Back to The Wall

Seven of us - Darryl, John D., Patti, Suzanne, Jen, Charlie and I - went back to The Wall at La Parguera Sunday, diving with West Divers. West Divers have been around for a number of years but recently reopened with new owners.

We had a little boat trouble on the ride out (water in the fuel) and ended up abandoning the second dive but the first dive was amazing.

I love diving The Wall. The Wall is actually a 28-mile-long cliff in the seafloor about four to five miles off shore. Yesterday we dove a site called Efra's Wall, one of more than a dozen recognized dive sites along The Wall. The drop off the boat is to about 60-65 feet. You swim down a gentle decline to about 75 feet and then the bottom falls out. You swim out over the edge of the cliff. the bottom is another 65 to 80 feet below you at 130 to 160 feet. (A little further out is another vertical drop to over 1,000 feet deep.)

As I swam over the edge of The Wall and looked toward the bottom below, there was no sense of fear, no sense I might fall. My friend Darryl and I talked about the feeling as you move a little away from The Wall, separating yourself from "land." It is as close as we will ever get to being in space. I was suspended, weightless, motionless, unconnected, peaceful. Then the beauty of The Wall drew me back and I swam on.

Most of the dive along The Wall is between 80 and 100 feet, depending on the divers. You then come back up The Wall and swim back to the boat at 55-65 feet along the edge of the cliff.

Colors are naturally filtered out as you get deeper, starting with reds and yellow so many underwater photos appear more blue and green than normal. The deeper you go the more pronounced this filtering effect is. But the reverse is also true: As you come up, there is less filtering. So as you ascend from 85 to 55 feet there is more apparent color in the corals and fish. It's interesting to watch the colors "reappear" as you ascend.

You can see more pictures from the dive on our Flickr page.