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Newsletter 11 - Sept. 2002
HD News Huatulco Miscellaneous Guest Comments & Photos Previous Editions
Hurricane Divers News
Time flies when you´re having fun! We are already a year at our current location on Santa Cruz Beach and it´s already three years ago that we opened our dive center in September 1999. One of our goals we set when we started was becoming an Instructor Development Center and in August this year we became Huatulco´s first and one and only, official PADI Gold Palm Instructor Development Center!
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Santa Cruz
Our location on Santa Cruz Beach is working out very well for us. We have done very well since we moved here despite the September 11 disaster last year which seemed to bring a lot less foreign travellers to Huatulco. Every month we have taken out more divers and done more courses than the same month last year. We had a lot of divers coming back to dive with us for the second or third time which is obviously a good sign!
For the first time in three years we closed the dive center in September. People could still call us and we have gone out diving a few times. Since September is usually very quiet and it´s the peak of the hurricane season, we will probably close every September from now on. We sure enjoyed having some time off!
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Pauline´s Book Swap
Pauline has set up a little "Book Swap" in our dive center. The aim is not to make money but to build up a collection of English books for everybody here in Huatulco who likes to read in English. Books are hard to find here so if you read this and have any books lying around that you can miss, please bring them when you come to Huatulco!
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Instructor Development
As I wrote in the last Newsletter we did an IDC (Instructor Development Course) last March and I´m happy to announce that Ezequiel, Paola and Jony succeeded in becoming PADI Instructors. Jony, after finishing his internship with us and Ezequiel left to work on the Caribbean Coast of Mexico and Paola is working for us as a free-lance Instructor. Natanael completed his PADI IDC Staff Instructor Course at the same time. Nele (see picture) finished her Divemaster Internship with us and is now back in Germany trying to adjust to good old Europe again.
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Go Pro!
Since we are now a PADI Gold Palm Instructor Development Center we can offer any professional level PADI and DAN course at any time. For more information go to our new GoPro! page in this website. You´ll find short descriptions of the courses we offer, and links to a page with all the course details like the contents, duration and prerequisites, etc. per course. Go Pro; the possibilities are endless!
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"A Day Like Today": September 2001
The terrorist attacks in the USA shocked us all very much. I remember actually seeing the whole thing happening live on CNN. It was the first time ever I was late opening the dive center and we just walked around the whole day in shock. That and the fact that we had just moved to Santa Cruz meant two very, very quiet months for Hurricane Divers. We decided not to celebrate our second anniversary out of respect for the victims of this terrible tradegy.
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Diving Huatulco
The water became nice and warm really early this year. From the beginning of April up untill now we have had a water temperature of 27ºC to 30ºC. We also had long periods with very good visibility and very few days with rough seas because of hurricanes building up. A good year for diving in Huatulco so far! We didn´t see a lot of whales coming by this year and there seemed to be a lot less dolphins around, no idea why. We did see some interesting stuff though, a lot of sea horses and turtles and the occasional big Manta Ray. There also seem to be a lot of Eagle Rays this summer. An Instructor from the dive shop in the Gala Hotel saw two big Orca´s only meters away from him at La Blanca while diving!
Like every year after the Easter Holiday we organized a beach clean up of Violin Beach. Half a dozen divers helped cleaning the underwater part and some others cleaned up the beach itself.
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HD News Huatulco Miscellaneous Guest Comments & Photos Previous Editions
Huatulco News
Who are those handsome fellows in the pictures on the right? It´s one and the same, it´s me! The other two are Jean-Claude van Damme and the guy everybody knows as "Apollo" from the Rocky movie. They were visiting Huatulco for a celebrity event and the pictures were taken on the day we took a group of them out for a snorkel tour. The lovely (pregnant) lady is my sister Yvonne who was involved in the organization of the event.
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Development
President Fox visited Huatulco in August and had a look at the progress of the new pier for the cruise ships. It´s coming along nicely, although I doubt that it will be ready as planned in November, before the high season starts. Fox opened the new marina in Chahué which is now ready and operational although they´re still working on the facilities on land surrounding the marina, but it can be used to moor boats. There seems to be a lot more development and construction going on lately, little hotels and appartment buildings suddenly rise up in various open spaces in Chahué and Santa Cruz. Is everybody preparing for the new "highway" Oaxaca - Huatulco? No news on that one lately, supposedly they started it but nobody seems to know it´s progress. In any case it looks like the pause in development of the last few years is definitely over. Fonatur, the National Trustfund for Tourism Development, is not only busy developing. They are now working together with "Green Globe 21" to in their own words: "Place Huatulco amongst the select group of destinations with a form of care for the environment that garantees a sustainable development, providing acces to markets and customers interested in supporting destinations and companies commited to the environment and sustainability." The public and private sector have reacted very positive to this initiative. For more info on Green Globe 21 go to: www.greenglobe21.com
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Hurricane Season
As usual the hurricane season started again last May but so far we have had little effect from it apart for some rain and a bit of rough seas now and than. We only had to cancel diving once and that was in September which is usually the worst month. On the right a satelite picture of Hurricane "Douglas" (upper left hand corner) and Tropical Storm "Elina" (more or less in the middle) which became a hurricane too, both moving away from the Mexican Coast towards Hawaii without causing any problems on the mainland.
