In April 2013, Mick Todd and I visited three Revillagigedo Islands aboard MV Escape. We were advised that Roca Partida was likely to be the best of these. We were advised correctly.
Roca Partida is the smallest of the Revillagigedo Islands and is uninhabited with an area of only 1.4 hectares. Like other islands in the Revillagigedo archipelago, it is volcanic in origin but unlike our two other destinations, San Benedicto and Socorro, it is still active.
Mick and I saw Hammerhead, Galapagos, Silky, Silvertip and Whitetip Reef sharks, large Yellowfin Tuna, Manta rays and breaching in the distance, Humpback whales. Ever nature friendly, Mick picked up a juvenile Whitetip Reef shark during one dive, letting it go as soon as it wriggled.
Fabulous diving then but I had to feel just a little bit sorry for Mick. Yes, even “Manchester United loving” Mick. He’d picked up a cold courtesy of the long flight to Mexico from Australia and was suffering Reverse Ear Block on every dive. On our penultimate dive at Roca Partida he got a particularly bad case. Now Mick is incapable of diving without writing copious massages on his white board so was soon scribbling away to give me these glad tidings, concluding with the warning that when he attempted to surface he expected his ear to explode whereupon he would pass out. I prepared for this moment - a good shot might make the medical section of a dive magazine. Perhaps even … while I was daydreaming about my soon to be taken, multi-award winning photograph … Mick surfaced without any explosions whatsoever. Damn!
Not surprisingly Mick later announced that he wouldn’t be joining me on the final dive at Roca Partida or the concluding two dives of the voyage at San Benedicto. Then I did feel sorry for Mick.