how has the island changed?

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vlkr

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Location
venice
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while kayaking the myakka saturday, i met a woman who has been going to coz 3 times per year since 76. i have been going once or twice a year since early 90's and think i have seen lots of changes but she has me beat by a wide margin. guess i wasn't the first gringo after all.
what changes have you seen for the better and worse?
i like it that the folks seem to have more in the way of material things but don't like the congestion. miss the coffee/art shop which was a little south of the square. it was run by a french woman and seemed to be a congregating spot for euro hippy divers. lots of interesting conversations about dive travel.
 
Cruise Ships! The money generated by those cruise ships now makes the whole island have a different atmosphere. My first trip there was 12 years ago... and divers were the focus. No more. Divers are welcome but Cruise Ship Pod People are the money makers, from the taxi cabs to the amusement parks and beach clubs that charge...
 
Traffic, especially on Sunday driving south. I've only been there twenty times in the last six years so mine is a limited view.
Something tells me ya ain't seen nuttin yet.:idk:
Still Love the place and the diving can't be beat. You can't stop change.
 
My first trip to Cozumel was in 1978:

Playa Bonita was the Naked Turtle and it was pretty much the only civilization over on the "wild side".
Chankanaab was a wide place in the road with a single restaurant, and you could snorkel in the lagoon.
The best dish on the island was turtle steak.
On fishing trips we would stop for lunch on a deserted beach near Palancar and the deck hands would snorkel for conch and lobster.
Cruise ships? What's that?
There was nothing at Cedral other than the ruin and a few thatched huts.
I was skinnier and I had more hair.
 
I've been going for around 6 years, so the cruise ships have always been there for me. I never got a chance to see the slow island vibe nor the reef pre Wilma. I enjoy it all the same and go a couple of times a year. I'm a bit jealous to have not seen the earlier years. But I'm also not as affected by the increased tourism.

A couple of things that have changed in that short time are:

The opening of the International Pier
Mega Grocery Store
Lion Fish
La Choza burned down and moved
Primas moved from one roof top to another (although a bit higher)

PH
 
I miss going to the square at night and finding no one there.Back in the 90's when we first started going all the restaurants around the square were packed with groups of divers and families.We used to go to the dairy queen and have a sundae after dinner before we walked back to the Plaza Los Glories where we used to stay.Now the town is like a ghost town when the cruise ships pull out for the day.
 
Personally, I think there is a lot of rosy eyed hind-sight, Cozumel has gotten nothing but better over the years in my opinion, it's far from crowded, far from over run, far from over developed, right about now and for the last 10 years it seems to me to be in a pretty good equilibrium.

I can't recall any large scale developments adding rooms to Cozumel since I've been going there, there has got to be some hasn't there? What's the last large scale resort that has been built there? When is Coconuts going to get some damn electricity???
 
I moved to Cozumel in 1992, so I can't say much about it before hand, but this is my two cents.

First off, it is much easier to actually live in Cozumel now. Some of you may remember that our only "sorta real store" was Maxi on Ave 5 at 1 n. A glorified 7-11 t best, if you went there the day after pay day you were out of luck for most things. Then the restaurants were, imho, really lousy. Do some of you remember Karen's Pizza? Order a sausage pizza and it came with Vienna Sausage, or better yet Spam. Yes, Morgan's was there as well as Cafe Del Puerto across from Palmeras, and Pepe's had the only edible salad on the island...but oh so limited.

Then in the late 90s some good places popped up. Pasta Prima, La Choza then others so the food thing became livable, but the stores still sucked. Back then we used to have to go to Cancun to get even the most basic stuff. The the big change was when San Francisco came in way out on 65 ave...wow. Then closer to town, and now we even have a Sam's Club!

The stores in town have become much more glitzy with diamonds and all that stuff, as well as all the shops that sell garage sale inventory to the cruise ship weenies, but most of us in Cozumel ignore that stuff anyway.

Another change is the huge influx of gringos that live here, at least part time. My guess is that the number was about 200 in 1992 and now may be in the thousands.


But the VERY GOOD news is that the happy and friendly culture of Cozumel has not changed at all. At least that is my opinion comparing 20 years of change.


Dave Dillehay
Aldora Divers

PS Oh, yes, before 2000 there was never any grafitti, but it seems pretty tame even now.
 
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