casts_by_fly
Contributor
Hi All,
My wife and I finally made a trip to Cozumel 3 weeks ago (with a following week after in Riviera Maya) and I'm happy to report that all went very well. I took a lot of SB advice before the trip via a couple of threads. We ended up staying at Cozumel Palace and dove with Aldora. We much prefer all inclusive hotels/resorts, especially for a first time in a place. We also considered the Intercontinental, but given its location we knew we would end up just eating at the hotel each night and not going to town and that would end up expensive. So we stuck to the Palace. Additionally, we heard nothing but good about Aldora and we prefer a smaller group size and fewer divers to DM. It was a natural fit and we were extremely happy. We did double tank mornings dives every day but 1, and we did a night dive on the off day. Every day we had 5 or 6 in our dive group plus a DM (Jorge). Jorge was great. He found interesting things, he tailored the dives to our experience and air consumption (pretty good overall for a random group), and was great at suggesting dive sites when the group didn't have a specific request. I'd happily recommend him and Aldora. We dove a combination of steel 100's and 120's. We were NDL constrained rather than air constrained every day and we were doing 80-95 minute dives depending on depth and NDL.
For the diving, we did 10 dives over the week. We did one check out dive the first afternoon around San Juan (north of town) to get our bearings and weighting right. After that we dove the usual suspects including (S to N): Maracaibo, Columbia deep, Big Caves, Bricks, Horseshoe, Gardens, Cedral Wall, San Francisco, and a couple more. I didn't write them down every day so I am missing 1 or 2. The night dive was somewhere around Tormentos I think, but I'm not sure. We were able to dive most of the well known dives and I was completely satisfied, but left wanting just enough to come back again. My wife said that Cozumel completely exceeded her expectations. She dove in the Maldives and in the Dominican. The Dominican was pretty poor and the Maldives is some of the best in the world. She didn't realize that Cozumel was closer to the latter than the former. Cozumel doesn't have the quantity of fish that the Maldives has and we didn't see any of the big stuff like you can in the Maldives (aside from the biggest Parrot Fish I have ever seen around Columbia Deep). However, the bottom topography of Cozumel is amazing with the varied pillars, swim throughs, caverns, etc. Definitely better than the Maldives.
For critters, we saw many of the usual suspects, some of which were new to us and some weren't. Before going, I said I wanted to see a splendid toadfish and lobsters. There was no shortage of either. There were arrow crabs everywhere. We saw a couple of fireworms (though I didn't get a good picture). There were lots of other macro invertebrates to get pictures of. We saw a pipefish and a pipehorse, though only one of each and not a seahorse. We saw a couple nurse sharks including a very large free swimming one around Cedral wall. One of the guys found a sleeping reef shark at 12m, but the rest of us were at the safety stop when he signaled so no one else went down to see it. As I mentioned above, I saw the biggest parrot fish I have ever seen. There were a couple on the trip that were all i the 5' long range, nearly as big as a Napoleon. I thought that's what the first one was in fact until it got closer (but not close enough for a photo). Overall it was an awesome diving trip.
Next time, we will probably stay somewhere near town, but not all inclusive (probably breakfast/lunch included). There are enough great places to eat in town that we wanted to hit but didn't have a chance or the will to. We didn't drink much in the days or evenings (unlike our usual all inclusive trips) and I don't foresee that changing on another dive trip (especially getting up a 6:30 and diving for 3 hours before 1 PM) so no need for included alcohol. That said, the Palace was very good quality and in line with our expectations (a 4-star experience).
Overall, we will be back and sooner rather than later. If it wasn't so far from the UK, it would be an annual trip for us, or even a long weekend.
Thanks,
Rick
My wife and I finally made a trip to Cozumel 3 weeks ago (with a following week after in Riviera Maya) and I'm happy to report that all went very well. I took a lot of SB advice before the trip via a couple of threads. We ended up staying at Cozumel Palace and dove with Aldora. We much prefer all inclusive hotels/resorts, especially for a first time in a place. We also considered the Intercontinental, but given its location we knew we would end up just eating at the hotel each night and not going to town and that would end up expensive. So we stuck to the Palace. Additionally, we heard nothing but good about Aldora and we prefer a smaller group size and fewer divers to DM. It was a natural fit and we were extremely happy. We did double tank mornings dives every day but 1, and we did a night dive on the off day. Every day we had 5 or 6 in our dive group plus a DM (Jorge). Jorge was great. He found interesting things, he tailored the dives to our experience and air consumption (pretty good overall for a random group), and was great at suggesting dive sites when the group didn't have a specific request. I'd happily recommend him and Aldora. We dove a combination of steel 100's and 120's. We were NDL constrained rather than air constrained every day and we were doing 80-95 minute dives depending on depth and NDL.
For the diving, we did 10 dives over the week. We did one check out dive the first afternoon around San Juan (north of town) to get our bearings and weighting right. After that we dove the usual suspects including (S to N): Maracaibo, Columbia deep, Big Caves, Bricks, Horseshoe, Gardens, Cedral Wall, San Francisco, and a couple more. I didn't write them down every day so I am missing 1 or 2. The night dive was somewhere around Tormentos I think, but I'm not sure. We were able to dive most of the well known dives and I was completely satisfied, but left wanting just enough to come back again. My wife said that Cozumel completely exceeded her expectations. She dove in the Maldives and in the Dominican. The Dominican was pretty poor and the Maldives is some of the best in the world. She didn't realize that Cozumel was closer to the latter than the former. Cozumel doesn't have the quantity of fish that the Maldives has and we didn't see any of the big stuff like you can in the Maldives (aside from the biggest Parrot Fish I have ever seen around Columbia Deep). However, the bottom topography of Cozumel is amazing with the varied pillars, swim throughs, caverns, etc. Definitely better than the Maldives.
For critters, we saw many of the usual suspects, some of which were new to us and some weren't. Before going, I said I wanted to see a splendid toadfish and lobsters. There was no shortage of either. There were arrow crabs everywhere. We saw a couple of fireworms (though I didn't get a good picture). There were lots of other macro invertebrates to get pictures of. We saw a pipefish and a pipehorse, though only one of each and not a seahorse. We saw a couple nurse sharks including a very large free swimming one around Cedral wall. One of the guys found a sleeping reef shark at 12m, but the rest of us were at the safety stop when he signaled so no one else went down to see it. As I mentioned above, I saw the biggest parrot fish I have ever seen. There were a couple on the trip that were all i the 5' long range, nearly as big as a Napoleon. I thought that's what the first one was in fact until it got closer (but not close enough for a photo). Overall it was an awesome diving trip.
Next time, we will probably stay somewhere near town, but not all inclusive (probably breakfast/lunch included). There are enough great places to eat in town that we wanted to hit but didn't have a chance or the will to. We didn't drink much in the days or evenings (unlike our usual all inclusive trips) and I don't foresee that changing on another dive trip (especially getting up a 6:30 and diving for 3 hours before 1 PM) so no need for included alcohol. That said, the Palace was very good quality and in line with our expectations (a 4-star experience).
Overall, we will be back and sooner rather than later. If it wasn't so far from the UK, it would be an annual trip for us, or even a long weekend.
Thanks,
Rick
