We just got back Tuesday from a two week visit to the island; we stayed at and dove with Blue Angel.
IN GENERAL: Our United flights AUS - HOU, HOU - CZM, CZM - HOU, and HOU - AUS were mostly uneventful except for the last leg; more about that later. The hotel was the same as it ever was, which is a bit rustic for some folks but checks all the boxes for us. Other than the music on the lawn four evenings a week and the rave “music” up the street for three days and nights that I ranted about in another thread, the hotel was mostly quiet, which I appreciated. The weather was unusually good the whole time; the days were sunny and the humidity was uncharacteristically low. Two small thunderstorms popped up but they both missed us, and the lighting on the dives was mostly aquarium-like. We only saw Eva a couple of times - briefly and from a safe distance; she was fighting a virus the whole time we were there.
There were five of us in our core group but we had others who joined us for parts of our stay; my wife and I were the only divers. I did not record the DM every day, but we dove with Marcos, Andy, Julio, and the new guy Leo, and all of them were excellent. The hotel provided a hammock for me outside my sliding glass door; I woke up and got in it at ~5AM every day to watch the island wake up. Heavy sigh…
DAY ONE 4/22 (ARRIVAL): We landed noonish and took the shuttle to BA; I spent the afternoon moving into the room, making the first run to Mega for supplies, and relaxing and getting into Island Time with the Ceremonial Removal Of The Wristwatch. We had dinner at the BA restaurant.
DAY TWO 4/23 (Happy 97th birthday, Mom!): We dove at 10AM from the No Problem so we could sleep in a bit on our first morning; the rest of our boat dives were all from the Jibarra or the Blue Angel II at 8:30AM. We dove Santa Rosa Shallows and Yucab; we saw our first shark at SRS. That night we had a birthday celebration dinner for my mom at Buccanos At Night.
DAY THREE 4/24: We dove Cedral Wall (three big green morays under an overhang together and two big loggerheads) and Tormentos. Dinner at La Choza.
DAY FOUR 4/25: The first of two 8 hour fishing trips, this one on the Albatros booked through Albatros Charters. It was not great; we only caught two very small dorado (mahi mahi), which we threw back to maybe catch next year when they grow up. The boat was just OK. Dinner at ‘Ohana where we got to spend some time with Mateo, who is currently on hiatus from being a DM at BA due to a complex and challenging family situation. We hope things get better for him soon; he needs a miracle every day.
DAY FIVE 4/26: Colombia Deep (lone eagle ray) and Francesa (two sharks, three juvie drum, and a big orange seahorse). Dinner at Pancho’s Backyard.
DAY SIX 4/27: We contacted our regular taxi driver for the last 7 years or so, Jose “Squarepants” Lopez, who picked up our group of seven at the hotel for our annual trek around the island. We stopped at Mescalito’s (I hooked the ring game three times), Señor Iguana’s, Punta Morena, Coconuts, and El Mirador, and Jose cut through the jungle to get to the old road so that we could make our yearly pilgrimage to Tree, which is a huge ceiba which we believe is the largest tree on Cozumel and which we discovered in 1978. Dinner at BA.
DAY SEVEN 4/28: Second fishing day, this one on the Lucero, booked through our friend Jesus Vivas. It was all-around a much better trip than the first; we caught 10 small to medium dorado, one wahoo, one barracuda, and a beautiful white marlin, which we released (we kept the rest of the catch; we gave away several dorado filets and left the rest on the boat). We liked the boat a lot better, too. Dinner at El Moro.
DAY EIGHT 4/29: Palancar Bricks and Paseo Cedral. Huge loggerhead at Cedral; I am pretty sure it was Charlie, the one with damage from an encounter with a boat propeller. Dinner at Kontesa.
DAY NINE 4/30: Francesa and Tormentos. The current was ripping at Francesa, and my wife found that GoPro (see the other thread), which, thanks to Scubaboard, we were able to return to its owner that afternoon. Gotta love a happy ending to a lost camera story! Dinner at Casa Mission with another birthday celebration for Mom.
DAY TEN 5/1: Casablanca (a shark, two loggerhead (perhaps the same ones from day three) and Paradise. Paradise was a lovely slow current brightly lit dive; I don’t know why so many divers turn up their noses at that reef. We also dove Paradise that night, we didn’t see any octopus, but there were so many crabs and lobsters that we soon stopped pointing them out to each other. We saw what the DM called a “snake eel” - a sharptail. We were continually buzzed all through the dive by a hunting gang of large horse-eye jacks, and we saw two large nurse sharks - one was “asleep” in a grotto but the other one swam right through our group. Great dive, and dinner at BA.
DAY ELEVEN 5/2: We booked the Lucero for a trip to Cielo, which was typical of the times we have been there. Floating around in the chest deep beautiful water, beer and snacks on the swim platform, lots of other boats doing the same thing. We put a couple of lines in the water for the return trip, but no strikes. Dinner at La Monina.
