As most of you know we have a little bit of a situation in the Riviera Maya concerning line arrows.
There is one individual that changes all permanent arrows in the caves to poor quality pink arrows which already in months time were bent completly out of shape and are more pointing to the ceiling, floor and walls rather than the exit.
Now I have no personal problem with this person nor with the color pink but the quality of the arrows are to some concern. But honestly I did not care too much and just left markers out of my briefings as they seem to change on monthly basis.
In the last couple of months though another diver decided to act and cut off all the tips of these pink arrows which leaves us with bent out of shape arrows with no nose...
I have also no personal problems with this person and even understand to a degree his desperate action.
The safety officers of the area are all very successful and busy cave diving instructors who simply do not have the time to fight this situation.
After having been asked repeatitly in the last weeks by several customers about this situation and why noone seems to act upon it and thinking of the countless visitors the caves of mexico get every year I decided to do smth.
Within hours it was clear I was not the only one and so via FB and other media we found right away about 15 local cave divers/instructors/guides that are all agreeing to the fact that we want safer cave diving with quality line arrows. And not only that, the plan is also to follow floridas example in installing some distance markers as well as putting the names of sections on the arrows which would help visitors to navigate.
Only thing needed, LINE ARROWS of course. In the same moment I contacted ALL mayor training agencies AND gear manufacturers explaining them our desperate situation.
My email was answered by three organisations:
NSS CDS was the fastest telling me they will help and that my email was forwarded to the right people...that was 11 days ago no news anymore...
NACD wanted to bring out a statement that condamns such a behaviour...which was 10 days ago...no news either
GUE was actually in a 6 email exchange with me and looked pretty good but now is 6 days and no word...
I understand that they are in the US and its sort of not their problem so no hard feelings at all!
No one else has answered to my email...
Its just a bit sad that our community is pretty helpless in situations like this...
Anywho we have not give up, we found a producer of line arrows in poland which hopefully will cut us a good deal and now we will start asking around from shop to shop to get some money for the arrows.
This will happen and we all work hard to make it happen earlier than later.
Any people passing through once we have the arrows, if you wanna help you are welcome to join the cause for safer and easier navigation in the mexican caves.
On the other hand if you happen to leave mexico and you wanna safe some luggage leave us your arrows and we will put them to good use!!!
cheers
P
