Trip report Cozumel Mexico November 2013
We left Denver on Nov 11, 2013 for 11 days of vacation via Dallas on American Airlines and the travel was uneventful. Immigration and Customs in Cozumel took very little time and we arrived at our hotel (Reef Regency which is part of Sunscapes now) and checked in with no delays. Our friends Lou (Loudives on SB) and wife Nancy arrived later that afternoon after their bag drag from Cancun. Our Canadian friends arrived a couple of days later for their ten day trip.
Coming back we were delayed in Dallas due to weather. We left Dallas about 1:15 am and got to sleep in Denver about 4 am.
We arrived in Cozumel to decent weather but had rain for a few days afterwards. Apparently it had been raining quite a bit in the past few weeks so we expected lots of mosquitos but there were very few where we stayed. Shocking. The weather towards the end of the trip was great.
The concrete pier at the hotel is essentially closed off for access. In May of this year we went up to the main road and walked back down to it but I was told that access was blocked now. We did not check though. We used the wood pier farther to the south. Dive House apparently has taken over from Dive Paradise as the in-house operator. We dont use them but they seemed to accommodate other dive ops picking up at that pier. No one tried to charge us the old 3 $ US/person/day.
We took one day off to go to the other side of the island and had good weather. Lunch at Mezcalitos and then south. We wanted to stop at Playa Bonita but they have lost significant beach. We thought about stopping at some others but they were packed with buses full of cruise shipers. We ended up at Paradise café/Rastas.
Had dinner at Guidos. Good as usual. Sorrisi's was recommended to us but we didn't get a chance to go. It was described as Brazilian but seems it's advertised as Italian.
Diving
The water was mostly flat, with little current except for Punta Tunich on day, and a top layer of green fresh water due to rainfall. Water temps on my computer were 82-84F which pleased my wife as she gets cold easily. The currents were so slow that on many dives I had to kick. The lack of currents made it much easier for photography which I am happy for as I had some great macro opportunities and it helped with my first time shooting video.
My intent this trip with the camera was to nail down settings in manual mode including strobes for wide angle, normal and macro. I specifically wanted to work on exposure, depth of field and lighting. This was the second trip with the new camera and I had previously been shooting in semi-manual mode. I also used the last day to shoot video for the first time which by coincidence the mode dial on my camera came off and although I kind of got it back on, I was in video mode and left it there.
I found that Arrow Crabs are very good for practicing macro as they dont move much, have good color and differing linear tones.
I took about 400 stills and was bracketing like crazy but I am generally pleased with the shots. I made notes about settings that I wanted to try before I left but as bad luck would have it, they sat on a table while I was on vacation.
I took about 25 videos that last day and used all default settings. I found I lose track of time when I shoot video.
I should have checked the file format as they were all MOV format and I wanted AVI or MP3/4. I converted the MOV files to AVI but when putting them on my wifes Android tablet when we got back, it wanted them in WMV which made the videos freeze and pixelated. I will have to see if I can copy them in as AVI to view.
We dove most sites from Punta Sur (Sur not Devils throat) to Punta Tunich. We did not go north out of the Park as we figured the Eagle Rays had not yet arrived in force. We hoped at Punta Sur we might see Eagle Rays or sharks but no luck. Good dive though. We saw 6 black tip reef sharks at Palancar Gardens on a different day. I have some photos but they are zoom shots and down so theyre not so good. We went on a sea horse hunt but did not find any. I did get pipehorse photos on a different day.
We dove with Bottom Time Divers and have divers choice of sites. We usually chose a site where there were no boats. Raul (DM/Owner) is great at finding small stuff and can see things in the distance before we do.
Our first few days we dove with some divers from NJ that we dove with before for a few days. Good to see they are still coming down. After they left it was just our group on the boat. Easy diving for Raul as we have dived with him for around 15 years. He also got a bigger camera bucket for me.
We had planned a night dive or two but unfortunately were not able to schedule it due to some issues Raul had to deal with. So I got in 16 dives but since we are able to dive our computers and air the day dives were sufficiently long. The shortest was over 60 minutes.
Photos
I did some post editing and mostly edited the RAW images. While I still need to get more practice at it, I love RAW.
Eagle Ray from behind. Not the best shot. I did not realize they had more than one barb.
Most of the lionfish we saw were very small juvenile. I saw another juvenile where the body was almost transparent. I didn't get a photo of that one though.
I have tentatively identified this as a nudibranch but do not know the specific kind. He is approx 1/2 inch long and found at about 50-60 fsw (I think). It's just not right for any kind of flatworm I know.
A good sized Nurse Shark in front of my friend Scott.
One of many octopus we found during the day. Many trips we can't even find one.
I cut off the tail but it's tough to get good shots of them
Whenever I shoot these filefish I usually get fish butt but not this time.
