This was my last day of diving. I wanted to do a stage dive, going long. Hesitated a bit, but in the end decided to go upstream on the main line at Nohoch.

I have done this same dive last year, but Pietro, my dive guide at the time, was ultra-conservative, and swam at a very leisurely pace. It took us over an hour to get to Dinner's hole Cenote, and we turned the dive some 20 minutes later. I wanted to go deeper into the cave.

My intention of taking two extra 80cuft cylinders was dashed by lack of training. Even in open water I could see that managing 2 stages on the same D-rings was going to be a struggle. So we left one stage behind, and went in with only a single stage.

It took us 40 minutes to dinner's hole, and we weren't pushing. We kept going for another 40 minutes. Past the dinner hole, as noticed last year, the cave gets temporarily barren with less decorations. But it soon changes back to the usual magnificiency. Lots of gas pockets. I surfaced in one. I couldn't see any flying bats and decided to keep the regulator in my mouth.

This is a very shallow part of the cave. In places you do swim amongst the tree roots. When I turned on thirds we were close to the turnoff to the far point station.

On the return we did a couple of jumps after recalculating thirds. It's the good thing about diving independent gas stage supplies. When you get back to your stage, you can recalculate a third of your back gas and go side exploring without violating the thirds rule.

One of the jumps we did got us into a small zone of the cave so full of spelothems that I considered turning around for fear of braking something. Felt a bit like an elephant in a china shop. In the end I think I did pretty well. Tip toeing, so to speak, from stalagmyte to stalagmyte, left it as I found it.

On the second jump Steve's primary run out of battery. I have had the same problem with the halcyon charger. You really need to be very careful to make sure it doesn't give a false full charge. I usually replug it a few times to make sure all is well. No such problems with the Li-on Salvo set. Anyway, we called the dive at the end of that line. Dive duration: 3 hours and a half.

Nohoch Na Chich... full of secrets...

Diving amongst the tree roots

An air pocket seem from below... you can point your light at the surface and the shine will shimmer down like if coming from above. Quite beautiful.

Surfacing in an air (?) pocket

A decorated area in a side exploration off the main line.
Felt like an elephant in a china shop, but didn't break anything.

Return to the cavern area... daylight at last.

Next time I'll hit the gym with a little more frequency for a few months before coming. If I want to get into out-of-the way cenotes, long walks with 50 kgs on your back are required. Most of the really interesting sites are out of the way. The Pit is now more accessible but it's still a 250 meters walk. The Blue Abyss even further from where you can get to with a 4WD.

This is a unique place. Where caves are the most accessible. But it still pays to come prepared.