Report from the cave training with Marco Wagner - Mexico 2008

Our journey began in Gdansk, from where we flew to Frankfurt and then to Cancun, where we changed to buses provided by the diving base.

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On the 19th of March 2008 our team arrived late in the evening to our destination which was Tulum. H2O Pro Diving is at the same time a base, a diving centre and a hotel, run by a German – Marco and a very nice Korean – Kim. The hotel consists of two buildings, where several clean and tidy rooms are available. The whole is decorated quite modernly, and an additional plus is a swimming pool. In the catering offer they only have breakfast, but this is not a problem, because the next meal can be eaten in one of the many great pubs in the city

On the 20th of March we start our training under the guidance of Marco. The first day is mainly theory and skills training for the next stages of the cave diving course, which we practice in Carwash Cave. In addition to Christian and myself, there is another German in our team, for whom this was the first dive in a two-cylinder set. No wonder he had problems with swimming backwards or manipulating the valves, which we had already mastered. That day we did three dives full of practice. We finished the intensive training day with a dinner on the town in one of the local pubs.

The next day, we continue diving in Carwash cave, on the way to which we stock up on provisions in the form of Subway sandwiches. In between dives, Marco loads us with lots of theory, and discusses all the mistakes we make. The theory covers all the possible emergencies that can occur during this type of diving, such as lack of light, loss of gas, losing the railing, or sharing air with a partner. We end the day with dinner in an Argentinian restaurant, where we eat steaks from arachera, a part of the cow that you won’t find in Europe because it is made differently.

22 March, is our third day of our stay, during which we do four dives. Two in Cristal Cave and two in Carwash Cave. During them we repeat the exercises served by Marco to the point of boredom. These again consist of: bad visibility, mask rupture and lack of air in the partner. Exhausted to the limit, we eat a seafood dinner and go to recuperate while we sleep.

For the next few days we repeat the set of exercises from Marco and complete the tasks he assigns us. In addition to the caves mentioned above, we dive in places such as Calavera, Gran Conote, and Escaltido. In total, our training consisted of eighteen dives, not exceeding 20m in depth, with times between 23min and 82min, after which we were certified as Full Cave Divers.

To sum it all up, we should emphasise the diligence and great professionalism of our instructor – Marco. In addition to the qualifications, we took away amazing memories from Mexico of magnificent caves filled with stalactites, stalagmites and stalagnates. They are an amazing composition with sensational visibility reaching 50m. A place definitely worth recommending, I myself will definitely want to return there.

Source and Photo: Divers24