That's sophomore in high school, right?

Just got back from Cozumel late Sunday night... Was supposed to have been a
2 hour flight from CZM to IAH, but they changed the flight on us to go to
Cancun... f.ck... If I had wanted to got to Cancun, I would have booked at
flight there... Made for a 3 hour trip instead of a 2 hour one... Of course,
even more than 3 hours was spent going through security at CZM and
Immigration at IAH... CZM didn't have checked baggage x-ray machines, so
they were hand searching *every* bag that you checked... It took me awhile
to convince them that the power supply that I had with an 8 Ah 12VDC battery
in it was indeed allowed on the flight because it was a non-spillable
battery... One thing that I noticed in Cancun though was that the folliage
on the trees in the jungle did not seem to sustain the amount of damage that
I had seen to the trees in Cozumel... There was noticeably more greenery
there than on the Cozumel trees... The hurricane had gone right up the
channel between Cancun and Cozumel and I suspect that being on the "clean"
side of the storm made a bit of a difference...

We stayed in Hotel Cozumel & Resort... It was pretty much the only large
hotel that was back up and running so far... Some of the smaller hotels in
town were open from what I understood...  Our hotel was right across the
main road from the beach with a private beach area and dock for the dive
boats... The beach area sustained quite a bit of damage, but they were
creating forms for pouring a lot of concrete while we were there... They
seem to be learning lessons from the hurricane and building the replacement
items out of thicker concrete... We were one of the first guests at the
hotel since they had reopened after the hurricane... They spent about a
month getting everything repaired enough that they could have a limited
reopening... They were still doing a lot of construction... Each morning
around 08:30-09:00, you would hear them start up hammering or whatever in
the rooms down the hallway... They said that they want to get everything
ready for their "high season" starting around the latter part of December...

I had reserved a car via Budget for the 7 days ($125.40) and drove around
the island quite a bit... The car seemed fairly new and the air-conditioner
worked very well, so it was a pretty good deal... I suspect that many of
their previous cars were flooded and they brought new ones in from the
mainland... The damage to some of the buildings were fairly obvious, but
others you kind of had to wonder if they looked all that much different
prior to the hurricane... Not everywhere flooded on the island... Some homes
and businesses managed to escape being flooded... Some of the low lying
areas supposedly took a couple of weeks to dry out... Some of the very well
constructed buildings didn't appear to have sustained *any* damage... Some
of the smaller local shops away from the coast lost their roofs if they were
not made from concrete, but those seem to have been repaired quickly... The
coastal road was closed from just north of Punta Sur to a couple miles south
of the road across the island... They have a lot of people and equipment
working on it, but it appears that quite a few sections were washed out...
The Allegro resort has quite a bit of damage... They were hit pretty hard by
Emily and had nearly completed the repairs from it when they got hit by
Wilma... Many of the docks along the island were seriously damaged... Of
course, this gives a bit more bottom structure along the coast and as such
perhaps more fish when you're shore diving... The Navy facility is is pretty
bad shape and it appears that they moved their personnel to a facility
further inland... I did not notice any of the hotels on the northern end of
the island as being open yet, although there was quite a bit of repair work
going on... The harbor had two sunken pilot boats in it... The wooden
sailing boat had been supposedly sunk in the harbor, but it had been patched
with plywood and refloated and they were working on it when I went by
there... The storm had stripped most of the leaves from the trees around the
island, so it kind of looked like they had experienced Autumn and the leaves
had dropped... Not quite though since the smaller limbs had disappeared
also... They've trimmed back the broken limbs... The trees are starting to
bud again, so I suspect that since it's a tropical climate, within a year
things will be green again... Chancanab was seriously hit... The old coastal
road is washed out in various places around there... By the time I found an
alternate route to the cenote to the south of Chancanab, it was Saturday
evening, so I didn't get a chance to dive it this trip... One of the local
DMs said that the cave went about a mile into the mainland from there... The
first two days we were there, the water was very choppy on the west side of
the island -- perhaps 5 ft between the tops and bottoms of the waves at
time... I figured that the east side of the island would have better
conditions, so we headed over there to do some shore dives... They had nice
breaking waves over there, but was fairly smooth out past the surf zone...
It would have probably been pretty good surfing conditions... Towing Kaitlyn
through the surf zone sucked though... I snorkeled along the west coast on
one of the days when the water was too choppy for the dive boats to come up
to what was left of the pier... Needed to time the waves just right to keep
from getting beat to death going out or coming back in...

The deeper reefs haven't been damaged that much... One diver commented on
the absence of sea fans after the hurricane... The shallower reefs are a bit
sandy, but they should clear out soon enough... One of the DMs said that at
least one of the shallower reefs has completely disappeared... The dives we
did didn't seem to have the current speed that I had experienced in previous
years... They didn't really end up being drift dives -- we pretty much had
to swim to move along the reef in the dive... The quantity of marine life
did not seem to be as high as it had been before the hurricane... The
variety of marine life seemed about the same, but there just didn't seem to
be as many of them... Saw a couple of very large lobsters that I would have
liked to invite home for dinner... One very large sea turtle and other
smaller ones that were perhaps 2 ft in length... Saw a couple of eagle rays
off in the distance as I was swimming along one of the walls at around 110
ft... The largest had perhaps a 6-8 ft wingspan... The barracudas that I saw
were mainly the smaller variety -- perhaps 2-3 ft in length... Saw one nerf
shark -- perhaps 7-8 ft in length... Various smaller moray eels...
Octopus... Scorpion fish... Variety, but not necessarily quantity...

Grace didn't think she would need a wetsuit... I brought it anyway... By the
end of the first dive, she was shivering and her legs had started to
cramp... She hates it when I'm right...

   Maybe, but I'm guilty sometimes too.   ;-)

Curtis

   Wrong, no "us" involved.......my kind of gorilla is a title, not a name,
and needs to be awarded by people of status.   ;-)

   BTW, diverging and diversity not synonymous.

   Happy Turkey Day!

Curtis

90% of Us couldnt give a f.ck less about hockey.