entrance underwater:



Some stalagtites that have joined stalagmites forming decorated columns, typical in this system:



Myself in an air bell, during our first dive in the system:



Another airbell, at the extreme point of our second dive. There were bats, so the air was breatheable, albeit "smelly":



Another example of cave decoration:



In the cavern zone, where you can still find open water divers, a barbie is in the jaws of a crocodile (why oh why do they have to do it?):

The entrance seen from below.

Cenote Aktun Koh.
Here we go... first day, first couple of dives. Most of the underwater systems in the Mexican state of Q.Roo are fairly shallow. So dives can be made that last 2 hours... At Aktun Koh, did not go below 12 meters. I was concerned, but seems I didn't loose a lot of skills since April. Didn't gain any, either :(

Another view of the entrance:



And deep inside:

These are the guys I'm diving with. They are an IANTD shop, one of the dive training organizations with a cave curriculum. I won't bore you with the different organizations, philosophies and approaches (and concumitant flame wars) available to a budding cave diver. It's all quite entertaining really but you need to be hooked in. And yes, I have an opinion.

My instructor is probably not available to dive with me this time, which is a pity, as buddying is a major thing in cave diving and knowing one another helps.

I am carrying a camera. But, beaware, this is a basic setup, and the results will be the left side of modest, to put it some way. Underwater photography is a technology intensive endeavour (I know). This translates into an equipment ladden diver, taking virtually a powerplant down to feed the artificial light sources required to properly illuminate the subjects. In a cave this would be life threatening if not done with the right team, preparation and planning.

So, I'm taking a pocket camera. I just hope to pass on the feeling, not to rival the pros.

Last time, my 7 days of intensive training did not allow for much sightseeing. I did not visit the best caves or the largest saloons, or the airbells or the most pristine cave formations. In fact, as standard procedure, instructors take you to "sacrifice" caves, places where most training is done. And where you can see significant damage wrecked upon the cave by newbies...

I spent a lot of time with my eyes closed or the mask flooded, doing drills: Lost diver. Lost Line. Lost Gas supply. You know, it never happens until it happens, and then it's your life on the line (or off the line, if you allow me the pun). So you got do it over and over again til it becomes second nature.

In spite of all the focus on training, I did have some moments of striking visual wonder, like when a peaky rock outcrop that speared the halocline from below, created a mesmerizing "trompe l'oeil", making you feel that you were seeing a mountain island being lapped by a choppy sea. The "choppy sea" was no more than the fresh water running a little current over deeper standing salt water. Seen from above, the feeling of soaring over this landscape was nothing like I ever felt on open ocean diving throughout the years.

But still, I wouldn't say that the "feeling" of adventure comes from these sensory experiences, but rather from the unknown. From "What comes to you".

If these feelings of adventure were not enough, the fact that the knowledge required to cave dive is highly structured, just increased my interest. I was hooked.

I am at home with strict and rigid requirements. Not that I am in the army or anything like that, but my professional life sometimes strays in that direction. Thus, the need for formal procedures in an overhead environment, from where there is no immediate escape, made all the sense to me. They are all simple things if you do them out of context. After all where is the difficulty of laying line from a spool with a stretched instead of a bent arm? Of avoiding crossing a line from below? of leaving "bread crumbles" when you have to take a directional decision?

The difficulty comes from operating in an environment of restricted sensorial input and altered mechanics. Underwater even a simple gesture can become a challenging task. Difficult to understand, when you're moving about on the surface, but all too clear if you're underwater, with limited vision, having to maintain body attitude at the risk of silting out your immediate vicinity, trying to perform one of those simple tasks.

Cutting short a long story, the procedures for cave diving are almost ritualesque. And for some reason, I took a lot of pleasure out of being able to perform in an environment where simple "no-second thought" tasks for "ambulated" humans, become an art form to be learned once you're submerged.

One last comment, if I may. Virtually everybody I bored with my story, made the same comment about my venture sounding too claustrophobic.

To be frank, I myself had some doubts. My sinus are (mal)formed in such a way that I get a blocked nose frequently while sleeping. I'm convinced that this is the reason why I get vicious nightmares about having to negotiate tight, constricting passages to go places... Can't describe it any other way, but, it's just like that and believe me, it's no dream. It's a full blown nightmare. And a month doesn't go by that I won't awake all sweaty stuck between a rock and a hard place.

By the way, I also suffer from vertigo. And I could get sea sick on the Queen Mary sailing on a flat lake. In my youth I would wait for the underground, off the platform, for fearing of falling onto the track.

In a nutshell, not the best profile to become a cave diver. So I was aprehensive when my instructor started to describe one dive plan that involved negotiating restrictions. Restrictions in cave diving parlance can be major or minor. The latter allow a diver carrying back mounted tanks to pass, while the former require a side or no mount configuration. In a no mount configuration you have to push the tanks in front to you. How's that for you claustrophobics out there? Anyway, either the restrictions were really really minor, or it made no bad impression in me at all. Quite the contrary. It all added to the mistery. One of the places I passed had a ceiling low enough to be bumping tanks. It was formed like a freatic sheet sculptured by a river, landscaped with beautiful columns that created a surreal atmosphere. It felt... well, adventurous, for lack of a better word.

So these are my excuses. I had to return soon. And when a week with a couple of holidays came up, I took the opportunity.

Hopefully I'll be able to document the next 5 days with some pictures to give friends a taste of what this is all about. I promise not to be so verbose. After all this a damn blog not a bloody novel, right?

Adventure: A thing about to happen to anyone

Other definitions:

That which come to us, or happens without design, chance, hap, fortune, luck.

Chance of danger or loss, risk, jeopardy, peril.

A hazardous or perilous enterprise or performance; a daring feat.

If there is one word that described what I felt during my 7 day intensive training to become an "underwater caver", this was it. Adventure . Not fear, nor claustrophoby, nor going where no one has ever been before, nor any such crap. Don't really know why, but this was the word that reflected what I felt.

That was last April in the karst plains of the east caribean Mexican coast. Reflecting about the word, I realized, as I often do with numerous other words that we use without a second exegetic thought, that it carried even more meaning if one was to look into its structure. Adventure, ad-venir, something that comes to you.

Bad things come, or in street jargon, shit happens. Some people go in, never to come back. But frankly, this had nothing to do with me. It's not the risk. It's what lies ahead. It's the unknown. It's the convoluted space. It's the time trip.

On the surface, nothing truly remarkable came or happened last April. But down deep, those dark, remote, water filled tunnels and galleries, where the sun never shines, exherted an irrepressible attraction that made me come back at the first opportunity.