Natalie Gibb

Gibb co-founded Under the Jungle near Puerto Aventuras in 2016, is a TDI cave instructor and instructor trainer, a published author and cave explorer, and a 2020 inductee to the Women Divers Hall of Fame. She is among the most consistently recommended cave instructors in Quintana Roo: ScubaBoard threads asking who to train with in the Riviera Maya return her name year after year, usually paired with Protec or with Cave Training Mexico, and r/scuba answers the same question the same way. A detailed cavern class review is the fullest account of her teaching and it is specific about method. She replied to the initial email immediately, asked about prior experience, and held the line on her own prerequisite — her intro to tech class or equivalent — before accepting the booking. She prefers to teach privately unless divers arrive together or are known to match, and the reviewer thought that was why the week worked. The class itself put dive planning, line following and reference points first, with a fixed pre-dive routine repeated on every dive, and drills built from dry land in the shop before the water. Standards were held without heat: a lazy tie-off well beyond the intended rock was marked as a failure and told to the student plainly afterwards, and a messy first reel run in a crowded cenote drew visible annoyance but, in the student's words, "she never stopped smiling" and gave tips that fixed it on the next attempt. By the third day she was removing masks, pulling the line out of his hand, tying a jump spool into it and tangling his light head, and he got through it calmly. She also offered the option of ordinary recreational sites or somewhere off the beaten path for the fun days, and took him to four very different cenotes. The summary that review ends on — a phenomenal instructor, surfacing from every dive smiling — is the tone of most of what is written about her.