Open Water

One of the most beautiful places I have ever been is the coastal area south of Cancun. On our last trip there we were diving in a swift drift looking for turtles. My husband and I were with the dive master who was an ex-marine. There were 3 other couples with us who went with another guide to another spot, because they were beginners. So, essentially our boat left us but the operator said that they would be back by the time we were ready to surface. I was a little worried at that point but went along with the plan.

We saw some beautiful sea turtles. They are huge, beautiful, friendly creatures! It was so peaceful and almost magical to be drifting with them. Our time was up all too soon; we needed to surface since we were at the end of our air supply. You guessed it, no boat anywhere in sight!

Have you ever seen the movie Open Water? That was us, only we had the Marine and we didn't die. We floated for about 40 minutes waiting for any boat or craft; there were none. At this point our guide began cussing up a storm he was so angry. He probably could have made it to shore but I wouldn't have. So we began to rack our brians for solutions to this problem. We came up with doing the only thing we really could, which was blowing our dive whistles!

I never even thought about my dive whistle before that day but I was so glad we had them because some jet skiers finally happened by close enough to hear us blowing our little hearts out.

The jet skiers didn't pick us up but they did find our boat for us. We were in the water floating for almost two hours by the time we climbed back in! Our Marine hit the guy running the boat and nearly knocked him out...I was just glad to be going back to land.

The lesson? Never go on a split dive in Mexico!