MX Recommendation

[Walter Pickel]

You could also look into Caracol - www.labnaha.com Talk to Sergio or Pep, they are great. Caracol is on the same road as Nohoch Nah Chich; just a little further. They actually have a 400' bottom lighted snorkel tour through Caracol...Pretty neat when you think about it.

I also have some Caracol info on my site (the fledgling Mexico side)

Oh yeah....www.mxlogic.com does rock for a company!

[Aktun]

My wife and I are going to get to dive next Saturday with Protec in Playa. I was wondering which cave you might pick if you had two dives in one day with Protec?

My wife and I are both Intro to Cave level. We dove the two loops at Dos Ojos already.

Thanks,
Hans

i can suggest a good cavern intro dive at chikin ha to ask your guide take you there., send pm for details if interested.
David

[Simon Richards]

Why are there no guided intro dives in MX? What intro restrictions eliminate the possibility? Do all the dives start with a jump or t in the main line? Or is it the unavailability of H valves? Please expand on your response.

I can't address why. I can only tell you that the official guide system is only set up to for "Snorkle", "Cavern" and "Cave". This was done in response to fatalities several years ago, so it would be hard to change now.

The Snorkle dives are a hoot. There are 2 guides, one in front, and one in back of the group. The guides both have lights, but none of the tourists do. They also have no fins. I *think* the theory is nobody will stray off, with no light :-)

They take "Cavern" well beyond the US defination of Cavern, but not as far as intro. They only tanks I have ever seen available are regular OW single 80's.

For "Cave", there are a few places, like Protec, that have double, manifolded 80's. They do allow penetrations up to thirds on those tanks.

While it may be possible to talk an individual guide into taking you beyond cavern, the oficial system doesn't have any provisions for it, and if caught, the guide would be in trouble.

Hi Forrest.

What you say about cavern dives is correct - some of those have Ts on the line (e.g. Taj Mahal has three I think), so those ones do not meet the normal standards for a cavern dive - if the dive shop is an APSA member then the guides should be following APSA standards for those.

What you say about intro dives needs to be expanded. There are plenty of intro dives that can be done. If you want a guide (which I would always recommend for people not familiar with the caves and the area), that guide will be calling themselves a cave guide rather than an intro guide or cavern guide, but they will be able to do just intro dives without problems - in my view one of the responsibilities of a guide is anyway to suggest dives within the training, experience and ability level of the divers.

Standard tanks here are single or double AL80s. A few places have H or Y valves, but not many. Plenty of places now have double 80s.

As regards the original poster, provided Protec are aware of your certification level, I have no doubt that they will arrange plenty of enjoyable dives which are within your certification and ability levels, as would any of the other reputable dive operations.

Regards,

Simon

[Moonfuzzy]

Intro = no jumps.

From what I remember, almost all the caves I saw in Mexico had a line running the perimeter of the cavern, and then jumps if you wanted to do any penetration into the caves themselves. It seems that the way these caves are set up means that there are almost no true intro dives (unless you bring a really BIG reel and run your own line in).

[Simon Richards]

Intro = no jumps.

From what I remember, almost all the caves I saw in Mexico had a line running the perimeter of the cavern, and then jumps if you wanted to do any penetration into the caves themselves. It seems that the way these caves are set up means that there are almost no true intro dives (unless you bring a really BIG reel and run your own line in).

There certainly are lots of caves like that, where you would be wanting to jump off the cavern line, which doesn't meet intro standards, but also plenty where you don't have to do that. In a couple of minutes I just counted out to myself over 20 tourist intro dives where you would be laying a primary line straight from open water, and I am not particularly familiar with tourist diving here. For all of those a 300 foot reel will suffice (and for many 100 foot would do it) if you know the way.

[rjack]

For my class (GUE cave1) and afterwards we ran an independent line from OW (400ft works everywhere). Only once or twice in 16 dives did we have to cross a cavern line.

There are Ts in many systems though. Temple of Doom is one with several Ts not very far in.

RJ

[FW]

What you say about intro dives needs to be expanded. There are plenty of intro dives that can be done. If you want a guide (which I would always recommend for people not familiar with the caves and the area), that guide will be calling themselves a cave guide rather than an intro guide or cavern guide, but they will be able to do just intro dives without problems - in my view one of the responsibilities of a guide is anyway to suggest dives within the training, experience and ability level of the divers.

True, but you will probably have to pay for a "private" guided dive. They wouldn't be able to mix intro and full cave in the same group.

[Luxrok]

My wife and I just got back from MX tonight and we had a great time. We ended up doing 4 intro dives. We dived Gran Cenote, Car Wash, Dos Ojos Imax Line and Doce Palmas river run. We did a total of 4 dives. Minimum dive duration was 60 minutes give or take. We had ZERO problems using our Discretionary Apprentice Cave Cards. The shop was very supportive. It was Allie, myself and our guide Pietro.

We had our slew of normal problems. Allie's primary light failed to work because of some corrosion. Then we had a primary reel problem when a locking nut broke, we had an half empty set of doubles and we temporarily lost the reflector for a primary light during our s drills. Every problem was handled very quickly and without any further issues. Everything was low key and completely laid back. Pietro and Bernie are rock stars and made us feel completely at home. I am very grateful to the both of them.

On the Imax Line we made it about 32 minutes back into the cave on 1/6's. It was really beautiful back there. My wife thought that the dive up stream from Doce Palmas was the best. We even spotted a little green tree frog. I think out of the 4 dives Imax was my favorite, it is amazing how white it is back there.

Next time we go back I will be full cave and Allie plans to finish cave down there. That is if all the training stars get into alignment.

I can now tell you from personal experience that there are some amazing intro level dives. We did have to run our reel back to the main lines from open water. We nearly exhausted our primary reel in pursuit of the start of the main line. Normally, the guide would jump from the cavern line to the main line, but since there are no jumps for us we just had to reel in the 250' from open water.

Thanks for the recommendations!
Hans

[FW]

I am glad you had a good trip. You ended up doing "private" guided dives. Did you have to pay extra for them?

[Luxrok]

We paid $100/day/person + tanks + fills + entrance. So it was a little on the expensive side. It was private. I couldn't sustain that kind of spending but for two days of diving it wasn't bad.