keithab
Registered
I am staying at Occidental Grand so they are most convenient Dive Op for me. Anyone on the board had any experience with them?
Welcome to ScubaBoard, the world's largest scuba diving community. Registration is not required to read the forums, but we encourage you to join. Joining has its benefits and enables you to participate in the discussions.
Benefits of registering include
I am staying at Occidental Grand so they are most convenient Dive Op for me. Anyone on the board had any experience with them?
Just because Dive Palancar is on-site doesn't necessarily mean it's the most convenient. Plenty of dive ops can pick you up at the OG dock and will store your gear for you so you don't have to carry it back and forth from the Dive Palancar shop to the dock. Personally I prefer smaller boats and longer dives on bigger tanks.I am staying at Occidental Grand so they are most convenient Dive Op for me. Anyone on the board had any experience with them?
Of course there are other dive ops, besides Aldora, that offer the same sort of service and dives. The point is, it can be as convenient or even more to dive with an outside dive op, and the on-site dive op may require sacrificing bottom time versus outside dive ops who allow (and provide tanks for) longer dives.I'm pretty much repeating what has already been said. I recently stayed at the OG but dove with Aldora. I'd leave before the house op and return like 3-4 hours after the house came back, and I was the last to be picked up and first dropped off every day. Talking with other divers at the hotel, I sort of felt like I was bragging and rubbing it in when giving descriptions of my dives. They would have 40 min dives while I had 90+ on nearly every dive... and the only time I touched my gear was when I was in the water. The boat showed up with it all rinsed and assembled and ready to go! The captain even hung our wetsuits during the SI so they'd be nice and dry and easy to get into for the second dive. It's a little more pricey this way, but you get twice the amount of diving (which is the entire point in me being there)... so it's actually a better value, and you get ridiculously pampered!
One piece of advice for you at the OG though... the late night pizza from the main buffet room (after dinner hours) may be your best friend for food. I was disgusted with every meal I had there (and trust me, I'm no foodie and am VERY easy to please)... even the lamb and steak dishes at the Royal Club were gross. Soup was often good, but that's about it. As the week went on, I found myself flat out skipping dinner and just having cocktails until they started making pizzas.