Category: Scuba Diving

I apologize to those of you who had been following along. I have dropped the ball. Life has been CRAZY this year.

Previously on, BBYODO, we had just returned from the Riviera Maya and purchased a home in Puerto Aventuras. I had a horrific diving accident at 100 feet that landed me in the chamber with the bends and I thought I would likely never dive again.

Shortly after we returned from Mexico in November, we began plotting a return trip to get the new house ready. We had hoped to close on our property in January but the seller lived in Colorado and the secretary of state there was backed up for weeks due to Covid. She need a letter apostilled so her attorney in Mexico would have power of attorney to sign all the documents on her behalf. We were able to do the same in Washington and it only took a few days. Our trip back to Puerto Aventuras and our new home had been booked for late February. Well, closing day in January came and went and we agreed to an extension to early February. That day came and went… at this point, we were becoming very nervous about the entire process. We had already wired all of our money to the escrow account set up by our agent and it wasn’t that we were concerned about that, we were concerned that the seller would fail to preform and we were already committed to this house emotionally and financially. Ultimately, the night before our flight, we agreed on a soft close. The form that we had been waiting for from the State of Colorado finally came the first week of March while we were there. SUCH a relief!

While we were down in February, I knew I was not ready to go back to diving. Instead, we made our way to Akumal and spent the day snorkeling with the Turtles in Akumal bay. By the way, there is a trick to avoiding all the people selling tours, etc. Go grab some breakfast at Lol-Ha where you can park close to the bay or consider visiting Akumal Dive Center to rent a locker or gear if you need it. From Lol-Ha, walk down toward the bay and slightly to your right. You do not need to buy a tour to swim in the bay but these rules are constantly changing. You do need to stay out of the roped off areas but there is still plenty of bay to explore on your own. Here is a great map with tips and tricks I found for Akumal bay. Turtles galore! Make sure you wear biodegradable sunscreen and don’t wear fins.

I am not going to lie, just having my face in the water with a snorkel was anxiety producing. At one point, I ended up leaving Lisa to do her own thing while I collected myself. I had no expectations of being able to go diving but I was surprised that just being in the ocean was PTSD provoking. This is not ok! The whole reason we chose the area of Mexico that we did was so we would have very easy accessibility to the ocean, diving, etc. It was about this time I befriended a woman named Robin who owns Aquanauts dive shop in Puerto Aventuras. I shared with her my experience and fears and she confidently told me that she would be ready to help me get back in the water when I was ready. Having the correct fitting gear and the right instructor were going to be the answer. She even offered to let me try out her own wing style BCD to ensure proper fit (Women, especially big busted gals don’t fit into standard BCDs…) and having a BCD with integrated weights was going to be a must for me but I just wasn’t ready in March.

July rolls around and we head back to Mexico. (see why I have had no time to blog? I can’t wait until I am no longer working full time and the move is over!) At this point, we had submitted 48 pages of documents to the Consulate and were awaiting an email regarding our residency applications. If you learn anything about Mexico from this blog, know that the only thing that is consistent is inconsistency. If you are thinking about applying for residency, I highly suggest you visit websites for each one within your area to see what they are requesting. Even if you give them everything that they are asking for, it is at their discretion whether you are approved or not and for what type. (permanent or temporal) The main Consulate website can be found here. Other important tip, you cannot start the residency process within Mexico! If you head down and fall in love with Mexico, you have to come back to start the residency process. Visitor visas are good for 180 days. While we were down, we received an email with our appointment date for our interviews for residency. Yay!!! We had not received any sort of confirmation that our papers had been received and the website states to not follow up with an email to check the status. It is a, don’t contact us, we will contact you, mañana, process. More to come on that later. By the way mañana doesn’t actually mean tomorrow, sometimes it does but it really just means later. So far, this experience has been an excellent exercise in patience, letting go, trusting the universe, and trying not to lose my hair in the process.

Circling back to what I had said about Aquanauts, I had decided that I was ready to ease back into some scuba gear, in a pool, and work with Emilio (DM) on skills and reestablishing my confidence. After a 3 hour session, I was feeling pretty confident. I was able to relax and enjoy my trip back in the water and I really just cannot say enough awesome things about Robin, Emilio and their whole staff. I wrote a pretty detailed review here. Safe to say, I am looking forward to buying my own equipment and many more dives with Aquanauts and grabbing a margarita or two with Robin! Until next time- Salud!