Huckleberries for the Divers

I’m BACK!!!!!!!! Did you miss me? I wasn’t kidding when I said I was going to be off the grid and underwater, although, in all honesty, I really did think we would have internet access. But as it turns out, we did not.

We went down to Cozumel. Cozumel is our favorite dive destination, at least so far. We still have a lot of oceans and water yet to dive before I can officially say that though. 🙂 The name Cozumel was derived from the Mayan “Cuzamil” or “Ah Cuzamil Peten” in full, which means “the island of swallows”.

Normally, Cozumel is a diver’s paradise because there is so much abundant wildlife and beautiful topography underneath the beautiful crystal clear turquoise waters. Because Cozumel is known for its drift dives, I might not recommend it for beginners though. This time, all that was still very true, except the currents were RIPPING!!!!!! We were literally flying across the ocean through uncontrollable currents that were taking us were they would. There was no stopping or changing directions. All we could do was just surrender to the currents and let them take us where they were going to take us and go with the flow. These ripping currents were fun in the daytime. However, on one of our night dives, I have to say, it was a very different story. The adrenaline rush was a bit to extreme at night, even for me, the adrenaline junkie. We were being thrown around like were were spinning in a washing machine, being tossed in all different directions. When we surfaced, we came up to pouring down rain, lightening and thunder. I was NEVER so glad to end a dive as I was to end that dive. Normally, I am just the opposite; I never want to come up for air.

Even when we dive under normal conditions, we work up an appetite, but we especially worked up an appetite after our wild rides in the currents, or la ligne de curiente. It has been said that even on easy dives, we are still burning about 600 calories per dive. Who knows how many calories we were burning this time around. It’s a good thing I decided to make some muffins to take with us and to share with our fellow divers and dive masters. They were a big hit too. I made enough to share for 3 days. When they were gone, everyone was asking and wishing I had made more.

This time, I made some huckleberry muffins from the huckleberries that were in our backyard.

The recipe was the same basic as the recipe I used for my mini banana muffins Mini Banana Muffins. Obviously, I used huckleberries instead of bananas, and I also added some lemon extract. Huckleberries are similar to blueberries, only not as sweet and are a bit smaller. They are also delicate like blueberries, so I coated them in flour before adding them to the mix.

I was definitely underwater quite a bit, and got in 17 dives for the trip. I did forfeit a few dives, however, to let us explore and be tourists too though. Larry does not dive as much as I do, and he is diving less and less all the time. He just celebrated his 300th dive. I am diving more and more, and just celebrated my 350th dive, with many, many more ahead, in the hopefully not so distant future. 🙂

I came home to a TON of email and spam, and am slowly getting through them all. I will have a lot of pictures from our trip to share, but I will also be taking another few days off again, since we have company coming in from California on Thursday. After next week though, I should be back on schedule. So stay tuned, and don’t change that channel.

Stay safe and stay well Everyone. ‘Til next time.