Lsufootballfan
Registered
I know that this is quite long but I wanted to share our experience with Eagle Ray Divers so that no one else would make the mistake of booking a dive with this dive shop.
We were scheduled to arrive in Cozumel, Mexico on April 29th, 2011 via the Norwegian Spirit at 0800hrs. After reading several reviews and speaking with the owner, Chellie Castellanos, I arranged a dive with Eagle Ray Divers
A little information about ourselves: I am AOW certified; my wife has not received her OW certificate but has been on 2 previous open water dives in Jamaica with myself and an instructor. She wanted to wait until it warmed up a little before she scheduled the class. The cruise was a last minute decision and she was unable to complete the class prior to the sailing date.
After speaking with Chellie on the phone, we arranged a 2 tank, Discover Scuba dive for my wife and a 2 tank dive for me. My wife and I would dive together, along with an instructor on a shallow water dive. We liked the idea that Chellie was a female and an American. She was a pleasure to speak with and very assuring that they would accommodate our situation and provide us with a very pleasurable experience.
We arrived in Cozumel as planned at 8:00am. We exited the ship carrying our scuba gear on our backs. I lost the reservation papers for Eagle Ray Divers and did not remember their address. As we exited the port, I asked several people if they knew where Eagle Ray Divers was located. 1 person pointed me to an area about a half of a mile from the port and said I think they are over there. No one else had ever heard of Eagle Ray Divers. We walked to this area but did not find Eagle Ray Divers. No one that we asked had a phone book and no one knew who Eagle Ray Divers were. We saw another dive shop, Aldora Divers and decided to ask them if they knew where Eagle Ray Divers was located. I entered the dive shop and was greeted by some extremely nice people. I explained to them my situation and asked them if they could help. They invited us into the dive shop and offered us a seat. They too had never heard of Eagle Ray Divers. The man that I was speaking with kindly offered to look them up on the internet and even called them for me. Now that is customer service! They were willing to help us find a competitor’s dive operation and never once tried to persuade us to book with them. The only thing they asked was to consider them the next time we were in Cozumel. If it wasn’t for the deposit that we had already paid to Eagle Ray, we would have booked with them that day for being so nice. We will defiantly book with them next time after the experience we had with Eagle Ray.
Okay, so I speak with Chellie on the phone and get directions to Eagle Ray. She tells me to take a taxi to Carletta and someone would be there waiting for us. We did as instructed and arrived at a small harbor about ten minutes away. As we exited the taxi, we look for the dive shop. To our surprise, there was no dive shop. A few moments later, a man approached us from a pickup truck and tells us that we missed the boat. Now, this man is wearing a tee shirt, blue jean shorts and a floppy hat with no insignia of any kind to indicate that he is associated with Eagle Ray Divers. I explained to him that I just spoke with Chellie 10 minutes prior to our arrival and she assured me that someone would be waiting on us. He told me that they were but the boat left 45 minutes ago. I looked at my watch which showed the time of 8:45am. I remember thinking that if the boat left 45 minutes ago then it left as our cruise ship arrived at 8:00am. This man began talking in a hurried voice saying “it’s okay, it’s okay. I’ll call a fast boat and taxi you out to the dive boat”. I told him that I didn’t even know who he was and that my wife and I surely weren’t going to jump onto a boat with him to be taxied out to another boat which was supposed to be waiting on us in the first place. He had still not identified himself or who he worked for. He just kept saying ‘it’s okay; I’ll take care of it’. I insisted that he call Chellie and let me speak with her. After arguing with him over this, he dialed a number and handed me the phone. I just couldn’t believe that this was an organized dive operation and remember thinking that this jerk was probably someone trying to rob us. To my surprise, Chellie answered the phone. I told her what was happening and asked her what kind of operation she was running. I told her that I had no idea who this man was and asked her where the dive shop was located? She told me that there was no dive shop (a total surprise to us) but assured me that everything was fine and that this man would take us to the dive boat. She told me that this happened all of the time.
