Discovering Scuba in Cabo

It was the bubbles that initially disturbed me; there were so many of them and they seemed to overwhelm the training pool and cloud my visibility. But they didn't stop me from venturing with Cabo Adventures on a boat to my first diving site on what was my first ever scuba dive.

On the vessel, I discovered I was about to enter the Sea of Cortez with fifty pounds of equipment strapped around me. I also unnervingly found out I'd be sitting on the edge of the boat and falling blindly backwards into the warm water behind and below me. I was incredulous that holding my mask with one hand and placing my other hand behind my head would prevent the mask from tearing away on impact with the sea. (The mask stayed securely on.) Yet I was still bravely undeterred from making the dive.

Floating with a buoyancy vest was effortless, as was rolling over uncontrollably, belly up and floundering. But following my Mexican guides' instructions to pull myself along a line to a buoy in water twenty feet deep kept me focused and mostly right-side up.

The hand-below-hand descent along a knotted rope below the buoy was also easy as a guide timed it and released air from my vest while instructing me through hand signals to pinch my nose and blow gently to equalize ear pressure until I reached the seafloor. I was breathing comfortably through the regulator connecting my mouth to the shorty tank on my back and attached to my vest. An additional weighted belt seemed to re-enforce the law of gravity even in the weightlessness of the salty ocean.

Somewhere attached to me was a gauge indicating the air pressure in my tank. An hour or so before, on dry land above and near the busy pier in Cabo San Lucas, I had learned how to communicate that pressure reading non-verbally: two fingers on my forearm followed by five fingers in the air to convey 2500 psi, for example. I was told that a pressure reading in the thousands, when a tank was fuller, was good, but in the hundreds was an indication of dangerously low air. But I never actually learned exactly where the gauge was so I relied on Sofia and Brandon, the tour's instructors and guides, to keep their eye on it and, by extension, keep me alive.

I did however know where the octopus was. If for some reason the regulator came out of my mouth and I couldn't find it, or if it stopped functioning for some other reason than the air tank was empty, the bright yellow octopus attached to the right side of my vest would serve as a back-up line to my air supply.

The instructors had told me and the other two beginners - a young couple in their early twenties from Van Nuys - to assume positions like lying on our bellies or, perhaps more aptly, like Supermen flying. As such, we kicked our flipper-donned feet in the direction of Sofia. Along the white, sandy floor, a couple of large, spiny pufferfish joined our fivesome. The fish seemed as curious about us as we were about them.

I restrained from giving the thumbs up because that hand sign signaled I wanted to ascend. Not surprisingly a thumbs down indicated I wanted to descend which was not physically possible when already on the seafloor. The closest appropriate signal I had in my limited vocabulary was the 'ok' signal with my thumb and forefinger in a circle. The puffers were indeed more than okay but that's all I could communicate.

It was only minutes after that initial encounter with the Sea of Cortez's sea life when I tested the full limit of my hand signals. We followed Sofia to Pelican Rock several feet away and our ultimate dive destination, a stone monolith populated below water with purple sea fans, sea urchins, and an abundance of tropical fish. (Guess what hangs out there above water? Yes, pelicans.) I saw several surgeonfish and king angelfish, whetting my appetite to see deeper-living sea life after decades of snorkeling within only a foot or two of the ocean's surface.

The sandy floor started gradually descending, the sunlight darkening slightly either because of the depth, or, possibly, because it was late afternoon. I followed Sofia along with Sherry and Emanuel from LA for a dozen feet, noticing Sofia pick up and discard a large sea shell. But I soon paused when I felt a pain in my ears and temples. Pinching my nose, I blew lightly, sensing slight pops alleviate the pressure and the pain. But the discomfort quickly returned and was joined by a loud hum and some squeaks.

By then, Sofia and the others were much further ahead of me but Brandon was still right next to me. I indicated there was a problem using a signal, rotating my open hand at the wrist with the fingers pointing up. Afterwards I closed the fingers, indicating a pain, and pointed at my ear.

Brandon understood, indicating I should pinch my nose and blow by pinching his own nose. Of course I followed suit but I still felt some pain and continued to hear those unfamiliar noises. What was that whirr, a motor boat above me?

His goggles close to mine, Brandon knew in my eyes even before my thumb pointed up that I wanted to ascend and abort the mission. I had discovered my diving Achilles' heel and it was in my head quite literally.

We swam to the tethered line below the buoy and slowly ascended the twenty feet, pausing every two feet for Brandon to check his gigantic wristwatch. Some diving organizations recommend ascending no faster than thirty feet per minute in order to avoid decompression sickness, or the bends. We safely took our time and I was fine as I floated - Brandon must have added air to my vest at some point - over to the waiting boat where I passed up my weight belt and heavily-loaded vest to a couple of crew members.

Brandon had moments before offered to take me back down where we could dive in shallower water. But I insisted he return to the group so his other two customers could get what they paid for as safely as possible. After all, I had already gotten fifteen minutes of the real scuba diving experience: mask, fins, regulator, tank, buoyancy vest, weights, hand signals, and a twenty foot descent. My head in deep water just didn't quite feel right and the silent communication frustrated me.

"How about snorkeling?" Brandon asked me. Back in my comfort zone and in a beautiful little corner of the sea, I jumped at the chance. The team on the boat quickly exchanged my mask for another with an attached snorkel in addition to tossing me my underwater camera - frustratingly forbidden on the dive - and I headed toward Pelican Rock.

An endless supply of colorful fish waited for me along the steep underwater walls of the formation located a hundred feet or so off shore. We were less than half a mile from Los Arcos, close to where the land mass of Baja California ends and the Pacific Ocean meets the Sea of Cortez in a zone popular with divers, snorkelers, and glass-bottom boats.

The water had terrific visibility, alas perfect for diving but just as excellent for snorkeling. The side of Pelican Rock away from the beach, facing the sea, was roped off to swimmers because both boat traffic was zipping by and humans were diving from the rock.

I was able to get close to a large number of whitecheek surgeonfish, king angelfish, yellowtail surgeonfish, giant damselfish, and Moorish idols, to name just a few species. Coral, sea urchins, and purple sea fans populated the rocky mass creating a colorful habitat just as vibrant as the darting fish.

In a shallow, protected cove I found a school of tiny yellow surgeonfish, too vulnerable to survive predation in the open ocean. Next to one large, mature specimen, in another area, I photographed several spotted neon-blue fish that I later identified as immature damselfish. Pelican Rock turned out to be a sort of nursery for juvenile fish.

I soon spotted my diving group, twenty feet below, admiring a massive bait ball of sardines that reached all the way to me on the water's surface. The foursome's dive was nearing its end and they soon slowly ascended the same rope line that I had less than one half-hour earlier.

Yes, the kids had also felt some pain in their ears and temples, and yes, they had heard unfamiliar sounds. But they were more interested in the seafloor and the sea life, the swarms of eels and the giant pufferfish, and didn't mind the discomfort. Somewhere in the instruction, verbally no doubt, they had heard to keep calm and carry on, and consequently had the time of their lives.