Trip Report CocoView Resort May 8-15, 2021

[Hoag]

An incredible trip report!

Thanks for sharing.

 

[Doc]

Good stuff.

 

[deeper thoughts]

What a fantastic report!
Thnx for taking the time out to do this

 

[Rob9876]

Great report, thanks for posting!

 

[<*)))><]

Outstanding review. Extremely helpful and much appreciated!

 

[drrich2]

Coco View must have been fully occupied or nearly so. The dining room appears pretty full. How many divers were on the Coco II? It looks to hold quite a few, perhaps wasn't run at capacity. Did everyone go with the guide for the first part of the dive?

Yes, they only had 2 rooms to offer me for that week, and that was as of late November 2020. I never had trouble finding a table, though.

Early in the week I snapped a shot from the chalk board of our boat assignment.

We often dove with fewer people on a given trip, though. It wasn't consistently a '6-pack experience' of course, but I didn't feel like we were mobbing the reef, either.

The group always went with the guide, and I never heard anyone asking about buddy pairs going off on their own, so I don't know what the reaction would have been. A couple of things to mention:

-----Most dives were the standard 'go tour the reef and come back to the mooring' type, but two of ours were 'drop off, spend the dive headed one way (roughly), and reach the site the boat had moved to moor at,' based on conditions (e.g.: anticipated current).

-----One guy with a big yellow pony bottle diving without any evident buddy often dove well below the rest of us. To give you some idea, we were the only two doing a drop-off dive one afternoon, and I watched him awhile but broke off when he kept going at a good deal deeper than I was...and I was at 88 feet! (Note: Newman's Wall and CocoView Wall are better dives shallow).

keep in mind, go back and edit if you will

it’s CCV, not cvr.

Thanks, Doc. I still had time to Edit, so I fixed the ones I found.

Richard.

 

[Doc]

Early in the week I snapped a shot from the chalk board of our boat assignment.
View attachment 660257

I walked off your same boat as you arrived. About the same load factor. More than enough room.

Several trips we had 2 or 3 divers on the boat. Shore diving will do that.

 

[drrich2]

I walked off your same boat as you arrived.

Small world! I was impressed with CCV; as always, I try comparing it to other places, but it's apples-to-oranges.

I love the independence of roaming Bonaire's west coast for independent shore diving...but my first trips were with a group (which I recommend to get oriented), and roaming Bonaire means a comfort level driving in a foreign country with international road signs unlike what we use in the U.S., plus that roughly foot deep 'step off' the edge at many shore sites, where I can't see the bottom clearly due to waves washing in and out. And there's the hassle of gearing up with the tail gate of a pickup truck. The only big grouper I've seen in Bonaire were tiger grouper. I preferred southern Roatan's strong vertical wall to Bonaire's (? roughly 30 - 45 degree ?) sloping walls...but some people like flat or sloping bottom right under them. The boat trip distant sites of Roatan I saw were lusher than most of west coast Bonaire in my opinion, unless you head way south (e.g.: Sweet Dreams), where seas may be rougher.

A diver fairly new to Caribbean travel who's not well-traveled or adventurous, wants boat diving but to try shore diving, at risk for turning an ankle or falls, happy to stay on the reservation and not traveling with a dive group might be way better off hitting CCV. Of course, if sandy shore entry/exits are the issue, some might say consider Curacao.

The diving workflow of CCV is more work than the Caribbean live-aboards (but less than Bonaire) I've been on (which are as close to 'eat, sleep and fall in the water' as I think diving gets), but not everyone is up for being on a boat for a week, and some people like to 'connect' to the land portion more. It still bugs me I've got 18 dives off Little Cayman and 2 off Cayman Brac (via the Cayman Aggressor IV)...but have never set foot on either island. And people who want to try a little solo diving in benign conditions to grow their independence may find solo diving is forbidden on some live-aboards.

I'm very blessed that I got to do all those. I hope people researching trip options on Scuba Board analyze their options closely, because what's 'best' is very relative.

 

[Johnoly]

What a complete and detailed report!!. I know that this took you hours and hours to writeup & assemble and the quality of the report shines thru. The incredible amount of pictures answered every question I could think of and those vertical wall dive shots look like the place to be. 5 Star report @drrich2 !!

 

[scubabjs]

Great trip report, wish I could give you some karma or something, looks like nothing has changed in 15 years other than some of the staff, have been thinking of going back to CCV after this Covid-19 mess, to see if the reefs/fish population has recovered.