Being shrink wrapped

This is me totally wrapped in rubber. I wasn't diving; I just like how it feels against my skin. Mmmm, sticky.

We had fun at Blue Hole, NM, learning how to dive in our new drysuits. It is pretty tough, I spent most of the first dive lying on the bottom pathetically kicking up silt, but by the third dive we were starting to get the hang of it. There isn't much to see there, but there are some goldfish and a kind of grotto effect were previous divers have placed little religious icons and toys on the rocky shelves. I failed to find the legendary spongebob squarepants though, that has to be worth another 1200 mile round trip. My left knee is suffering- I don't recommed taking an old injury, wrapping it in sealed rubber and gradually increasing the pressure until fluid is sucked out of the injury and into the overlying skin. It's all creaky now :(. There was a potentially serious incident while we were there- a diver was at 60 feet, got low on air and instead of staying with his group and dealing with it he shot to the surface and popped out like a cork. Scary stuff, I hope he was ok.


This is Andy at Boca Negra canyon, NM, where native Americans carved petroglyphs into the hard black basalt to honour the sacred mountain. In the 1600, Catholic shepards added their own religious symbols, and today a few people have scratched their names into the rock. It throws up an interesting issue- how old does graffiti have to be before it stops being defacing vandalism and starts being sacred art? What if a native american artist just wasn't very good and did a bird that had a wonky beak? Would that still be art or would it be relegated to vandalism? Or doesn't it matter if it is bad or good as long as it is more than 700 years old or so?