[PACKRMAN]

Hola Everybody

I regret to inform you that we are back in the States. This was easily a Top Five vacation for the Block family.

As some of you know our vacation started a little rocky when my wife thought it would be a good idea to check on our Tues. flight at 5:00 Sunday afternoon. It turns out that AA no longer flies to Cozumel on Tuesday. We were given the option of flying at 8:00 Monday morning or on Friday the day before we had to fly back. After about 3 hours of Panic Mode we were packed, had the dogs boarded, made arrangements at work, and “thought” we had a place to stay when we got there. While checking in at the airport Monday we had a pleasant surprise in an upgrade to First Class from Dallas to Cozumel. We were also able to get in touch with the travel agent when we landed in Dallas and he was able to secure our rooms for the extra day during our layover. About this time Ellen got an e-mail that our original flight was cancelled (GEE THANKS).

We stayed at the Cozumel Palace. What a FABULOUS resort. It has 175 rooms, everything was spotless, and a spectacular staff. The girls in my family don’t dive but they were more than happy to spend the week in the spa. According to my daughter Ramone or Raymond or Ricardo or what ever his name is, was just “special”.

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The in house dive shop is Aqua World and I booked a pair of dives for the next day. Way too many people. There were 25 people on the boat split into 4 groups. In all fairness they were very organized, but still, way too many people. The dives were at Palancar Caves and Yucab Reef. Palancar had several turtles and a good sized lobster but visibility was only about 60 – 75 feet. At Yucab the DM knew where to find a couple of Lion Fish. He tried to net the smaller of the two but got help from the boats Captain and a spear for the second.

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The next three days we dove with Aqua Safari. I liked this a lot more. We had as few as 5 divers and as many as 9, but there was always a Dive Master and a Safety Diver to keep track of the herd. We went to Punta Dalila and Chankanaab reef on Wednesday and saw a mixed bag of critters including our first shark.

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Thursday we went to Paso del Cedral and San Francisco Reef. New for the day were a couple of nice grouper and a mongo lobster. He wasn’t the 6 footer other people had reported but his body was easily over 3 foot and his antenna alone were as long as I was.

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Friday we were at Santa Rosa Wall and back to Yucab. We did several swim thrus that were a lot of fun and found a sea horse. Visibility was by far the best this day and it was nice to just drift along and enjoy the view. Water temps. were never below 83 deg. and I chose to dive without a wetsuit everyday. On the last couple of days visibility was so good that sometimes the safety stop offered as much or more to see than drifting 3 feet over the reef.

I have to admit that most vacations I am always ready to get home, sleep in my own bed, take care of our horses and micromanage the hell out of work. But this time I was pretty bummed when I saw the dive boat pull up to the pier while we were packing to go home. All of these pictures are as they were taken, and I had quite a bit of trouble uploading them to the website. I would appreciate any suggestions on taking better pictures or on how to improve them afterwards.

Thanks