Wijbrandus
Contributor
Cancun Trip Report
Went to Cancun for the week of 30 Oct through 6 Nov, 2004. I booked with Apple Vacations, and chartered my diving directly with the local operators. Here is my experiences and my opinions, take it for what it's worth.
The Diving:
I'll start off the bat with the most relevant stuff for this board - the diving. My wife and I are both relatively new divers. I have 23 dives under my belt, she has a few less, so this is definitely from a less experienced perspective.
Good stuff - I really liked the diving. I've been to Coz, Aruba, and the Keys. The vis is better in Coz, and the so is the coral, but there were way more fish in Cancun than I've ever seen in my other trips. I would rate Cancun over Coz right now simply on the comparison of one trip each for wildlife. Some people on my boat saw nurse sharks up to 8 or 9 feet, but I never got so lucky. We did have a sea turtle following us around for a little bit, that was different. No large pelagics or dolphins. We did do a cenote for our last dive day. Wow. If you haven't ever done one, this alone was worth the trip.
Bad stuff - Rough seas, for one. We were running 6-8 foot swells, with the occasional bigger roller coming through. I never get sea sick, but I was sick every day on this trip. A few bumped noggins and knees from the boat rolling like a wild bull. We had really fast currents too. Every drop was run commando style. The boat would power into the target area, and one group of divers, already geared up to go, would jump in to a "GO GO GO" and then descend quickly. One time my wife didn't get down fast enough - it took her almost a minute from jumping in to descent. We missed the wreck and had to reboard for another run at it. The boat crew said they were going to "follow our bubbles", but didn't. I did deploy my sausage a few times just to make sure they could see us. Was very glad I had a six footer and not the tiny four footer, too.
Overall - Two thumbs up. Rough seas were hard to deal with, but the diving was well worth it when we got under the waves. I don't know why Cancun is so overlooked by the diving community, but I think it's very under rated.
The Dive Operator:
We had it all set up with Manta Divers before we went. When I got there and called to confirm the morning start for a week of diving, I was told there would be no trip the next day because of this International Triathlon that was going on. The manager asked us to walk down to the shop to discuss our options. It's only about a kilometer down the road, but we'd been flying all morning, and been up since 1 am, so ... ugh. We hoof it down there, and he just repeats that he can't get his crew in and so won't be running on Sunday. Then he starts a hard sell on a cenote dive because he's short on his minimum numbers for later in the week for the trip. We left, walked back to the hotel with a bad feeling, and decided to ditch him. Got back to the hotel, and we called AquaWorld. After hearing a lot of negatives here on the board, we figured we'd use them for the Sunday diving, and then decide where to go after that. Booked a 2tank reef trip and showed up the next morning...
I am very impressed with them. Yes, it's a "cattle-boat". Yes, you have a DM and you follow the leader. Yes, you have hard limits on bottom time. However, they are very well run. Tracy ran all of our ocean trips. She'd only been there 7 months, but she had the routine down pat. All of the DMs are locals, but they speak English well enough and seemed quite competent. When we were done diving, they rinsed all of my gear down and gave it to me to pack up. There was some confusion by the DMs setting up the gear since I dive a bp/w, but I always double-check my gear when it's all set up, and it was fine.
We will gladly use AquaWorld again. (PS I did ask where to find CancunMark, but as he's an instructor, he was "unavailable". Just wanted to say hi from a SB partner, but I missed the opportunity.)
The Rest of the Story:
Apple Vacations has their poop in a group. Very well organized and coordinated. Everything went off according to plan and as advertised. We are already planning our next trip through them.
The Hotel - We stayed at the Intercontinental Presidente. Nice place, but we didn't like it for some problems we had.
1) My wife works online, even on vacation, so Internet access for us is a must. All of our reservations are made with this in mind. This hotel advertised free wireless Internet. However, when we got there, it "wasn't available yet." She had to use the Business Center at 10 bucks an hour instead.
2) Maid service. Only happened three days. The other days, we never got service except one night they knocked on the door at 9.30 at night and woke us up to ask if we wanted our room cleaned. WTF???
3) No outside food was allowed in the resort. They had security nazis at the entrance to make sure. The one time we actually took in the breakfast buffet, it cost us 42 bucks. We smuggled in some pop tarts, and lived on outside food from then on. We tried to talk them into letting us order a pizza so we could watch the Election coverage - no dice. This appears to be the norm for all the hotels in Cancun. Didn't like that at all.
4) The hotel staff continually pressed us to come and listen to their timeshare/package deal speech. No thanks. Could not get them to just leave us alone.
I really liked Cancun. Yes, it's full of chains, but we had a blast. Hung out in Carlos & Charlies most nights. Didn't drink much until the night after our last dives, and then we went hog wild. CHEAP BOOZE. Two thumbs up for Cancun topside.
Margaritaville was also pretty different. My first time there. I'm a big fan of the coconut bikinis the girls were wearing.
Bottom line - Cancun was a great trip for my wife and I. However, we won't be back for a while as the hotel was pretty much a bust.
