Cozumel - El Cuento de Mi Viaje Solo

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kmarks

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Back in February my wife had to book a conference for work and it so happened that it was in our home town, where both of our families still live, but 1200 miles from where we currently live. The conference would be from June 5-10, and she thought it would be a perfect idea to take our 15 month old daughter to visit her grandparents, freeing us from the obligation of a Christmas visit. While she was making plans, she asked me what I would be doing during that time and the conversation went something like this:

J: What are you going to do while C and I are gone?
K: I don't know. Maybe clean out the garage or something.
J: You could go to Cozumel and -
K: YouSaidItCan'tTakeItBackNowAlreadyBoughtTheAirfare!!!

And just like that, I was planning a trip to Cozumel, my fifth time on the island, but my first time to go alone, after four pre-kids trips together. @Skittl1321 has always written trip reports, but I'll have to step up and do this one.

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There were two goals for this trip: 1) Have fun, and 2) do it cheaply. One is a lot easier than the other. I was able to put the airfare on credit card points and most of my diving came out of my PayPal account, but I needed somewhere cheap to stay, which is how I ended up choosing Caribo Cozumel, the tiny $25/night owner occupied hotel on the edge of Centro that you've never heard of.

I'm going to break this up into multiple posts in the same thread, mostly because it's a lot to type all at once, but also because it's a lot to read all at once.

The short report: I was in Cozumel from June 5-10, stayed at Caribo Cozumel, and dove with Scuba with Alison on the 6-9 and Cozumel is, like, the best, you guys! I have pictures on Flickr.
 
Interested to read this as I'm looking to do a Coz trip on the cheap sometime soon. What airline did you fly with and what form of points did you use? Also where did you fly out of? Was it a direct flight to Coz or you flew to Playa del Carmen and caught the boat across?
 
Please keep posting. I also may have to do it alone this year or skip Cozumel :(
 
Ok, so lets start where we always start: at customs. Flying in to CZM is always one of my favorite things, as you pass over PDC and look down on the beautiful water on final approach, and then step off the plane into the humidity, it's almost impossible not to start smiling already. I've been working on my Spanish (Duolingo is seriously awesome!) for the past four years and I consider it a win when something like my "Buenas tardes!" is good enough that the immigration officer asked if I wanted to continue in Spanish. I chose English, because I'm not quite that confident in my Spanish. After the quick "Why are you here? How long will you be here? Do you have enough money to go home? Even if you party too much?" I moved on to the next challenge: the dog. The dog sat. The dog isn't supposed to sit. I was asked if I had food and I said yes, and I was asked if it was beef jerky and I said no. He asked what it was, and I asked if I could open my bag and show him and he said no. It was cookies that they had handed out on the plane, which I told him, and was told to go on. What's the point of the dog if you just get to tell them whatever you want (I really did have cookies and no beef jerky) and get waved on? At the next check point, I got the red light, another first, followed by a very half-@ssed look through my bags. The guy on the other table had a lot of stuff taken away, so they must actually be looking for something.

I developed tunnel vision for a few minutes and could see only the Shuttle Transfers desk and avoided the time shares people. My shuttle fare was 81 pesos or $5.50. I got my ticket and was on my way to my new home for the week.

Caribo Cozumel is owned by Jorge and Carolina and it is their home as well as a hotel. I think it has less than 12 rooms, and I was room 10, which is a standard room, with a double bed and private bathroom. It was less than $25/night and had great reviews across multiple sites, which is why I chose it. It is located at the corner of 40th and Juarez, which might be a bit of a hike for some people, but wasn't bad for me.

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Jorge and Carolina were extremely friendly, their hotel is nice, clean, and I felt safe. I had an entrance off the street, shown in the picture above, and an entrance into the courtyard, show in the picture below. There was a small mini fridge, a small safe, a very much appreciated AC, a table and a couple of chairs, a coffee maker, a very comfortable hammock, a small chair next to the bed, and a small bathroom with a shower. In the courtyard, there is a very tiny pool and a table with an umbrella, and they serve free coffee in the mornings. There is also a communal kitchen that looked well stocked that anyone can use at any time, but I never used it. I was given a 1 L bottle of water and told that I could refill it from the jug in the kitchen, and they only ask for 5 pesos in the basket whenever you get a refill. The descriptions when I booked said there would be no maid service, but there was; a woman swept, mopped, and made the bed each day and changed the sheets and towels one day (they do that every three days).

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Since I had the street access, I used that almost exclusively and never joined them for coffee in the mornings, but Jorge still recognized me one afternoon when we ran into each other as I was coming back from lunch and he and his family were heading to where I had just been. We stopped and chatted for a minute and he wanted to make sure I was enjoying the room and that I should let him know if I needed anything. He also called the taxi company and asked for a cab to come to pick me up on the day I went back to the airport.

