When looking through old images I can see myself almost back there. In this particular image taken 1994 at Cenote Temple of Doom I am just crawling up the make shift wooden ladder. I did have the option to climb up the tree roots though if the ladder should have collapsed, which happend once in a while. The thing was very steep, very crooked and very slippery. You could fall of it easily and quite a few divers did.
In 1994 I was still living on the island of Roatan working as a recreational dive Instructor over there. As I came in 1994 to the Cancun – Tulum corridor as the Rivera Maya was called back then I first did my cavern and intro to cave course in Spring or ’94 with Dan Lins of the Akumal Dive shop to return later that same year in fall ’94 with my back then girlfriend Susan to complete the full cave course with her.
As we had completed the full cave course we rented a VW bug and went cave diving with it. Yes. You can go cave diving with two divers out of a VW bug. This image was taken very shortly after we had completed our full cave course and started fun cave diving into Temple of Doom with the Madonna passage and the Fang room.
What’s in the image – Well it’s me, Matt 1994 with the remnants of my hair and dread locks, whom I cut in 1995 on Roatan just before I moved to Mexico permanently. The 80 cft alm double tanks have no isolator manifold, but have a manifold, something you could see quite frequently back then. I am wearing both of my trusted Aladin Pro Air, as the blue Aladin Nitorox units where not out in the market yet. I am configured Hogarthian somewhat with breathing off the long hose and short hose around the neck. I am using my Sherwood regulators, one of them with INT connector, the other a DIN. I do not own a primary light at this time. We used backup lights to penetrate the cavern and cave to the permanent main line and then switched over to our handheld dive lights, no wrist band but a clip though. I am wearing as well as Sea&Sea MX 10 camera with strobe attached to my left waist band d-ring.
I just love to look at my old diving photos and wished I would have had taken more …