I asked this man what his name was and was in total shock when he responded “I am Antonio, the owner of Eagle Ray Divers”……… The owner of Eagle Ray Divers!! Are you kidding me!! We should have run away right then……. Having been anticipating this dive for quite some time, we gave in and asked, okay, what do we need to do? Antonio looked at us in frustration and said “Y’all are being rude. I don’t want to take y’all diving. I will refund you your money”. We are being rude?? What?????........... A strange man, in a foreign country, approaches us and tells us that he wants to taxi us out to a boat, which we were supposed to meeting at Eagle Ray Divers dive shop (which doesn’t exist) and we’re not supposed to question this?? In total shock (once more) we began to walk off after telling him a few choice words.
It was about that time that we realized that the taxi had already left and we had no idea how we could even summons another one. Great!! Stuck in a fishing harbor with a man named Antonio who claims to be the owner of a dive shop that doesn’t exist!!........and to top it all off, we are going to miss out on scuba diving Cozumel after anticipating this dive for weeks………..
I see that Antonio is standing by his truck, talking on the phone. When he gets off of the phone, he approaches us, now wearing a Eagle Ray Divers hat and tells us that he will now take us diving………Are you kidding me??...............Now we are really stuck in a difficult situation……. We are in Cozumel and won’t be able to come back any time soon. We have to be back on the cruise ship by 4:00pm and have been looking forward to diving in Cozumel for weeks…………We put our gut feelings aside and told him to do what he had to do to get us on the dive boat. He placed a phone call and a boat arrived a short time later.
We boarded the boat off of a concrete ledge which was about five feet higher than the boat itself. No pier in site…….The boat left out of the harbor and traveled a short distance along the coast line. In disbelief, we observed 3 people snorkeling in the water in front of us, a woman and 2 YOUNG children. The driver of the boat left them in the water, alone, to pick us up from the harbor. We picked these people up and began traveling the opposite direction along the coast line. Knowing that we had to board another boat, we didn’t put on our wetsuits and remained in shorts and tee shirts. We were soaking wet by the time we arrived at a pier 20 minutes from were our journey began. At this pier, there were 6 or 7 people also waiting to dive with Eagle Ray Divers. Antonio tells them that he is sorry for being late but the cruise ship was late to dock………What cruise ship was he talking about?? We were the only people to get off of a cruise ship and it arrived right on time……..
A short time later a second boat arrived and we all began to, ummm, climb aboard……….The pier was so high, that the roof of the boat was only about 6 inches higher than the pier…… We pretty much had to jump off of the pier and land 6 feet below on the back deck of this boat………I still couldn’t believe that this was an organized scuba diving operation. It felt like we just hired someone who owned a boat to take us out to a dive site in Cozumel. As the boat proceeded to the dive site we geared up for our dive. We then learned that Antonio was going to be our guide as he went over the basic instructions for scuba with my wife………Great!! I guess it was a little easier for me to overlook all of the negatives when my excitement for diving was so high….My wife on the other hand was not very happy that this man would be guiding us and her excitement was replaced by pure evil thoughts. Since she loves me so much, she suppressed these thoughts and agreed to continue with the dive. There was a 14 year old boy who would be joining us on this dive. He had received his OW certificate 2 weeks prior to this dive and his mother wanted him to dive with an instructor on a shallow dive while she went with the other group on a deep dive.
The boat arrives at the dive site (Palancar Caves) and we are ready to jump into the water…….Wait, what do you mean there is no platform on the boat to enter the water?? That’s right, we had to climb onto the side rail of the boat, 2 feet high, with full scuba gear and fins while holding on to a 2x4 post which was supporting the roof. Could this day get any worse?? The answer is YES!!