DAY TWELVE 5/3: Palancar Caves (another long beautiful swimthrough) and the last part of Cedral into Santa Rosa Shallows. We found a juvie drum out against a coral backdrop; my wife got some great video of it. We also did a shore dive from the hotel that night, which was fabulous! We mostly stayed close to the fence around the stingray jail; we saw five or six octopus, and since we were alone my wife got loads of video of them. We saw a pair of big slipper lobsters, which reminded me of the aliens in some old sci-fi show I saw many years ago. Squid, balloon fish, trumpet fish, many drums in various stages of maturity, morays, and a huge stingray through the fence. Dinner at BA.
DAY THIRTEEN 5/4: Colombia and Villablanca Wall. We did the longest swim through I have ever done at Colombia, which was beautiful, but Villablanca was a called dive because of the ripping current dragging us toward the car ferry pier. It was impossible to stop to see anything or to stay together. It was a shame because it may have been our last chance to dive Villablanca. Dinner at Bajau, which was new to us, recommended by a friend
DAY FOURTEEN 5/5 (Last dive day, being here now!!): San Francisco Wall and Yucab into Tormentos. SFW had uncomfortably fast current but the second dive was lovely. I saw a large splendid toadfish nearly all the way out of its lair but by the time my wife could get there with her camera it had gone back in. It was a very nice dive to end the trip. Dinner at Cielito Lindo, also new to us on recommendation by a friend. Eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow we fly.
DAY FIFTEEN 5/6 (Time to go home): If you don’t leave you can’t come back. The United flight from Cozumel to Houston was fine but the last leg for my wife and me was a nightmare due to weather delays, a flight cancellation, and crew shortages. We were supposed to land in Austin at 7PM, but we walked in our front door at 2:30AM, totally exhausted.
The rest of our group, including my 97 year old mom, were going to Lake Charles, LA, and their experience was even worse. Their flight was scheduled to leave IAH at 7:30PM but got delayed until 11:30. It got all the way to LC but could not land because of a stalled thunderstorm; it flew all the way back to Houston and unloaded. My sister texted me at 4:30AM to tell me that they were looking for a hotel room; they flew out at noon the next day. They got to LC but half their luggage did not until the day after that.
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Anyway, with the exception of our flights out of Houston, we had a really great trip. Great dives and not so bad fishing, great weather, great food, great people… All in all, great. We are already thinking about año proximo!
Gordon
IN GENERAL: Our United flights AUS - HOU, HOU - CZM, CZM - HOU, and HOU - AUS were mostly uneventful except for the last leg; more about that later. The hotel was the same as it ever was, which is a bit rustic for some folks but checks all the boxes for us. Other than the music on the lawn four evenings a week and the rave “music” up the street for three days and nights that I ranted about in another thread, the hotel was mostly quiet, which I appreciated. The weather was unusually good the whole time; the days were sunny and the humidity was uncharacteristically low. Two small thunderstorms popped up but they both missed us, and the lighting on the dives was mostly aquarium-like. We only saw Eva a couple of times - briefly and from a safe distance; she was fighting a virus the whole time we were there.
There were five of us in our core group but we had others who joined us for parts of our stay; my wife and I were the only divers. I did not record the DM every day, but we dove with Marcos, Andy, Julio, and the new guy Leo, and all of them were excellent. The hotel provided a hammock for me outside my sliding glass door; I woke up and got in it at ~5AM every day to watch the island wake up. Heavy sigh…
DAY ONE 4/22 (ARRIVAL): We landed noonish and took the shuttle to BA; I spent the afternoon moving into the room, making the first run to Mega for supplies, and relaxing and getting into Island Time with the Ceremonial Removal Of The Wristwatch. We had dinner at the BA restaurant.
DAY TWO 4/23 (Happy 97th birthday, Mom!): We dove at 10AM from the No Problem so we could sleep in a bit on our first morning; the rest of our boat dives were all from the Jibarra or the Blue Angel II at 8:30AM. We dove Santa Rosa Shallows and Yucab; we saw our first shark at SRS. That night we had a birthday celebration dinner for my mom at Buccanos At Night.
DAY THREE 4/24: We dove Cedral Wall (three big green morays under an overhang together and two big loggerheads) and Tormentos. Dinner at La Choza.
DAY FOUR 4/25: The first of two 8 hour fishing trips, this one on the Albatros booked through Albatros Charters. It was not great; we only caught two very small dorado (mahi mahi), which we threw back to maybe catch next year when they grow up. The boat was just OK. Dinner at ‘Ohana where we got to spend some time with Mateo, who is currently on hiatus from being a DM at BA due to a complex and challenging family situation. We hope things get better for him soon; he needs a miracle every day.
