Trip Report Cozumel October 2024 - Presidente / Aldora - Minor Incident

[lionfish-eater]

Are these US dollars or pesos? Pretty interesting taxi price if ninety dollars.

I use a shared taxi and it is 15 per person and they try to get 4 people. So 60 would make sense.
I ask how many passengers they have already and compare that to the departure time of the next ADO bus.
I have even helped the taxi driver get some passengers so we could depart quicker.

 

[ggunn]

Are these US dollars or pesos? Pretty interesting taxi price if ninety dollars.

Dollars, I presume, but it's about a 35 mile one way trip. You have some leverage, though, hiring a taxi in Playa del Carmen to get to the CUN airport, since many of the drivers hanging out in PdC have just hauled someone down from CUN and are looking for a paying fare back.

 

[Quicksilver II]

A beer in the afternoon and a small glass or two of wine at dinner are OK for me, but the last time I drank to excess on vacation was 25 years or so ago when I drank so much out fishing that I have no memory of the big white marlin I caught, and I spent the next day in bed in my hotel room. Never again.

I'm a dumb monkey and slow to learn but in the future will def be skipping either the margs or skipping the diving the next day. I think I got a bit complacent, fortunately, it was a cheap lesson.

All the dives had been so easy so far and I got to talking to another DM at the brewery during my one night out in town and overdid it. Not even close to worth it.

That was the first time I've been underwater and really wished I wasn't, which was a feeling that won't be soon forgotten.

 

[Aey P]

Your comment is helpful. I am about to go to Cozumel for the first time and plan to stay at the Presidente (that is Intercontinental hotel, now, isn't it?. Do you have nearby dive operators you would recommend?

I am going to Cozumel in 2 weeks, ironically enough to practice for my first liveaboard trip to Raja Ampat in January on the Velocean. I was at the El Presidente in April diving with Aldora for the first time as my very favorite divemaster just started working there. I've stayed at a number of the Cozumel hotels, and by far the Presidente is the best! ( I had two awful dives with their dive shop-though, and one was unsafe for the beginner divers he had with him.) I was lucky enough to have 6 private dives with him, and got to dive the Cathedral for the first time, and we both saw our first hammerhead shark. This time I have to fly into Cancun (its become impossible to find any flights to Cozumel from any of the airports in my area-they all have connections of under one hour), and almost impossible to even find nonstops to Cancun. I just hope the harbor is open every day for me! ( I am AOW with 170 dives.)

 

[Bookworm11]

Your comment is helpful. I am about to go to Cozumel for the first time and plan to stay at the Presidente (that is Intercontinental hotel, now, isn't it?. Do you have nearby dive operators you would recommend?

I would dive with Aldora. I can't recommend the Presidents dive shop based on my experience with them. The DM was unprofessional and in my opinion, borderline unsafe. The shop lost my flashlight and refused to pay for it. I had to talk to the manager to get it paid for. I had 6 amazing private dives with Aldora in April and 25 quality dives in November.

 

[Shawn C]

You should, as a rule, almost never dive with the on site hotel/resort dive op in Cozumel. Sure it's convenient and easy, but they are all volume based. So many better boutique dive ops to choose from.

 

[Edward3c]

at a depth deeper than I have ever been. It passed quickly but instantly made me very uncomfortable.

This makes me think you were experiencing nitrogen narcosis (NN). The effects of NN become more pronounced the deeper you go. For most people it kicks in from around 25m, but can be as shallow as 15m.

 

[bradStyle]

This makes me think you were experiencing nitrogen narcosis (NN). The effects of NN become more pronounced the deeper you go. For most people it kicks in from around 25m, but can be as shallow as 15m.

Chiming in on this one because I'm an Aldora diver, and feeling sympathetic to your under-the-weather dive. Yeah, +1 on the possibility of narcosis, but could also be hypercapnia... CO2 buildup. You'd definitely be a bit more susceptible to it after a night of drinking, perhaps breathing a bit more weakly than normal because you were tired.

Hopefully you never find yourself in this situation again, and even if you did, you can't develop a tolerance to narcosis, but IF it was hypercapnia, you can fix this pretty easily by emphasizing your out breaths. Just make sure that occasionally you (somewhat) forcefully expel all your gas, followed by a normal inhalation, and hypercapnia goes away in a couple minutes (or just never starts in the first place).

I used to have semi-regular headaches while diving before I discovered this trick, and even had a couple incidents of vertigo/anxiety at depth. This breathing practice has dispelled all of that for me.

 

[ccannon707]

Question - I often get headaches after diving, sometimes with the starburst in the eye thing that is associated with migraines, though I'm not a migraine sufferer. Is this also hypercapnia? I tend to shallow breath and usually have plenty of air left by the time we ascend. The deep breath - forced exhale technique would be such an easy fix!

Chiming in on this one because I'm an Aldora diver, and feeling sympathetic to your under-the-weather dive. Yeah, +1 on the possibility of narcosis, but could also be hypercapnia... CO2 buildup. You'd definitely be a bit more susceptible to it after a night of drinking, perhaps breathing a bit more weakly than normal because you were tired.

Hopefully you never find yourself in this situation again, and even if you did, you can't develop a tolerance to narcosis, but IF it was hypercapnia, you can fix this pretty easily by emphasizing your out breaths. Just make sure that occasionally you (somewhat) forcefully expel all your gas, followed by a normal inhalation, and hypercapnia goes away in a couple minutes (or just never starts in the first place).

I used to have semi-regular headaches while diving before I discovered this trick, and even had a couple incidents of vertigo/anxiety at depth. This breathing practice has dispelled all of that for me.

 

[bradStyle]

Question - I often get headaches after diving, sometimes with the starburst in the eye thing that is associated with migraines, though I'm not a migraine sufferer. Is this also hypercapnia? I tend to shallow breath and usually have plenty of air left by the time we ascend. The deep breath - forced exhale technique would be such an easy fix!

It could very well be. Try to not shallow breathe and see where that gets you. The occasional forced exhale followed by full regular breaths might just do the trick. It's been a game changer for me. If I get to the headachy state before noticing I'm going that way, it usually takes about 2-3 minutes for this technique to turn things around, I don't feel any *immediate* relief, but in a few minutes it's totally gone.

Hey, and if it works for you, please let me know. I wish I'd had someone explain this to me. I only learned about hypercapnia properly in a tech diving course, and discovered this method on my own. I *hate* having headaches but had accepted that it was part and parcel of my diving. I'm so relieved to finally understand what was causing them and that it's an easy fix. I suspect many other divers might benefit from understanding this better. Headaches are no fun.