Day 1 of the cave course

After a good nights sleep I got up had a coffee and doughnut for brekkie from the 'oxxo' across the road and stumbled the 10 foot to the dive centre from my room to meet up with Jason Renoux who has kindly organised my training over here and even picked me up from the airport along with Fiona his partner. Jason introduced me to my Instructor 'Nando' now Nando is a bit of a 'dive god' and is a technical cave diver instructor trainer!! basically if he says jump you just jump and wait til he says its ok to come down again :)

FirstlyI had to do the boring paperwork that accompanies every course you do in diving, this seems more serious though, mainly because I was sat next to a large plaque saying ' do not enter without training! over 300 people have died in caves like this one, including scuba instructors!!"

Next it was time to 'show' Nando my equipment :) He wasnt quite as impressed as I was though, it seems my almost new Hollis sidemount BCD wasnt quite streamlined enough for cave diving. So after lots of 'fettling' we went of to 'Ponderosa Cenote' this was a beautiful spot out in the jungle, we got out of the van and almost immediately I was set upon by mozzies and biting ants, liberal amounts of industrial strength insecticide kept them at bay for a while.

Nando now decided t

he best way to make my kit more 'cave ' orientated was to customise it a fraction, OUT CAME THE SCISSORS!!