Don- thanks for your feedback. Can you give me a name of your favs- you didn't state the name! Also your mentioned CVCHIEFS fav- but I don't know the name either. Can you post some company names. Oh the 2k covers plane, hotel, dives, food, drinks, tips, and transport etc.. roughly and by the way did you mentioned you stayed at Coz Hotel and Resort and if so what do you think. Im a competitive open water swimmer also and looking for a nice pool to swim laps after a long day fighting drift diving currents!!
!! Im serious about this too!! haha
---------- Post added March 17th, 2013 at 11:49 PM ----------
Clueless on Caleta? Can you give me more info on this? Much appreciated.
Well, yeah - I have stayed at the Hotel Coz, but I'm a lazy old coot. I make 2 dives in the morning, then loaf around the hotel. You will probably like their huge pool. It's where they take the captive dolphins during hurricanes, a practice that I do not support but the whole captive dolphin industry is easy to despise. Normally, it's fully available to guests. And you sound very athletic, but don't fight the currents. Enjoy the ride. The DMs are required to keep their dive groups more or less together in the park. You can enjoy some leeway on that once your DM knows your dive skills, but stay in sight of your group and ride the currents.
Your typo was $200 thousand = $2 million, but we understand what you meant.
The house Op at Hotel Coz is Dive Paradise. A lot of divers like them, but most of their boats are so slow. It a big Op and I just have this cattle boat expectation of them. You might like to rent a tank from them for a shore dive if you keep your great yourself. The hotel does have rinse tanks and lockers, BYO lock. I let my Op keep much of my gear and rinse it for me so I never tried the shore diving there, and they pissed me off when they wouldn't send my pony to the fill station for an overnight fill.
Not far from the Hotel Coz is the Blue Angel, a nice walk for people less lazy than myself, or for this discussion - a good Op to go with, who will pick you up at Hotel Coz. Have a chat with the owner in email or on Facebook, be open about your dive experiences, and they should be able to get you on more experienced boats okay for trips to more challenging sites far south or up north - the latter being a whole different dive experience.
I dive with Opal's Dream dive Op. That's a long, involved story that started before the divorce, before Opal's fatal dive accident on an off day, etc. Her mom & I are still FB friends, as is the shop, but I hated that they moved into town. They still pick me up and serve me well, but I just don't go visit at the shop like I did when they were below Hogtown Cafe.
Chief's fav is Scuba With Alison if I have that right, docked at the Caleta marina. He got me to go out with them one day on her boat, with Chief picking me up in his funny rental car they always save for him, and they are super. The boat is huge and comfy, but not big enough for 2 DM lead groups so she just takes out 6 or 8 at a time like the smaller boats. Being such a big boat, she does not waste gas running it to town and back to pickup customers and get them to the sites, but if you don't mind a taxi each way or a rental car, it's a great Op. Really, the idea of take ground transportation to the marina then the boat from there makes good sense if it were not for the taxi union that prevents buses, shared vans, dive Op transportation, etc. The only other down side is that they don't go up to the north reefs.
But really, dive Ops are so very competitive on Coz that most of them are great once you avoid the big Ops and their cattle boats. You could make a list of 20 from the favs reported in threads on this forum, email each, telling them that you are an experienced diver who wants to go out to challenging sites with boats of other experienced divers, adding whatever points you felt important (tank type, Nitrox, price, pickup at hotel, head on board, etc?) and half of those would probably work out ok. I could not tell you which tho. I don't know you and your preferences well enough.
, so I'd guess he's been with her awhile. 
Thinking on it, I think he has a thing for her Capitan! 