That's the end. Hope this helps someone else out.
Went to Cancun for the week of 30 Oct through 6 Nov, 2004. I booked with Apple Vacations, and chartered my diving directly with the local operators. Here is my experiences and my opinions, take it for what it's worth.
The Diving:
I'll start off the bat with the most relevant stuff for this board - the diving. My wife and I are both relatively new divers. I have 23 dives under my belt, she has a few less, so this is definitely from a less experienced perspective.
Good stuff - I really liked the diving. I've been to Coz, Aruba, and the Keys. The vis is better in Coz, and the so is the coral, but there were way more fish in Cancun than I've ever seen in my other trips. I would rate Cancun over Coz right now simply on the comparison of one trip each for wildlife. Some people on my boat saw nurse sharks up to 8 or 9 feet, but I never got so lucky. We did have a sea turtle following us around for a little bit, that was different. No large pelagics or dolphins. We did do a cenote for our last dive day. Wow. If you haven't ever done one, this alone was worth the trip.
Bad stuff - Rough seas, for one. We were running 6-8 foot swells, with the occasional bigger roller coming through. I never get sea sick, but I was sick every day on this trip. A few bumped noggins and knees from the boat rolling like a wild bull. We had really fast currents too. Every drop was run commando style. The boat would power into the target area, and one group of divers, already geared up to go, would jump in to a "GO GO GO" and then descend quickly. One time my wife didn't get down fast enough - it took her almost a minute from jumping in to descent. We missed the wreck and had to reboard for another run at it. The boat crew said they were going to "follow our bubbles", but didn't. I did deploy my sausage a few times just to make sure they could see us. Was very glad I had a six footer and not the tiny four footer, too.
Overall - Two thumbs up. Rough seas were hard to deal with, but the diving was well worth it when we got under the waves. I don't know why Cancun is so overlooked by the diving community, but I think it's very under rated.
The Dive Operator:
We had it all set up with Manta Divers before we went. When I got there and called to confirm the morning start for a week of diving, I was told there would be no trip the next day because of this International Triathlon that was going on. The manager asked us to walk down to the shop to discuss our options. It's only about a kilometer down the road, but we'd been flying all morning, and been up since 1 am, so ... ugh. We hoof it down there, and he just repeats that he can't get his crew in and so won't be running on Sunday. Then he starts a hard sell on a cenote dive because he's short on his minimum numbers for later in the week for the trip. We left, walked back to the hotel with a bad feeling, and decided to ditch him. Got back to the hotel, and we called AquaWorld. After hearing a lot of negatives here on the board, we figured we'd use them for the Sunday diving, and then decide where to go after that. Booked a 2tank reef trip and showed up the next morning...
I am very impressed with them. Yes, it's a "cattle-boat". Yes, you have a DM and you follow the leader. Yes, you have hard limits on bottom time. However, they are very well run. Tracy ran all of our ocean trips. She'd only been there 7 months, but she had the routine down pat. All of the DMs are locals, but they speak English well enough and seemed quite competent. When we were done diving, they rinsed all of my gear down and gave it to me to pack up. There was some confusion by the DMs setting up the gear since I dive a bp/w, but I always double-check my gear when it's all set up, and it was fine.
We will gladly use AquaWorld again. (PS I did ask where to find CancunMark, but as he's an instructor, he was "unavailable". Just wanted to say hi from a SB partner, but I missed the opportunity.)
The Rest of the Story:
Apple Vacations has their poop in a group. Very well organized and coordinated. Everything went off according to plan and as advertised. We are already planning our next trip through them.
The Hotel - We stayed at the Intercontinental Presidente. Nice place, but we didn't like it for some problems we had.
1) My wife works online, even on vacation, so Internet access for us is a must. All of our reservations are made with this in mind. This hotel advertised free wireless Internet. However, when we got there, it "wasn't available yet." She had to use the Business Center at 10 bucks an hour instead.
2) Maid service. Only happened three days. The other days, we never got service except one night they knocked on the door at 9.30 at night and woke us up to ask if we wanted our room cleaned. WTF???
3) No outside food was allowed in the resort. They had security nazis at the entrance to make sure. The one time we actually took in the breakfast buffet, it cost us 42 bucks. We smuggled in some pop tarts, and lived on outside food from then on. We tried to talk them into letting us order a pizza so we could watch the Election coverage - no dice. This appears to be the norm for all the hotels in Cancun. Didn't like that at all.
4) The hotel staff continually pressed us to come and listen to their timeshare/package deal speech. No thanks. Could not get them to just leave us alone.
I really liked Cancun. Yes, it's full of chains, but we had a blast. Hung out in Carlos & Charlies most nights. Didn't drink much until the night after our last dives, and then we went hog wild. CHEAP BOOZE. Two thumbs up for Cancun topside.
Margaritaville was also pretty different. My first time there. I'm a big fan of the coconut bikinis the girls were wearing.
Bottom line - Cancun was a great trip for my wife and I. However, we won't be back for a while as the hotel was pretty much a bust.
That's the end. Hope this helps someone else out.
