I'm a recreational diving instructor in the PADI federation. I teach and run courses here. The easiest way to start your diving adventure is to sign up for a course called Open Water Diver, abbreviated as OWD. It takes about 3-4 days. You can also start diving through the DSD program - Discovery Scuba Diving, our so-called intro. We do not have to start the whole course at once. You can get acquainted with the basic rules of safety and diving physics for one day, and then try diving in shallow water on the beach or in the swimming pool and see if it is interesting for you. When someone is bitten by the bug, you can start your diving course right away and that day counts as part of that course.

I'm also a diver of the IANTD and TDA technical federation, so all my cave dives are based on my Full Cave Diver degree in the IANTD federation and multistage DPD cave diver in the TDA federation and this space is as if strictly reserved for ceiling and cave diving in this accident and exploration of these caves in Yucatan.

 

What do you like most about diving?

 

This is a really difficult question. I think that at the beginning there was a lot of interest and, above all, the challenge of being in an environment such as water and breathing in it. Everything I learned, and what I did was a big challenge at every stage. It wasn't a piece of cake, although it was a lot of fun from the beginning. It helped that I was curious about everything - how to do it better, how to be a better diver, and have more opportunities underwater. It's the challenge of something new. At the moment, being in Mexico, diving a lot in caves, I think that it is also my meditation, my little ZEN when the whole world around you disappears and you can hide underwater, go to a completely different world, dimension, space. After a few years and several hundred dives, this is my world a bit. A world in which I feel good, the problems of everyday life disappear and it is certainly a great springboard from my everyday life.

 

Why Mexico? What makes the caves in Tulum so special?

 

I chose Mexico because of the caves in the Yucatan Peninsula, but before that, it didn't really stand out to me. When I started diving in Asia and a little in Sardinia, I slowly started to enter various types of caves during sea dives and it fascinated me. I met several cave divers during my first season in Sardinia and learned that in Yucatan, Mexico near Tulum, there are the largest cave systems in the world, incomparable to any other. There is no place where there would be so many of them, where they would be so extensive, so diverse and so interesting because there are huge amounts of them here. The largest cave system has over 360-370 km of connections and various types of passages. This whole system was created from two other systems and when a connection was found between them, it became one big system. There are so many of these passages, tunnels, and cave passages that I don't think I will live enough to visit each of these places, so it works on the imagination. When you start going underwater and visiting these places, you suddenly realize that this is what you want to do and you can get "a little" addicted. Another thing is that because of the limestone (and almost all of the Yucatan is practically made of limestone), the water has such a PH that you have unlimited visibility. We have the so-called vision, after a diver, i.e. visibility does not end like in the sea, after 10-15 meters, or as in a Polish lake after half a meter or two meters, sometimes you can't see anything because of sediments and water. Here it doesn't occur in many places and you can see everything. The water is very clean. This is a very interesting phenomenon.

 

 

Since when do you dive?

 

I have been diving since 2016 when I went to Asia for half a year and settled on the tropical island of Tiamal in Malaysia. I swam a lot, climbed, and lived on the beach with limited internet access, so I quickly became interested in other things I hadn't done before. There was a diving base, where I got to know and liked people very quickly, and that's how my diving adventure began. After the first dives, taking a diving course, they let me help in the diving base quite quickly and a moment later I moved to the other side of the island, where I practically worked in one base for the courses and big discounts in diving. Due to the fact that I had a lot of time, I could slowly explore this space. And so, after 6 years, suddenly it turns out that I'm an instructor and a cave diver in Mexico and I'm spending my fourth season here.

 

Tell me, what dangers await divers in the depths?

 

As an instructor, I laugh that the greatest danger is ourselves under water and the human factor is practically the most common cause of accidents underwater. Water is already an environment that threatens our lives and we must comply with all the different procedures we have invented to undergo to keep diving safe for us and our partners. You definitely need to pay attention to this. When it comes to animals, such as sharks or other wild animals, they are not as much of a threat as we are to ourselves. If they aren't provoked, there're practically no accidents related to them. Boats, for example, can be dangerous. In some places, there is so much traffic on the surface that you have to pay attention. Depth can also be a danger, but only when we do not take it into account at all, when we behave irresponsibly, irrationally, and when we dive deeper than we have learned or longer. It can also end badly when we underestimate all our procedures and rules of good diving.

 

Have you ever found treasures like Indiana Jones, sunken ships, or Mexican gold?

