Mexico.....Mazatlan Divers Sequence.

The Mazatlan divers, you have probably heard about, or seen pictures of them. They also practice this past time down the coast a bit to the south at Accapulco.

This is Jesus Garcia "Chikas" to his friends, shot from about 30 meters back towards the esplanade with some sequin clad attention seeker that just refused to get out of the picture looking on.
These guys dive from the top of the small white fence that you can see in the top right corner of the first picture which happens to be about 16 meters above sea level. Where they are heading to is just two meters deep........all they rely on to pull this feat off without breaking their neck is judging the swell patterns so that they are leaving the fence at the top and timing it so as they reach the ocean at the same second the incoming wave passes under them at the entry point, and as soon as they hit the water, putting their bodies into a full upward arch and returning to the surface without hitting the bottom. I must say that this did intrigue me highly.

I spent about half an hour talking to these guys during their dives and after to see what the hell makes them do it....basically they are just young men with balls of steel that are doing what boys do...........they do it because they can, and they get a buzz out of it and earn a bit of money from onlookers giving them tips.

BUT...............it does all go terribly pear shaped at times. About a year or so ago, one of them had just come back from living up in the states for a while.....he used to dive (and was good at it) before moving to the USA to live for a while, and when he came back to Mazatlan and hooked up with his old friends he thought he would give it another go. He took a dive from this spot, misjudged the entry, and hit the bottom instantly breaking his neck, and then floated to the surface in front of a couple of hundered onlookers with cameras flashing and videos rolling......... the hospital turned his life support off about 3 days later. This shook the hell out of Chika, Jorge and the couple of other guys that do this sport, but they are still up there doing it on a daily basis with no more loss of life since then.

The time we did spend talking to them was certainly an interesting conversation, and they seemed like just your average , ordinary, everyday Mexicans ( until you saw them run up to the top of this lookout and then dive off ).

You can see in the last photo here how close to the rocks they actually land, and also how quick they return to the surface..... Chika's head is back out of the water pretty well before his feet have gone in. Very cool, and also a little bit crazy....but you have to admire them.