Nohoch Nah Chich... oh! la grande plongée

When it comes to grandiosity, the French have it made. In no other language (that I know of) does the "grande" adjective carry such semantic power. I'll never forget an episode I had with a diveshop owner in Raiatea, French Polynesia. This was my first diving trip aboard from Australia (where I lived at the time), a total newbie with no more than a few dives under my belt. I was arranging to dive with him, and was in the process of explaining that I didn't want to dive deeper than 18 meters (ok, ok, I was young(er)).

He didn't like it. There were other customers coming along and that was against his plans of taking us deeper and feed the sharks. In the end he rigged me without a depth gauge (already on the boat) and proceeded with his dive as planned. Most dives in the French Polynesia are closely guided tours, so they must think it's ok to dive without one.

The ensuing altercation was a typical latin affair. Profanity flew. To be frank, I don't recall the details, but I do remember his comments about my plans to dive Rangiroa a few days later in the same trip. "You won't make it", "c'ést de la grande plongee, lá bas!".

He was right about Rangiroa. Hammerheads in deep waters, raging currents in the atoll passes with gin clear waters and so much life that you felt like you were in one of those sci-fi films where the traffic is 3D. Just that in this case, the vehicles were rays, sharks, groupers, and divers. Those were my best dives for quite a while, and I always associated these kind of dives with those french words, "la grande plongée".

Diving amongst the tree roots

Well, that phrase did come back to me after a 5 hour dive in Nohoch nah Chich. It was an unforgettable experience.

I had thoughts of a long penetration dive since visiting Nohoch the previous time I had been here. At the time we did a 2 hour dive and went inside for quite a while. Nohoch is for the most part a very shallow dive. Average depth was no more than 5 meters, lots of tree roots in certain sections of the dive are a reminder of how close you are to the surface. But the upside is that the gas lasts forever.

This time, after my technical cave diver training, I took two stages in addition to my back gas. In all, over 8000 liters of gas! after 4 hours and 45 minutes underwater I still had about 3000L to spare.

I would have done a longer dive, but that would be asking too much from Pietro, my diving guide, after all, to him it was just a day's work, and 24C water does get chilly after a while. I was ok, but nudged a bit nearer purchasing a dry suit. Definitely with a pee valve included!

Although there is something to be said for a dive that starts at noon and finishes at sunset, my main motivation was to go deep inside. In the end, I didn't go as far as I intended. Diving with a buddy, the speed is set by the slowest diver. For safety reasons, guides do not like to dive too fast.

First, the rule of thirds assumes that you can exit as fast as you enter. The faster you go going in, the more difficult it is to comply with that rule. And then if something comes up, distance just compounds the problem. So it's normal for guides to be extra cautious.

Still, I'm a marathon runner, and I'm used to lengthy sustained exercise. I could have covered substantially more distance. I may consider a solo dive next time I come back to this place.

In the end we went about 1.5 kms inside. Taking the mainline upstream, we got all the way to the dinner hole and continued for a little while before turning around. As you can see from the map below, this is only a small fraction of the overall system. You could spend a life time in here...




The dive was technically uneventful. A guide is absolutely essential, for things as simple as locating the start of a line... Our pre-dive check was becoming routine, but there is no way I can do it as swiftly as Pietro. I still have to consciously think about every step of the procedure, and of every item I carry. It's like I'm still reading it from a book. Pros do it as second nature. I enjoyed seeing a few seasoned cavers doing a pre-check before I went into the water. The verbal equipment check they perform sounds like a litany: can still hear them "from my right post...."

Anyway, we dove the 12L tank until 1/3th exhausted and left it on the line. The third from the 5L tank lasted a bit less and was again left on the main line. Then we dove the back gas to the turn around point.

I recognized several features of the cave as I had been here a couple of months before. The walls, the sheer size, the dunes. The elusive shapes that come in and out of the shadows, work like three dimensional Rorschach inkblots, kickstarting your brain into an oneiric world.

Not too far away from the farthest I had been, we spotted the "dinner's hole" cenote. After one hour and a half of artificial light it's quite something to spot natural light in the distance, and see it grow until it becomes an exit point. We had to do a short jump to the cenote line, and swam up to the surface. Dinner's hole is a small sink hole that, I think, could be climbed in an emergency. Returning from the cenote we kept going on the mainline. The tunnel became smaller and shallower with lots of air pockets. You can play with your light and confuse your buddy, just shine on top of him and the surface will reflect the light straight down! There were less cave formations, and you could see, from the increasing percolation, this was a place not many people visited.

The back gas first third exhausted, we returned, same route, to the 5L tank. There, we re-calculated a third of the backgas and went exploring side passages. This is a huge system with numerous lines, very easy to get lost if you don't follow the rules. Lots of nice and interesting sights. Some places were less well traveled than others.

We did the same routine when we got to the first stage tank, but by then we were running over 4 hours of diving and after a while agreed to return.

This is a selection of some of my pictures:

Going in, with Pietro still carrying his full tankload

Main line at the beginning of the dive

The thin and elegant columns, although profuse, never cease to amaze

Typical formations... How can you resist the impulse to go exploring those corners of the cave?

Walls

Halfway thru, this incredible sand dune. Why here?

Thousands of years ago these caves were dry and windy... see how the lime deposits curled up from capillary forces? These are called helictites.

Stalactites and gmites galore

Anybody there?

There are quite a few of these formations, they remind me of a huge umbrella where little goblins gather when nobody is around

Thick columns and right angle lines... don't get lost!

Dinner's hole cenote.If you had to abort in here you'd have quite an uphill struggle!

lots of airpockets upstream from dinner's hole

200ft from dinner's hole, foam cups left by Mike Madden years ago

myself "cooking": we side explored off the mainline when we got to our stages

Current shapes wonderful sculptures if left to its own devices...

melting roof

side exploring off our first stage bottle dropoff point

in the maze

exploring

Pietro close up

when you're off the mainline, tunnels become narrower

some places seem to go on forever

yep, I'm still here Pietro!

arriving at our first stage

close to the entrance

I want to come back. With a drysuit and two 12L stages, 6 hour dives are easily accomplished. Can't forget the pee valve. That could take me closer to the blue abyss (the 6 hours, not the valve).

Diving the blue abyss can't probably be done from the main entrance without significant logistics. But this is a dive I want to do. I just have to discuss with the local pros how much more time I need to get cave diving, before venturing into the 70m deep pit! they'll probably tell me to come back in the next incarnation, but there you go. Finding, of course, a closer entrance to avoid the long, long swim, will also help.

There is even a deeper cave dive not far from Nohoch, in the dos ojos system. There was a poster at the Protec dive shop, depicting the dive. Over 100m deep, but more of a cave, and less than a pit, although it's call the pit. It has not been fully explored... and probably never will be.

I'll be back.