Acapulco Part 4

One of the most exciting things we did in Acapulco was to visit the divers. I had so many gorgeous pictures of them on the roll of film that is stuck in the destroyed camera. You'll have to settle for the three I had on another roll of film until me and Director/Buddy can possibly pry the other loose. No camera repair shop will touch the job, so it's up to me to come up with the last ditch effort to save the film.

Acapulco is famous for its cliff divers, who hold the record for the longest dive in the world. Supposedly, the only way to become a diver is to be born into the family of one. There is one female diver, since one of the male divers didn't have any male children. They jump into the water and swim over to the cliff and actually scale the cliff before they dive from it.



The scaling of the cliff part is pretty impressive, as they go up in their speedos (speedoes??) with no shoes, basically, which looks pretty damned dangerous all by itself. There is a team of divers, and they begin diving from lower points, all of which are still pretty freakin' high. The final jump from the top of the cliff is precipitated by a show of praying to the shrine at the top (the Virgin of Guadalupe), and then the guy jumps.



See that beautiful, blue Pacific Ocean in the background? That's what is supposed to be in all my other shots, not the damned haze!!

This dude has the pictures I was hoping to get from the other roll of film, which shows the prep and all the excitement of the dive. I was surprised at how caught up in it I got. My heart was racing. It was a beautiful dive from the very top--so long in the air that I got to snap the picture twice.

I really need to dig that damned film out of that camera, even if I have to manually rewind it myself!!

-- Virgil