Some anemone shots
We left Denver on Nov 11, 2013 for 11 days of vacation via Dallas on American Airlines and the travel was uneventful. Immigration and Customs in Cozumel took very little time and we arrived at our hotel (Reef Regency which is part of Sunscapes now) and checked in with no delays. Our friends Lou (Loudives on SB) and wife Nancy arrived later that afternoon after their bag drag from Cancun. Our Canadian friends arrived a couple of days later for their ten day trip.
Coming back we were delayed in Dallas due to weather. We left Dallas about 1:15 am and got to sleep in Denver about 4 am.
We arrived in Cozumel to decent weather but had rain for a few days afterwards. Apparently it had been raining quite a bit in the past few weeks so we expected lots of mosquitos but there were very few where we stayed. Shocking. The weather towards the end of the trip was great.
The concrete pier at the hotel is essentially closed off for access. In May of this year we went up to the main road and walked back down to it but I was told that access was blocked now. We did not check though. We used the wood pier farther to the south. Dive House apparently has taken over from Dive Paradise as the in-house operator. We dont use them but they seemed to accommodate other dive ops picking up at that pier. No one tried to charge us the old 3 $ US/person/day.
We took one day off to go to the other side of the island and had good weather. Lunch at Mezcalitos and then south. We wanted to stop at Playa Bonita but they have lost significant beach. We thought about stopping at some others but they were packed with buses full of cruise shipers. We ended up at Paradise café/Rastas.
Had dinner at Guidos. Good as usual. Sorrisi's was recommended to us but we didn't get a chance to go. It was described as Brazilian but seems it's advertised as Italian.
Diving
The water was mostly flat, with little current except for Punta Tunich on day, and a top layer of green fresh water due to rainfall. Water temps on my computer were 82-84F which pleased my wife as she gets cold easily. The currents were so slow that on many dives I had to kick. The lack of currents made it much easier for photography which I am happy for as I had some great macro opportunities and it helped with my first time shooting video.
My intent this trip with the camera was to nail down settings in manual mode including strobes for wide angle, normal and macro. I specifically wanted to work on exposure, depth of field and lighting. This was the second trip with the new camera and I had previously been shooting in semi-manual mode. I also used the last day to shoot video for the first time which by coincidence the mode dial on my camera came off and although I kind of got it back on, I was in video mode and left it there.
I found that Arrow Crabs are very good for practicing macro as they dont move much, have good color and differing linear tones.
I took about 400 stills and was bracketing like crazy but I am generally pleased with the shots. I made notes about settings that I wanted to try before I left but as bad luck would have it, they sat on a table while I was on vacation.
I took about 25 videos that last day and used all default settings. I found I lose track of time when I shoot video.
I should have checked the file format as they were all MOV format and I wanted AVI or MP3/4. I converted the MOV files to AVI but when putting them on my wifes Android tablet when we got back, it wanted them in WMV which made the videos freeze and pixelated. I will have to see if I can copy them in as AVI to view.
We dove most sites from Punta Sur (Sur not Devils throat) to Punta Tunich. We did not go north out of the Park as we figured the Eagle Rays had not yet arrived in force. We hoped at Punta Sur we might see Eagle Rays or sharks but no luck. Good dive though. We saw 6 black tip reef sharks at Palancar Gardens on a different day. I have some photos but they are zoom shots and down so theyre not so good. We went on a sea horse hunt but did not find any. I did get pipehorse photos on a different day.
We dove with Bottom Time Divers and have divers choice of sites. We usually chose a site where there were no boats. Raul (DM/Owner) is great at finding small stuff and can see things in the distance before we do.
Our first few days we dove with some divers from NJ that we dove with before for a few days. Good to see they are still coming down. After they left it was just our group on the boat. Easy diving for Raul as we have dived with him for around 15 years. He also got a bigger camera bucket for me.
We had planned a night dive or two but unfortunately were not able to schedule it due to some issues Raul had to deal with. So I got in 16 dives but since we are able to dive our computers and air the day dives were sufficiently long. The shortest was over 60 minutes.
Photos
I did some post editing and mostly edited the RAW images. While I still need to get more practice at it, I love RAW.
Eagle Ray from behind. Not the best shot. I did not realize they had more than one barb.
Most of the lionfish we saw were very small juvenile. I saw another juvenile where the body was almost transparent. I didn't get a photo of that one though.
I have tentatively identified this as a nudibranch but do not know the specific kind. He is approx 1/2 inch long and found at about 50-60 fsw (I think). It's just not right for any kind of flatworm I know.
A good sized Nurse Shark in front of my friend Scott.
One of many octopus we found during the day. Many trips we can't even find one.
I cut off the tail but it's tough to get good shots of them
Whenever I shoot these filefish I usually get fish butt but not this time.
Some anemone shots
