bassplayer
Contributor
Warning: stream of consciousness style novel to follow. To paraphrase Mark Twain, I don't have time to write a short trip report, so I hope this long one will do. Here goes...
A Month In Cozumel
I'm probably not the only person who got re-interested in diving during the pandemic. Having completed my AOW locally and on the heels of way too much research / gear aquisition, I visited cozumel for the first time in early September and had a great time. While on the trip, I met a guy who told me he spent a few months a year there and balanced work in with recreation; this sounded very interesting, given that my job is now fully remote.
I decided to try a month working from Cozumel. my goals:
- see how it feels as a place to live and hang out, would i want to potentially buy a place or stay for longer periods every year?
- get rescue diver certification
- do some more diving in general
Working From The Island
The condo I rented had fiber optic internet, and it worked out great. No issue whatsoever with video calls or working with online documents. Internet worked flawlessly the entire trip. I also found the internet on my mobile phone largely usable though LTE coverage isn't perfect. overall, Cozumel seems to be a great location for remote work.
Living On The Island
"Luxury" services were accessible, affordable, and nice to have. I didn't even try to shop around so I'm sure even better deals can be had, but for reference, having my 3 bedroom condo cleaned cost 500 pesos, getting my weekly laundry done cost around 70 + tip.
I didn't bother to rent a car or a scooter, did lots of walking everywhere. Taxis for the rare trips outside centro, and bummed a few rides with people. It feels good to get a lot of walking in every day though!
Rescue Class
Before arriving in Mexico, I took First Aid/CPR/AED training with the red cross locally, and did the PADI eLearning online. This left a todo list of pool sessions, open water sessions, emergency oxygen hands-on, and boat dive scenarios.
Aldora was very accommodating and organized the class sessions during nights and weekends. I was the only basic rescue student, but was joined in the activities by a divemaster student, an instructor candidate, and an in-water instructor. Sessions were run by Liang, who is the course director at Aldora. I thought it was great that she personally oversees rescue classes. She shared a number of additional references to review, including accident reports, risk management literature, a link to the accidents and incidents forum here, and some other items of interest. Eventually had a few scuba accident dreams from reviewing all this material but didn't find it too upsetting strangely.
One of the reference pieces I found essential was this: . (how long it takes to drain a tank with high or low pressure regulator failure).
The class was great, covered all sorts of things. The first day of doing open water simulated rescues, I found my bpw and long hose to be annoying, because I had to doff and don gear in the surge out in front of villa aldora during each cycle of being the rescuer or the victim. The doffing was fine, it's the donning while being tossed back and forth that was a bit less than pleasant.
I overreacted by switching to a rental BC and regulator set for the next few days. To their credit, the instructors always kept an expectation that we would be doing it many more times. I can see how that facilitates learning to do it right vs just muddling through a set number of attempts. The feeling I got was that they wanted to see us really learn the skills, not just check off a few boxes. we definitely did all of the exercises enough times to get some muscle memory going which i appreciated. As it happened though, by the time I switched BCs I only had a handful of doff and don cycles left.
Overall, I think a lot of things from that class are going to stick with me forever and that's the mark of a good class.
Day Dives
Nice mix of good old cozumel reef dives, some of the notables:
Dos Barcos/Two Boats: never been to this site, used it for one of our rescue scenario dives. Pretty cool - enjoyed the wrecks and relocated coral heads, and lots of life was present: eels, wrasses, lobster, hermit crabs, angelfish (and other typical reef fish), quite a few decent size trumpet fish also. It's a shallow site which allowed for a nice long 94 minute dive time with some rescue incidents mixed in.
Villa Blanca Wall: this was a dive for rescue course. on entry found Tom with disconnected inflator in "distress". had to evade his "drowning panic", establish boyancy, and reconnect inflator.
ironically, he then had a real problem with equalizing so did the dive without him. this may have saved me from a lot of fake emergencies.
During the dive, did vertigo sim: blackout mask, spun around by instructor. had to re-establish boyancy and trim blind.
at the end of the dive, encountered an "unresponsive diver" at surface. followed rescue proceedure, brought to boat, administered cpr and o2, called fake EMS.
many toadfish at this site. followed by a giant eagle ray and then a medium one.
Tunich: loaded with turtles, in particular saw one huge turtle chomping away with an entourage of queen angelfish enjoying the scraps. Quite a feast
Palancar Gardens: Took Sherief's special route which is quite different than the usual. 3 different reef sharks came up from the deep to check us out.
