Diving in Playa del Carmen

[bubbles3d]

Maggy,
My husband and I are from Dallas and go to Cozumel quite often. Peter Guy is right, the Cenote dives are a very advanced dive for you and your friends at this time. I would stay on the Cozumel side, since you cannot dive as deep as some dives sites offer you still have a vast selection of shallow sites that all of you can enjoy. You do need to have a good handle on your bouyancy because Cozumel is all drift diving.

We use Caribbean Divers and the owner is Cesar. www.caribbeandiverscozumel.com. He believes in safety but also having a wonderful dive experience. He only allows 8 people on his boats and has 2 DM on every dive. He will pick you up at your hotel or from the dock, depending on what hotel you stay at. If you want any other information, please do not hesitate PM me. Enjoy your trip!

 

[Maggy]

Thanks again. I have not been doing any drift dives yet, so this time I don't think I should do that. If there is one thing that I felt that I had issus with during my education, it was bouyancy control. The rest went well. Therefore I also think I shall leave the cenotes for now.

I also know that 60 ft is not a hard limit, and I have been diving deeper. The main goal at this trip, is to do prefreably do 2 dives toghether with my two collegues that are going to take the resort course. So I know I have to settle for 40 ft this time. I guess that there will be sites that are interesting enough at that deep.

I did my first resort dives in Turks and Caicos, and specially the wall at grand Turk was amazing, even if we didn't go deeper than 40 ft. It felt like I was flying beside a mountain.

I will contact the operators in Playa.

Maggy

 

[ClamBake]

Contact Jason at www.fantaseadive.com he is an owner/operator there in Playa Del Carmen. He will provide you with excellent and personalized service! My wife and I just got back last night from five days down there. We dove two days with Jason and had a blast! Very personable and very fun! I would recommend him to anyone. We dove Friday on reefs and saw many turtles, eels, lots of fish and coral. Saturday we dove Cenote Dos Ojos......WOW....it was amazing. Jason brought his camera along and made an awesome video.

Give him a call.....you'll be glad you did!

Thanks again Jason.

Ditto what eatsleepfish said. I booked an upcoming trip with Jason and he was very accomodating and easy to deal with.

 

[DiveAnyone]

Hi! I'm new to this board and also new to diving. Took my OW certification in April and have done a total of only 10 dives (all in the Caribbean).

In late October I have been asked to go to a conference in Mexico and the hotell is situated outside Playa del carmen. Since we come all the way from Sweden, my two fellow collegues and I are going to spend 3 days there before the conference starts. I would love to do a couple of dives and the collegues would like to take a Discover Scuba diving course.

Do any of you have a suggestion for a good, serious diving operator in Playa del Carmen. Or do you recommend us to go to Cozumel? Never been to Mexico.

Any help and suggestion very much appreciated.

Maggy

We just got back from Playa (what fun). Recommend (highly) Yucatek, they are an outstanding operation. We did both Ocean & Cenote diving with them, and recommend that you do at least one Cenote dive (you'll be hooked). A number of Yucatek's team are from Europe, and all of their team will make you feel right at home. Here is their web-site: http://yucatek.com/

Have a great time.

 

[Rick Patterson]

I was in Playa last February on business and was able to get in some for two days before my meetings. I went with http://diablodivers.com/. Dennis runs a very good operation and was able to meet my requests for a few days of diving. I went with him and three others on three dives in cenotes and then on the next day did three dives in Akumal. Dennis came to my hotel in Playa and picked me up for the first day and arranged for the same service with another dive master for the reef dives the following day. The reef dives were great. I was able to have a personal guide with no other divers other than a dive master and myself. Our dive plan was jump in and he would try and point out anything that was interesting for me to shoot on video and when I reached 500psi let him know and we would head up and start our safety stop. These three dives were some of the best dives I have ever had because we were completely alone and I was able to get so close to marine life to shoot on video. I was able to close within two feet of a turtle that was eating a sponge and shoot it on video for more than three minutes without anyone else coming in for a closer look and scaring away my subject. It was a great trip and I would recommend diving with Dennis and his operation.

 

[pitdvr]

I did not feel that Tankha did well with less experienced drift divers (3 of our party were not happy with them. Have you considered the shallower dives off Isla Mejures?

 

[Don Wray]

www.scubamex.com give it a look. I enjoyed diving with them and they'll tailor your dive to your experience level. Small boat.

 

[Maggy]

Thanks again! I am overwhelmed by the number of replies. I really appreciate this. Now I have several options to consider. Also thanks for the note about the operation that you didn't feel were that good with inexperienced divers. And that is OK, but for us it's not suitable.

Jason at Fantasea can do a private trip with the three of us, and if that doesn't work out for some reason, I now have a couple of backups. The yucatek sounded good, from what I could read from their website.

Just wish that we would have more days to dive and less days on a conference

Maggy

 

[El Orans]

Don't forget to post a trip report when you get back.

 

[PlayaCountryBoy]

Hola Maggy, I'm looking forward to meeting you and your friends very soon! This will be one of the best activities you will do while your here, I promise! See you in October!