Jacques Cousteau Island

Where scuba diving was brought to the masses via the ground breaking TV documentary of Jacques Cousteau. Cozumel is Mexico’s largest island and only Caribbean island and was made famous in the 60’s by the famed French marine biologist.
We booked a snorkel trip from the mainland and caught the ferry over to the island, serenaded on the way by the ship’s house band who were pretty good! Getting off, we instantly realised we’d been done on the snorkel trip tickets we’d bought on the mainland. Lines of eager boat owners and tour touts lined the dock and this would be the place to buy. All in all though, if we were two weeks in, we were the palest white of tourists ever, and this was the first time we’d been ripped off it wasn’t bad! We vowed to get our money back by being the hardest barterers ever from now on though.
 Snorkelling in the legendary crystal clear waters was the idea and the water really was amazing. The clearest and bluest I’d ever seen. Loads of fish and strange things. The island had been ravaged for 72 hours straight, by a huge storm not so long ago though and lots of the reef had been destroyed. It’s returning but the bits we saw were not the best. Kath met some people later who said the scuba diving was the best they’d ever seen. They must have gone a bit out of the way of our standard tourist boat I think.
 One of the ideas of this trip was for us to go Scuba diving together everywhere. Kath had her PADI qualification and I didn’t even think about not being able to do it, even though I’d never even opened my eyes under the water before and didn’t particularly like being anywhere except on top of it. I have to admit that I really didn’t like snorkelling, it freaked me out and I realized why I’d never really pursued it before. It wasn’t a good sign for the scuba diving to come!

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