Diving Advice

Advice for Cavern and Cave Divers
Once you decide to use our facility for your cave diving training and education, we are confident that your visit and participation will be a rewarding and enjoyable experience. There is much information to learn and many skills to achieve during your course. To help you better prepare for your training we have put together this pamphlet with a list of suggestions of items to bring to make your visit more pleasant, resources to obtain to establish a solid foundation for the type of diving you will be involved with and input of things you may not need bring. Fair enough?...

Prepare For The Weather
* Tropical climate. We suggest shorts and T-shirts.
* For shoes, sandals work fine, but we strongly suggest shoes or boots to hike the rugged paths.
* Insect repellent for mosquitoes is necessary during summer and early fall.
* Ear infections. It seems that for every ten divers we will get at least three suffering from ear infections from the daily diving in the cenotes. Algae blooms and your ears may not acclimated to this new area well. We highly suggest you take care of your ears daily so you will not ruin your trip near the end of your visit. Look for swimmers ear drops at your drug store, or make your own solution of 1/2 vinegar and 1/2 hydrogen peroxide.

Dive Site Fees
None of the Dive site land is unowned - most of the Dive sites are owned by Mayan families. They charge a nominal fee - generally around $10 for each dive site. In all of our class settings, dive site fees are included.

Log books and Certifications
* Bring your logbook and certification cards to verify qualifications and experience.

Equipment
We supply the following specialty equipment for the cave and cavern courses.
For cave divers:
* Back Mount Wings and plate
* 7 foot low pressure hose
* Tanks
* Weights
* Primary reels 1
* Traditional primary light

For cavern divers:
* Primary reels
* Tanks
* Weights
 
If you already own or want to buy your own specialty equipment for the course - GREAT! Bring it with you.
Students must supply all personal gear.

For cave divers:
* Mask. Extra mask optional.
* Power fins and booties
* Open water regulator with pressure gauge and octopus second stage
* Depth gauges and watch and/or dive computer(s).
* Slate and pencil and set of decompression tables.
* Full wetsuit and hood. The water temperature is 77 degrees F/26 degrees C. The time in water will exceed two hours or more as the week progresses. You will get cold.
* Two small non-rechargeable lights to be used as back-ups.
* For cave diving - don't bring your open water BCD unless you wish to do open water diving during your visit.
* Three clothes pins wooden or plastic.
* At least four medium bronze or brass bolt clips and surgical tubing.
* All dive equipment is available for rent from Aquatech
 
All of our cave diving double tanks are set up with D.I.N. dual outlet manifolds. If your regulator(s) are D.I.N. - great, if yoke style, no problem as we have the adapters for the D.I.N. outlets.

For cavern divers:
* Power fins and booties
* Mask
* Wetsuit
* Open water regulator with pressure gauge and octopus second stage
* BCD
* Depth gauges and watch and/or dive computer(s)
* All dive equipment is available for rent from Aquatech
 
Books And Reading Materials
We suggest you obtain the following:
The Art Of Safe Cave Diving. Published by the National Association for Cave Diving. Judy Bauer - NACD General Manager: (904) 495 - 3348
* The NSS-CDS Cave Diving Manual.
* The NSS-CDS Cavern Diving Manual.
* The NSS-CDS Cave Diving Student Workbook.
* Safer Cave Diving. By Tom Mount.
* Mix Gas Diving. By Tom Mount and Brett Gilliam. Published or distributed by the International Association of Nitrox and Technical Diving (305) 751 - 4873

These materials are not required but can be very useful references. Reading assignments will be given each night during your course from The Art of Safe Cave Diving. Some materials may be available online:
National Speleological Society
National Association for Cave Diving