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Caribo Cozumel doesn't offer a lot, but it also doesn't ask for a lot, either. I would not hesitate to stay there again or to recommend them to anyone looking for a cheap, safe, comfortable place to stay while focusing on enjoying diving and the culture of Cozumel.
 
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Interested to read this as I'm looking to do a Coz trip on the cheap sometime soon. What airline did you fly with and what form of points did you use? Also where did you fly out of? Was it a direct flight to Coz or you flew to Playa del Carmen and caught the boat across?
Unfortunately, flying out of Cedar Rapids, there is no true cheap or direct option to almost anywhere. I had gotten the Chase Sapphire Reserve card last summer, which gave me 50,000 points after a minimum spend, and I have had a Chase Freedom card for a few years now. I had used some of my Sapphire points on a hotel at Thanksgiving, but I was able to move some points from Freedom to Sapphire to take advantage of the 1.25x multiplier for points used on travel. Because of that, I was able to cover all of my airfare (American Airlines ~$650) and all but about $20 of the hotel. The best part was that my wife and I were able to schedule ourselves on the same flight from CR to DFW and back again, so we were able to go to the airport together and be together for baby wrangling in DFW and on her longer flight.
 
@kmarks , is there a place where you could safely lay out and dry dive gear without getting in the way of other guests?

The place looks nice for the price!
 
Title should read...Coz on $30 a day......lol.
 
I made my dives with Scuba With Alison. We booked with her on our first dive trip to Cozumel in 2013 because my wife wanted somebody who would be good with beginners, but not overbearing and she got a lot of recommendations here on Scubaboard. Skittl1321 really liked her (as did I) and we've booked with her whenever she has been available ever since, including on this trip. Alison runs a small operation and she is usually her own dive master and guide and her captain is Carlos, who keeps us all safe driving us around and picking us up as soon as we surface. Her boat is the Maximus, one of the faster boats on the island, which is a big draw for me; get me to the reef and when we're done, get me back to that hammock!

Unfortunately on this trip, Alison had just had cataract surgery and was unable to go out on the boat much less dive with us, so I only got to spend a few minutes each morning catching up with her. She replaced herself with Jorge (not the hotel owner) as dive master and he did a fantastic job. His ability to find and point out hidden and camouflaged sea creatures is second to none.

I rented my regs and BCD from Alison. She uses Cressi Start BCs, which I thought were actually pretty nice for how cheap and basic they are (no integrated weight) and some unbalanced Mares regs that have seen some stuff. Real stuff, man. The first primary I had breathed pretty hard and started free flowing on the second day, but was very quickly replaced by Carlos. Not that I ever doubted its safety while I was using it, but it was definitely time for service. I bring my own computer, a Vyper Air, and I take the console off of her first stage to put my AI transmitter in its place. This is never an issue on her boat. This trip was also the first trip for my new Sharkskin jacket and YS-03 strobe on my Canon s110 camera, both of which I loved.

On my first day of diving, I packed up my bag and walked to the taxi station near the ferry pier and got a ride to FONATUR. I found the Maximus easily and Alison, despite not seeing me in nearly three years, recognized me from a hundred yards away. Her surgery is already paying off. We caught up for a bit, then were joined by a father and his two kids, before we set off. We picked up a family of four at Iberostar, who happened to be from my home town, then made our first of two dives that morning at Palancar Caves.

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It was interesting during the predive briefing to be pointed out as the "most experienced diver on the boat" considering I'm rarely the most experienced diver in Chili's, but everyone else was newly certified, as would be the theme for the week. It was also a very young crew each day, being half kids under 18. The younger girl (12) on the boat the first day, making her very first dive since certification was very nervous until about the moment we hit the water, then she was all smiles.
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We did our surface interval floating off the beach near Palancar pier, but didn't tie up, then did our second dive for the day dropping in right about the same place we came up on the first dive, so two dives on Palancar Caves.
 
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Title should read...Coz on $30 a day......lol.
Plus the diving... Haven't quite found an op with a 2 tank for that price :)

But he did a nice job of a budget trip. All those Ibotta rebates in the PayPal account added up.
 
@kmarks , is there a place where you could safely lay out and dry dive gear without getting in the way of other guests?

The place looks nice for the price!
I was able to dry my wet suit (it took two days - Alison doesn't do wetsuits) and my sharkskin, shorts, and rash guard (overnight) by laying them out across the wicker chairs in the room. As humid as it was outside, they may have gotten wetter if I had tried to put them outside somewhere. :wink: The courtyard is secure inside the hotel, you have to have a key to get into it, so I could have asked for permission to leave some stuff out for a few hours maybe, but I didn't need to.
 
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