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HD News Huatulco Miscellaneous Guest Comments & Photos Previous Editions
Miscellaneous
In our last Newsletter I wrote about Mandy-Rae Cruickshank visiting Huatulco. She is the holder of the women´s world record "no limits" free diving. When she was here she tried to break the world record "static breath holding" but didn´t achieve that goal although she broke her own record twice. Well, she´s done it last May! In Vancouver, Canada she broke the record by 3 seconds and set a new world record of 6 minutes and 16 seconds! Congratulations Mandy! For more info on Mandy and free diving go to: www.performancefreediving.com
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Las Vegas will be the location for the DEMA Show this year, which will take place 22 to 25 October 2002. DEMA stands for the Diving Equipment & Marketing Association and the show is a must for any diving professional and everybody else involved in the diving industry. For more info on DEMA go to: www.dema.org
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Giant Squid Found
Last July this a Giant Squid was found washed up on a beach in Tasmania. It weighed 250 kilos and the two long arms, which were lost, could have measured up to 15 meters. It had some strange muscle flaps on its arms and it could be a new species of this giant deep sea creature.
Kraak, my last name, is actually Dutch for Giant Squid. The Latin name is "Architeuthis". They live at depths of at least 500 meters and are usually only found washed up on the beach or in the stomach a of Sperm Whale.
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Ministry of Tourism
The Mexican Ministry of Tourism (Secretaría de Turismo or "Sectur") has been busy the last few years establishing and updating rules and regulations for the tourism industry and in particular for service providers of various activities. Even better, they are actually implementing them and are sending inspectors around the country to inspect for example, dive centers. They check the various aspects of Customer Service, Equipment and its condition and the Safety Aspects. It will be a slow process getting all the dive centers in Mexico to meet the minimum standards, but they are working on it and they actually are handing out warnings and fines for those who don´t comply. You can check out their website (in Spanish) for the rules and regulations, for dive centers that is Official Norm "NOM-05-TUR-1998" and under "Operadores de Buceo" you can find the list of dive centers complying with this Norm: www.sectur.gob.mx .
See also a series of articles I wrote about Dive Safety in previous editions of our Newsletter. In Newsletter 8 you´ll find an article about those rules and regulations in Mexcio.
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Hurricane Isidore
Cancun and Cozumel, the two most popular dive destinations in this part of the world had bad luck this September. See the photo of Hurricane Isidore which hit the forementioned area with full force. It caused a lot of damage and 70,000(!) people had to be evacuated.
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Cyber Diving
Here are a few interesting websites I found with info on diving, directories, etc.:
www.allaboutdiving.com www.scubanews.com
Yahoo now has a weather forecast for Huatulco: weather.yahoo.com/forecast/mxoahux
Have a look at www.hostelworld.com with information on hostels and activities around the globe. You can make reservations directly on their site, including for diving with Hurricane Divers!
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HD News Huatulco Miscellaneous Guest Comments & Photos Previous Editions
Guest Comments & Photos
On the left and below three photos Rogelio send us. He did his Open Water Diver Course with us after which he did a few dives to try his U/W Camera. In the photo on the surface you see Rogelio himself together with Paola, his Instructor.
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I don´t remember who took it but below left is a photo taken during our IDC in March with Ezequiel and Jony in our pick up. The photo below right was send to me by Mike who did his Open Water Course with us last January. I know it has nothing to do with diving but I just love those oldtimers (I´m talking about the car!). His showpiece is a 1930 Essex which he restored himself. He´s using it for parades, car shows and cruising with the kids of the youth ranch he manages. The photo was taken after he won first place in a car show.
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Below two photos given to me by Diego, taken from a little, one person flying machine (sorry, forgot what they are called). You see the marina of Santa Cruz and the Santa Cruz Beach with the marina in the background. In that last photo we are located just to the right of the wrist of the waving arm in the building with the white roof.
Following is a small selecting of comments our divers wrote in our "Guest Comment Book" we have in our Dive Center. If you went diving with us and you didn't get a chance to write something in our book, please feel free to send us your comments by e-mail.
e-mail us
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Gabe, USA, April 2002
Ralph, Canada, May 2002
Jim, USA, May 2002
Lucy, USA, May 2002
"I have spend the last month here in Huatulco, learning Spanish and polishing my skills as a scuba diver. I am contemplating a career change & possibly jumping into the world of scuba. Completing my Rescue Diver, MFA, DAN O/2 & two more Specialties here has been a pleasure as well as fun. The personal attention & professional standards made my experience most memorable. I look forward to my next visit to Hurricane Divers & Huatulco. Many thanks to Robert, Nata & Paola!"
Mark, USA, June 2002
"Got a lot of fun in these few dives, especially the excursion. Good food, nice beaches, beautiful dive site."
Natalie, Hong Kong, July 2002
Tom, Ireland, August 2002
"We couldn´t have imagened a better first time diving experience. Thank you Natanael, for helping us have so much fun and making us feel safe. There is a whole other world underwater - sparkling, magical and more beautiful than one can imagine. Thank you for helping us get a glimpse of this world. Warm water wishes,"
Matt & Eugene, USA & Mexico, September 2002
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HD News Huatulco Miscellaneous Guest Comments & Photos Previous Editions
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