Mexico 2006 Day 1
I arrive at Zero Gravity and met up with Fred Devos, who I had briefly met in Florida, and who would show me round this week. Fred is DIR Mexico’s newest GUE Fundamentals/Cave 1 Instructor but has been teaching with other cave agencies for a long time. He’s quiet and a very modest guy, who has a passion for the caves, for Mexico and for exploration which is, like everything about Fred, understated but clearly runs deep.
I was only diving in the morning on the first day so we headed to Taj Mahalwhich is a bare 100 yards from Zero Gravity along the main road – then off on to a typical jungle track. I dived Taj Mahal on my Cave 1 course but didn’t really remember it. There are two lines – one gold, one white and Fred led us off running the reel to the white line for our first dive.
It took me a few minutes to relax back into the slow steady pace required for the caves here and I was pleased that Fred ran the reel and led the dive. After 20 minutes we came to a restriction and started our return.
Second dive I led in. I knew I was looking for the gold line which would be to my left and was baffled to find the white line in the way as I was convinced that it was off to my right. Fred indicated that I was correct and I should continue - it turned out that another team had entered the cave and I had come across their reel rather than the second permanent line.
This dive is interesting as the passage which is never very deep goes very, very shallow to what is known as the DCS dome – at around 1 metre in depth. The passage then goes down again and the tunnel gets tighter – so the dive was called at this point. A relaxing and easy start to my trip.