Punta Sur Sur: Nice visit tol the cathedral, and upon exiting the tunnel a large Eagle Ray was crusing by up close and personal
Night Dives
Did a few of night dives with Aldora throughout my visit and in some ways these are my favorite. Lots of animals out and about including a lot of hunting octopii, a snake eel, lots of morays, big crabs
Continued in the next reply (character limit)
A Month In Cozumel
I'm probably not the only person who got re-interested in diving during the pandemic. Having completed my AOW locally and on the heels of way too much research / gear aquisition, I visited cozumel for the first time in early September and had a great time. While on the trip, I met a guy who told me he spent a few months a year there and balanced work in with recreation; this sounded very interesting, given that my job is now fully remote.
I decided to try a month working from Cozumel. my goals:
- see how it feels as a place to live and hang out, would i want to potentially buy a place or stay for longer periods every year?
- get rescue diver certification
- do some more diving in general
Working From The Island
The condo I rented had fiber optic internet, and it worked out great. No issue whatsoever with video calls or working with online documents. Internet worked flawlessly the entire trip. I also found the internet on my mobile phone largely usable though LTE coverage isn't perfect. overall, Cozumel seems to be a great location for remote work.
Living On The Island
"Luxury" services were accessible, affordable, and nice to have. I didn't even try to shop around so I'm sure even better deals can be had, but for reference, having my 3 bedroom condo cleaned cost 500 pesos, getting my weekly laundry done cost around 70 + tip.
I didn't bother to rent a car or a scooter, did lots of walking everywhere. Taxis for the rare trips outside centro, and bummed a few rides with people. It feels good to get a lot of walking in every day though!
Rescue Class
Before arriving in Mexico, I took First Aid/CPR/AED training with the red cross locally, and did the PADI eLearning online. This left a todo list of pool sessions, open water sessions, emergency oxygen hands-on, and boat dive scenarios.
Aldora was very accommodating and organized the class sessions during nights and weekends. I was the only basic rescue student, but was joined in the activities by a divemaster student, an instructor candidate, and an in-water instructor. Sessions were run by Liang, who is the course director at Aldora. I thought it was great that she personally oversees rescue classes. She shared a number of additional references to review, including accident reports, risk management literature, a link to the accidents and incidents forum here, and some other items of interest. Eventually had a few scuba accident dreams from reviewing all this material but didn't find it too upsetting strangely.
One of the reference pieces I found essential was this: . (how long it takes to drain a tank with high or low pressure regulator failure).
The class was great, covered all sorts of things. The first day of doing open water simulated rescues, I found my bpw and long hose to be annoying, because I had to doff and don gear in the surge out in front of villa aldora during each cycle of being the rescuer or the victim. The doffing was fine, it's the donning while being tossed back and forth that was a bit less than pleasant.
I overreacted by switching to a rental BC and regulator set for the next few days. To their credit, the instructors always kept an expectation that we would be doing it many more times. I can see how that facilitates learning to do it right vs just muddling through a set number of attempts. The feeling I got was that they wanted to see us really learn the skills, not just check off a few boxes. we definitely did all of the exercises enough times to get some muscle memory going which i appreciated. As it happened though, by the time I switched BCs I only had a handful of doff and don cycles left.
Overall, I think a lot of things from that class are going to stick with me forever and that's the mark of a good class.
Day Dives
Nice mix of good old cozumel reef dives, some of the notables:
Dos Barcos/Two Boats: never been to this site, used it for one of our rescue scenario dives. Pretty cool - enjoyed the wrecks and relocated coral heads, and lots of life was present: eels, wrasses, lobster, hermit crabs, angelfish (and other typical reef fish), quite a few decent size trumpet fish also. It's a shallow site which allowed for a nice long 94 minute dive time with some rescue incidents mixed in.
Villa Blanca Wall: this was a dive for rescue course. on entry found Tom with disconnected inflator in "distress". had to evade his "drowning panic", establish boyancy, and reconnect inflator.
ironically, he then had a real problem with equalizing so did the dive without him. this may have saved me from a lot of fake emergencies.
During the dive, did vertigo sim: blackout mask, spun around by instructor. had to re-establish boyancy and trim blind.
at the end of the dive, encountered an "unresponsive diver" at surface. followed rescue proceedure, brought to boat, administered cpr and o2, called fake EMS.
many toadfish at this site. followed by a giant eagle ray and then a medium one.
Tunich: loaded with turtles, in particular saw one huge turtle chomping away with an entourage of queen angelfish enjoying the scraps. Quite a feast
Palancar Gardens: Took Sherief's special route which is quite different than the usual. 3 different reef sharks came up from the deep to check us out.
Punta Sur Sur: Nice visit tol the cathedral, and upon exiting the tunnel a large Eagle Ray was crusing by up close and personal
Night Dives
Did a few of night dives with Aldora throughout my visit and in some ways these are my favorite. Lots of animals out and about including a lot of hunting octopii, a snake eel, lots of morays, big crabs
Continued in the next reply (character limit)
