Grateful head
Contributor
First and foremost, I want to thank everyone on this site, current and past for helping me make informed decisions about my recent trip to Coz. Everything from technical dive computer info to where to get the best dinner. Scubaboard is a great resource and I will shortly look into going red. I will attempt to quickly and efficiently relate our vacation experience to possibly help others in their research. Our trip was from March 19-27, just my wife and myself and our second time to the island. First time was nine years ago staying at the iberostar, diving with Dressel Divers. After researching this trip here on Scubaboard, we decided not to stay at an AI and instead focus on town and the many restaurants I read about. Contacted several dive shops before picking one, all were helpful and offered good advise. Ended up picking Tres Pelicanos and buying a dive/hotel package thru them, staying at the Casa Mexicana. Jeanie at Tres Pelicanos was very helpful and patient in answering my many questions and emails and delivering on a nice room at the hotel. Ended up booking five days with Tres, losing one day to port closure and making up the fifth day diving with another dive shop. Scubacraft is the name of the company with Andres as the owner/ dive master. I think this is a new company to look out for in the future. Extremely personable, brand new gear and just a genuinely nice, younger guy. The diving during the week was good as far as water temp, visibility and fish life. I know other discussions on Cozumel note a strong lack of fish life, but I didn’t really notice that. We dove a site called Tunish and I thought the fish life was very abundant there and on most all other dive sites as well. In my relatively mediocre sized dive number of 60 something dives, I have never seen larger sized Queen Angelfish anywhere. Lots of schools of bigger fish too. Did manage to see one nurse shark, about five turtles and maybe three spotted eagle rays. I had hoped to see more of the bigger stuff but.....Casa Mexicana was great, staff was awesome, breakfast was good but the location was really pretty awesome. Right in the middle of everything. Upon arriving at the Cozumel airport, we followed the advise of others here and grabbed our luggage, walked about two blocks and ate lunch at Diego’s. Got a cab from there to the hotel, very easy and cheap. Taxis are really a cheap and efficient resource on Cozumel and those reading this for future reference take note. Taxis are cheap, price is negotiable and they are plentiful. Our two tank day would have us back at the hotel around 12:30-1:00 pm. Maybe change some clothes and then grab the free bikes from the hotel and head out for lunch. Favorites are Chilangos and Casa Cazumil for lunch. Then around 2-3pm we rode over to Jeanies beach bar and grill where $2.50 beer gets you a lawn chair or table right on the ocean. We swam and snorkeled from there too. Stay there til 4-5 then ride back to the hotel, have a beer at the pool there, socialize a little and then head up to room to shower, change for dinner. Either taxi or walk to dinner around 7-8pm favorites include Guidos, El Morro, brother to El Morro is Los Morros el Morieto which was awesome. I thought El Pique was ok, ate at El Morro twice. Ray the waiter is a machine. We also tried other taco places for lunch which were just ok or mediocre. Couple of dislikes... the fricking street hawkers are annoying and sometimes aggressive. Aggressive is maybe too strong of a word but they are very annoying. Makes me try to avoid them as much as possible but it is almost impossible to avoid them, especially where the hotel is located. Once you back in the hood a few blocks, it’s fine. Another thing... there was this guy about three doors north of the hotel, a street hawker with this poor, shaking, possibly sun stroked chihuahua dog that he held in hand ALL day long as a ploy to get people on to the shop. This bothered me as you are witnessing animal abuse in plain site with no way to address it. I told him to be a man, put the dog down and work without using a helpless dog, but to no avail. I complained to the hotel but it’s out of their hands too. Other thing I’m skeptical about are the returning cruise ships. Last time I was in Cozumel, nine years ago, we rented a jeep and drove to town. It was a fricking madhouse with all the cruise ship people, waiting in line for everything, pure craziness. I went this time because I knew they would not be there, but they are coming back in June. The local people I’ve met tell me to just wait to 7:00pm to go out as that is when the cruisers are gone. Not sure how I feel about that. All in all it was a great trip, weather was great, not really crowded at all, food was great, diving was good to great, relatively cheaper than other destinations, friendly people (outside of the street hawkers). Last thing, on our day off we did a “cooking with Josefina class”. Met Josefina at the market, pick out produce, go back to her place, she shows us how to make tortillas, salsa, margaritas ect...was pretty good, a little too expensive though in my opinion. A good experience nonetheless.