DAY FIVE 4/26: Colombia Deep (lone eagle ray) and Francesa (two sharks, three juvie drum, and a big orange seahorse). Dinner at Pancho’s Backyard.
DAY SIX 4/27: We contacted our regular taxi driver for the last 7 years or so, Jose “Squarepants” Lopez, who picked up our group of seven at the hotel for our annual trek around the island. We stopped at Mescalito’s (I hooked the ring game three times), Señor Iguana’s, Punta Morena, Coconuts, and El Mirador, and Jose cut through the jungle to get to the old road so that we could make our yearly pilgrimage to Tree, which is a huge ceiba which we believe is the largest tree on Cozumel and which we discovered in 1978. Dinner at BA.
DAY SEVEN 4/28: Second fishing day, this one on the Lucero, booked through our friend Jesus Vivas. It was all-around a much better trip than the first; we caught 10 small to medium dorado, one wahoo, one barracuda, and a beautiful white marlin, which we released (we kept the rest of the catch; we gave away several dorado filets and left the rest on the boat). We liked the boat a lot better, too. Dinner at El Moro.
DAY EIGHT 4/29: Palancar Bricks and Paseo Cedral. Huge loggerhead at Cedral; I am pretty sure it was Charlie, the one with damage from an encounter with a boat propeller. Dinner at Kontesa.
DAY NINE 4/30: Francesa and Tormentos. The current was ripping at Francesa, and my wife found that GoPro (see the other thread), which, thanks to Scubaboard, we were able to return to its owner that afternoon. Gotta love a happy ending to a lost camera story! Dinner at Casa Mission with another birthday celebration for Mom.
DAY TEN 5/1: Casablanca (a shark, two loggerhead (perhaps the same ones from day three) and Paradise. Paradise was a lovely slow current brightly lit dive; I don’t know why so many divers turn up their noses at that reef. We also dove Paradise that night, we didn’t see any octopus, but there were so many crabs and lobsters that we soon stopped pointing them out to each other. We saw what the DM called a “snake eel” - a sharptail. We were continually buzzed all through the dive by a hunting gang of large horse-eye jacks, and we saw two large nurse sharks - one was “asleep” in a grotto but the other one swam right through our group. Great dive, and dinner at BA.
DAY ELEVEN 5/2: We booked the Lucero for a trip to Cielo, which was typical of the times we have been there. Floating around in the chest deep beautiful water, beer and snacks on the swim platform, lots of other boats doing the same thing. We put a couple of lines in the water for the return trip, but no strikes. Dinner at La Monina.
DAY TWELVE 5/3: Palancar Caves (another long beautiful swimthrough) and the last part of Cedral into Santa Rosa Shallows. We found a juvie drum out against a coral backdrop; my wife got some great video of it. We also did a shore dive from the hotel that night, which was fabulous! We mostly stayed close to the fence around the stingray jail; we saw five or six octopus, and since we were alone my wife got loads of video of them. We saw a pair of big slipper lobsters, which reminded me of the aliens in some old sci-fi show I saw many years ago. Squid, balloon fish, trumpet fish, many drums in various stages of maturity, morays, and a huge stingray through the fence. Dinner at BA.
DAY THIRTEEN 5/4: Colombia and Villablanca Wall. We did the longest swim through I have ever done at Colombia, which was beautiful, but Villablanca was a called dive because of the ripping current dragging us toward the car ferry pier. It was impossible to stop to see anything or to stay together. It was a shame because it may have been our last chance to dive Villablanca. Dinner at Bajau, which was new to us, recommended by a friend
DAY FOURTEEN 5/5 (Last dive day, being here now!!): San Francisco Wall and Yucab into Tormentos. SFW had uncomfortably fast current but the second dive was lovely. I saw a large splendid toadfish nearly all the way out of its lair but by the time my wife could get there with her camera it had gone back in. It was a very nice dive to end the trip. Dinner at Cielito Lindo, also new to us on recommendation by a friend. Eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow we fly.
DAY FIFTEEN 5/6 (Time to go home): If you don’t leave you can’t come back. The United flight from Cozumel to Houston was fine but the last leg for my wife and me was a nightmare due to weather delays, a flight cancellation, and crew shortages. We were supposed to land in Austin at 7PM, but we walked in our front door at 2:30AM, totally exhausted.
The rest of our group, including my 97 year old mom, were going to Lake Charles, LA, and their experience was even worse. Their flight was scheduled to leave IAH at 7:30PM but got delayed until 11:30. It got all the way to LC but could not land because of a stalled thunderstorm; it flew all the way back to Houston and unloaded. My sister texted me at 4:30AM to tell me that they were looking for a hotel room; they flew out at noon the next day. They got to LC but half their luggage did not until the day after that.
==========================================
Anyway, with the exception of our flights out of Houston, we had a really great trip. Great dives and not so bad fishing, great weather, great food, great people… All in all, great. We are already thinking about año proximo!
Gordon
