It didn't hit me til after he left my house, that my wife might not like the idea, I knew she wouldn't be able to get off work to go with us, and might not like the idea of me going without her. I was ready to call my brother and tell him I really couldn't go, when I decided what the heck, I could at least ask her what she thought, she never seemed to mind when I went deer hunting or gold hunting (near home.) Well, to my amazement, when I mentioned it to her, she said I should go and have a good time,she didn't have a problem with it at all.

A few days after I had made the decision to go, my cousin (who was also going) called and asked if I was planning to take my Tesoro underwater metal detector, and at first, I wasn't going to take it, it was my first ocean dive and I was only planning on just scuba diving and enjoying the fascinating sites the ocean had to offer. He was the one that convinced me to bring it along, just in case.

A few weeks later, my wife dropped us off at the airport, kissed me good bye, told me to have fun, and said I had better bring her home a nice souvenir. Of course, I thought I would bring back the typical T-shirt, little did I know I would be bringing her back something worth a lot more than that.

Once we arrived in Conzumel, we immediately started diving, two times a day and sometimes a third time at night. It was everything I had dreamed of or heard about. Finally, on our last night there, as we were getting our things packed and ready to head home the next morning, I had to pull my detector out of my duffel bag to rearrange it and make room for the rest of my things, when my cousin saw it, and thought it would be fun to take it out and try and find something. It was 10:30 at night as the two of us walked out of the hotel and on to the beach. It was a full moon that night, which made it very easy to see. I turned my Tesoro on, and we waded into the water, we went out til the water was up to our wastes, when suddenly the detector started to beep. I had failed to bring a sand scoop, so it was difficult to salvage the object. I would take a deep breath, try to kneel on the bottom and dig up the item, but I always float back up to the top. Finally, I had my cousin stand near the place where the detector beeped, and as I held on to his legs with one hand, I began digging up the object, about six inches into the sand I recovered it. I brought it up to the surface to show my cousin and check it out myself. I could only stand in disbelief for the first few minutes, it was a diamond ring! We inspected it closely (neither of us experts in the field), we didn't know if it was real or possibly a zirconium. But my cousin was so excited, all he could think about was the fact that I had only been in the water for no more than a minute when the detector started beeping, and the fist thing we found was a ring. And all I could think about was, with my luck it wouldn't be real. With all the time that I have spent digging up pull tabs, it was about time I found something of value. After such a great find, we decided to keep looking, after about a half hour had passed and we had found only pesos, nickels and dimes, and quarters we headed back to the hotel to get a good night sleep before the trip home.

Once we arrived at the airport at home, my wife was waiting to give us a ride. After getting in the car and heading for home, I reached in my bag, pulled out a T-shirt and handed it to her. She looked a little disappointed that that was all I brought back from my trip to Mexico, but she didn't say anything, just thanked me for the gift. Then I pulled out the ring I had found and gave it to her, I told her I didn't know if it was authentic or not, but since she was kind enough to let me go, I figured one good deed deserved another, and she could keep the ring.