We are using our boating bag to carry our things.
Snuba is a new diving scheme, at least for us. Basically it uses the same gear as scuba, with a regulated tank for breathing underwater, but instead of carrying the tank on your back, you leave it on a little inflatable rubber boat on the surface and tow it by pulling on the air hose to it. Above are the tank boats. We get about 30 feet of hose between the tank and the mouthpiece.
The boat loads the four paying divers - another couple and us - and takes off into the Caribbean to the dive spot about a mile offshore. The Xcaret divers are using full scuba gear and wet suits.
After a brief training lecture we dive in and start descending to about 20 - 25 feet deep, cruising above the small reef formations on the bottom. Behind me is the other woman in the dive party besides Teri. The main problems we had to struggle with was adjusting our middle-ears to the intense pressure, and my poorly fitting mask that let too much water in. I had to stop descending due to a sharp earache. After less than a minute I could resume descent.
Teri was a reluctant diver, but she did quite well up to the time we had to resurface. She came up a little too fast and her right eardrum popped - quite painful. We mentioned this to the medical doctor caravaning with us, our new friend Dr. Warner Ahlgren, and got antibiotic ear drops. Her eardrum did heal in a couple of weeks.The worst part of the dive, besides the let-down caused by the poor comparison between the small reef here and our great dives in Key Sal - South of Key West, or even in the Lesser Antilles, was the wait for the shuttle boat to pick us up. The sea was rough and we floated holding onto our tank rafts for nearly 20 minutes bobbing up and down with the 4-5 foot seas.
We both became a little nauseous as a result of the bobbing, and perhaps because we could not allow more digestion time after lunch.
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