The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - Travel
The museum at the bottom of the sea
this week’s winner, is charmed by an underwater sculpture park off the coast of Mexico
Each face was impossibly lifelike, each figure completely different from the next. They stood in groups, and the bright sunlight illuminated their features – hundreds of people, all of them made of cement.
These are replicas of local fishermen who live in the same community as Jason deCaires Taylor, the British artist who turned them into permanent works of art. Slowly circling the sculptures and admiring each face, I was in awe of the intricacy and detail. I was lost in thought, and the only sound was the constant noise of my own breathing. A vibrant yellow fish darted in front of my eyes. This was no ordinary art museum.
Earlier in the day I had hopped on a small boat parked up at a pier in Isla Mujeres, off the coast of Cancun in Mexico. Loaded up with equipment, the tiny boat set off into the impossibly clear waters that separate the island from the mainland.
Salty spray whipped my face as the boat made its way out into the open waters at speed. After 20 minutes or so, the captain came to an abrupt stop. We had arrived, although only someone with many years of experience in the area would have known that we were in fact floating above a very special area of ocean.
I donned my scuba equipment and carefully did all the final safety checks. Peering over the side of the boat, I could see the water was crystal clear but I couldn’t make out the bottom.
As I bobbed on the surface, awaiting the dive master’s signal that it was time to descend, a familiar feeling of excitement came over me. I had wanted to experience Mexico’s underwater museum since I had learned of its existence. On the way out, the captain had given us some more information on what we were about to see. The area was home to about 500 sculptures, and had been opened in 2010 as a way to relieve the stress on some of the other coral reefs around the island that were becoming overpopulated with tourists.
Thirty feet beneath the surface, I could make out the corals that had made these sculptures their home. An old Volkswagen Beetle had become a hiding place for a school of fish,
Demi Johnson,
As I floated weightlessly in between crowds of concrete ‘people’, I took in the beautiful corals
while a curious moray eel eyed me as I swam past a small concrete house.
Perhaps the most impressive piece in the museum is The Silent Evolution – 400 life-size human figures, each one contrasting in size, shape and expression. As I floated weightlessly in between these crowds of “people”, I took in the beautiful fan corals and sponges that had colonised the sculptures.
As I clambered back on board the boat, I realised that this was art like no other, constantly changing, and that nature would inevitably claim this museum for itself.