Back from Mexico... can I tell you about Dressels?

[freedivernd]

This happens everytime (I take that back, the folks at Tri-state diving in Detroit Lakes have been great!). this might get looooong.

Remeber... I e-mailed the rep from Dressels a half dozen times to clear my freediving with the dive shop at the resort we went to. Everything was set, I printed out the e-mails and brought them along, left the weights at home because I could use some from the dive shop at the resort. That was the first wrong assumption. I go to the dive shop to get weights for my wife and I so we can go do some simple snorkeling around the resort and am told "no, they're only for the scuba divers, we don't rent them out".. O.k. I think.. let's see, you rent masks, fins, snorkels... but no weights? I show my e-mails from the rep of dressels and inform them that I left all my weights at home because I was of the understanding that I would be taken care of at the resort. The gal reads over the e-mails and says "freediving?, we won't take you out on the boat". O.K.? so what the he?? am I doing here 3000 frikken miles from home with no weights, promises that mean squat, and thank you very much! You can't imagine how disappointed I was. My wife wasn't to impressed either.. in the salt water she can't get down to twelve feet without tremendous effort unless she's wearing 6lbs of weight (and that's without a wetsuit), and with that she's still very bouyant, AND she loves to be under the water. And they won't let us rent, use, or even BUY weights from them. NOT IMPRESSED!! This leads us to the dock to find anyone that will part with their weights. Finally, we find a captain from a different resort that sells us 10 lbs of weights so we can at least get in some easy diving.. jeez!

You gotta realize... for nearly 1/2 mile off the shore where we were at it only max's at 12' deep, most of the time it was less than 6!!! One calm day we made the swim out to where the dive boat had been going.. found a cut that was 45' (as deep as I had planned on going on this trip). Then a Dressel captain came to us and told us we were in the boat traffic lane and should go back towards the shore.--- oh yeah... are you saying it would have been safer to be out here with a boat? Did you forget that at the dive shop they told me I couldn't go on one?! I coudn't believe it.. I take that back.. I guess it didn't surprise me. I had resolved before I left home that if I would enjoy the shallow snorkeling with my wife, even if that was all we did. And we did.. for 4 hours a day most of the days. We traveled to were we pitched the tent last year, saw the largest green moray eel I've ever seen, eagle rays, and other rays, either some permit or pompano, couldn't tell for sure have to look in a book, huge angel fish, etc. etc. And we did find some fairly good snorkeling around the resort when we snuck off to one side or the other. Did get to one cenote. .. and no, after the turn off at Dressels never did do a scuba dive.. if some of the pictures turn out I'll post em.

Fred

[tbrown]

Sorry bout your luck with Dressel. Who the hell refuses to rent weights? But you have to admit, the ceynote was pretty cool though huh?