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Somebody asked me to post an account of our Merida trip. The best
bet would be to let the guys from Texas A&M do that since I never even
knew the names of the caves we dove. I can tell you my observations,
however.
Merida sounds very much like the Spanish word that it should be
named. There are no dive shops. We had to buy gas from another city and
have it delivered in to a local cave diver's ( Roberto Hashimoto )
house. We then had to go to a machine shop in town which had a
compressor.
The good news is that the local Ecology Dept. is big on cataloging
the sinks and gives you all the help you need, and the local cave divers
do the same, what few of them there are. A man named Fernando Rosado is
the President of the local cave diving goup, and he is an extremely nice
guy and very helpful. The local residents of the villages are very
helpful as well, one place cooking us food and bringing it to the dive
site.
The bad news is that everything is spread way out, and most sinks
require a Bill Stone style operation to even get into the water. Most of
them are deep and have no cave. The water is hot at 80 degrees, with no
difference between the temp of the salt and fresh. The caves are
decorated at the entrances, and then look like Leon Sinks after that.
The water is clear, but not like Akumal - more like Leon Sinks on a good
day.
We put together one of our usual type dives and pretty much
finished off the cave we were to explore in one morning, setting the
record for the area at the same time with all three teams adding line in
a leapfrog routine. Brent Scarbin and I started out with a quick couple
of reels to the old end, followed by Derek Hagler , Ken Sallot and Chuck
Noe adding to that, followed by Jess Armentrout, Bill Mee and John Rose
throwing down another reel. There were no side tunnels. Tom Iliffe's
crew from A&M did the creatures and Hydrolab stuff,set plankton traps
and conducted other halocline ( which is at 182 feet in this one)
experiments and the local University ran another bunch of tests, and
then Hagler sidemounted the other direction and nailed a giant room full
of previosly unknown artifacts under a Mayan Temple. We snatched the
gear and Brent and I went to reload the tanks ( we only dove the stages,
leaving the back gas full). This took six hours - a logisitcal
nightmare.
The next few days were spent checking other places, all very
beautiful. I left Tuesday morning, and the rest all filterd back one at
a time, leaving Trout and Brent down there. They were to dive in the
original cave some more to finish the mapping of the end, but I have not
heard how far they got. The cave got faily squirly after a few thousand
feet, whereas it had been much like Cheryl Sink for the better part of a
mile before that.
The one real negative comment that I can make is that there are a few
local severe strokes down there who think that deep is everything, and
deep air especially. They are diving air on their back with a side
bottle of mix to get deeper. These guys are also the local "tech"
instructors. Some people never learn, and some training agencies need
the boot to the butt in my opinion. The abosolute worst idiot down
there is none other than the local TDI big shot, as you would expect.
On a positive note, I can tell you from flyhing over the area and
looking at the topos that they have enough sinks for everyone who is
cave certified in the World to have their own cave to explore.
I lost 8 pounds on the trip, if that tells you anything - it is hard
work diving there, but as always with new stuff, worth it.
Iliffe's guys can fill in the rest of teh detail, as well as the
other WKPP guys, when they get back. We had the usual crew including
Dawn.
Otherwise, we are conducting rebreather training in Ft Lauderdale
this weekend and getting ready for Leon Sinks and Wakulla again. I also
got a new toy, which you guys have to see to believe.
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