 

Unfortunately, it's not so good and I don't find treasures, especially gold. However, I'm not an active seeker either. I think that there're many treasures of this type in the world hidden under water. Of the things that you can see and admire underwater, I could call them treasures, apart from the fauna and flora, there're definitely wrecks. This is one of the more interesting aspects of diving, namely wreck diving. Any ships, non-ships, that have sunk can be explored, within the limits of one's abilities and training. There're both large and small ships.

 

 

A dive-wreck safari in the Red Sea, for example, is a part-time attraction. Four times a day, ships from different periods, from different places, with different histories and cargo are boarded. Speaking of Mexico, for me, the main treasures are after our prehistoric ancestors. The oldest human remains from the Mesoamerican region are found here, I can dive among such things as the mandible of a mastodon, or the shell of a prehistoric turtle, sloth, or saber-toothed tiger. Enabling the entrance to a cave, where, for example, after a place, you get to places where there wasn't water ten thousand years ago and animals went down in search of it and died there. While diving, I can see these remains. This is definitely a big thing for me and a great treasure.

 

 

Many Polish tourists and adventurers come to Mexico to explore the cenotes with you. Could you share some tips on how to prepare for this journey and explain why is worth it?

 

Yes, a lot of people come to us. To us, to Polish Corner, the company run by Gosia and where I work. People come to us who are already quite experienced divers, who know what they come here for - to explore the cenotes underwater and it usually takes about a week. Then we go from cenote to cenote and do dives with these people and that's kind of the basis of our activity. They're experienced divers who can find their way underwater and experience ceiling diving. Sometimes we also do basic courses, it's not so much during the season, but it also happens. As for tourists, we do various types of trips - to the jungle, dry caves, and visiting various types of ruins. We usually choose places that aren't obvious from the tourist's perspective. People who come to us want to experience their adventure, so we choose places rarely visited by tourists. We're then the only group that can experience contact with local communities and wild animals, or explores caves and ruins somewhere deep in the jungle. Usually, in such places you need a good guide to get there, you can't always find useful information on the Internet.

 

How would you explain exactly what grades are in diving and does it cost a lot?

 

The basic degree is a diver's qualification for recreational diving, so it's our OWD (Open Water Diver). Then Advance Open Water Diver, rescue diver - Rescue Diver, and then we move on to more professional recreational degrees, i.e. Dive Master Guide and Dive Instructor. These are the basic degrees that we have in the PADI federation, other federations differ slightly in terms of their degrees, but they usually look similar. We also have a lot of specializations, such as wreck diving, and cavern (cave) diving, depending on the needs and the basin in which we dive (whether they are cold lakes in Poland, the Mediterranean Sea, the hot Red Sea, or cenotes in Mexico, etc.). Each of the reservoirs in the way of diving is slightly different and you have to adapt to local requirements and challenges related to these dives, around which specializations are also built. Decompression dives are already technical federations that also have specific degrees and specializations that allow us to comfortably perform more demanding dives.

 

What are the costs… A basic course in Mexico is about $500. It varies around the world, but the prices are pretty similar. Of course, we will find places where you can get a course a little cheaper or much more expensive, but I assume that it is better not to save on such a course because it translates into the quality and time of the instructor's work. The more time the instructor has for us, the more we can learn and the more comfortable we will feel in diving after such a course.

 

Could you list some of the most interesting places that you remember?

 

Cenotes… I could talk about them for hours. Just like recently, I was busy all the time because I was doing a cave and scooter (DPV) course for myself and I could do a 4-hour dive to swim with an underwater scooter to a place called Blue Abyss. It's a huge hole in the ground stretching to over 80 meters. After two hours of sailing, you can suddenly find yourself in a place that is truly amazing. I won't forget it for a long time.

I also often have memories of Sardinia and the first holes in the cliffs where I dived, near Algiero, in the northwest of Sardinia. Certainly, each diving place has its own interesting things, for example in Malaysia I was stuck for a long time with the number and multitude of nudibranchs that I could see during my first courses and dives. Nowhere else in the world are so many of them. In the Red Sea, for example, for the first time in my life, I was able to dive with dolphins and observe sharks from a fairly close distance. Such an experience with large predators is certainly something you won't soon forget. Similarly, interesting wrecks like the wreck of the SS Thistlegorm in the Red Sea, which I visited during night diving, stay in my head for a long time.