We jump into the water and begin our dive…………It’s about time….we are finally diving. As we descend, we are greeted by an abundance of marine life. Wow!! Cozumel diving is great!! About 10 minutes into our dive, my wife at my side, Antonio spots a sea turtle and points it out to us. He motions to me that he will take my wife’s hand so I could photograph the turtle. We are at about 36fsw. As he takes my wife’s hand, I swim over to the turtle to take some photos and video. After taking photos of the turtle, I turn back towards Antonio and my wife. I see them about 30feet away and noticed that they have ascended to about 25fsw. As I began to swim back towards them I notice Antonio jerking on the shoulder straps of my wife’s BCD and then observed him remove one of the integrated weight pouches. From my wife’s movements, I could tell that she was not relaxed. She was swimming with both feet and both arms and appeared to be trying to get away from Antonio. All of a sudden, she bolts to the surface with Antonio holding onto her leg in an attempt to slow her ascent. By this time, I have ascended to about 25fsw. I look below me and see the 14 year old boy, by himself at about 36fsw. I look up and see my wife and Antonio at the surface with my wife climbing onto the ladder of the boat. Not knowing what in the world was going on and refusing to leave a 14 year old child in the water alone, I signal for him to ascend to me. When he got to me, I signaled that we were going to ascend to 15fsw and stop. I don’t think he understood this, so I emptied his BCD, held his hand and ascended with him to 15fsw. Approximately 1 minute later, Antonio enters the water and descends to us. He signals that my wife is okay and to follow him. Not knowing what just happened, I signal to him that I was going to ascend. He again signaled that my wife was okay and to follow him. Knowing my wife, I assumed that she probably told him that she would just wait in the boat and she wanted me to finish the dive. We continued on with the dive which ended up being a pretty good dive.
After the dive, I climbed back onto the boat and sat with my wife. She told me that when Antonio took her hand, she became very uncomfortable since she didn’t like him and would have rather not been around him. He began adjusting her BCD and removed one of the weight pockets. She said that in the process, he pulled on her regulator hose, causing her regulator to shift in her mouth. This caused her to suck in water and she began to choke. She panicked and bolted for the surface. Antonio came over and told us that my wife was over weighted and he was trying to remove some of the weight from her BCD. My wife’s buoyancy was fine when she was with me for the first ten minutes of the dive……even if she was a little over weighted (she had 12 pounds of lead and was wearing a 3mm wetsuit and has dived with this weight before) an instructor should know and realize that a person who has very little experience underwater will panic if you start jerking and removing things from them underwater. Especially since they can’t communicate with you and you damn near jerk their regulator from their mouth……. Hell, I think I would have panic too if the same thing would have happened to me….
After completing the second dive, we began the long journey back to the harbor. The boat that we were on traveled at a lightning fast speed of about 10 miles per hour. It took us almost an hour to get back to the harbor.
If you want to hire a boat to take you to a dive spot in Cozumel, I guess you could hire Eagle Ray Divers. Although I’m sure that you could find a local fishing boat to bring you there for a lot cheaper. You would probably even receive better service. If you want to hire a competent dive shop to bring you on a scuba diving trip, stay away from Eagle Ray Divers. They are unprofessional, unprepared, unfriendly and unsafe……This was one of the worst experiences of our lives!! One of the reasons that we decided to book Eagle Ray was Chellie. However, we never even met her.
We were scheduled to arrive in Cozumel, Mexico on April 29th, 2011 via the Norwegian Spirit at 0800hrs. After reading several reviews and speaking with the owner, Chellie Castellanos, I arranged a dive with Eagle Ray Divers
A little information about ourselves: I am AOW certified; my wife has not received her OW certificate but has been on 2 previous open water dives in Jamaica with myself and an instructor. She wanted to wait until it warmed up a little before she scheduled the class. The cruise was a last minute decision and she was unable to complete the class prior to the sailing date.
After speaking with Chellie on the phone, we arranged a 2 tank, Discover Scuba dive for my wife and a 2 tank dive for me. My wife and I would dive together, along with an instructor on a shallow water dive. We liked the idea that Chellie was a female and an American. She was a pleasure to speak with and very assuring that they would accommodate our situation and provide us with a very pleasurable experience.
We arrived in Cozumel as planned at 8:00am. We exited the ship carrying our scuba gear on our backs. I lost the reservation papers for Eagle Ray Divers and did not remember their address. As we exited the port, I asked several people if they knew where Eagle Ray Divers was located. 1 person pointed me to an area about a half of a mile from the port and said I think they are over there. No one else had ever heard of Eagle Ray Divers. We walked to this area but did not find Eagle Ray Divers. No one that we asked had a phone book and no one knew who Eagle Ray Divers were. We saw another dive shop, Aldora Divers and decided to ask them if they knew where Eagle Ray Divers was located. I entered the dive shop and was greeted by some extremely nice people. I explained to them my situation and asked them if they could help. They invited us into the dive shop and offered us a seat. They too had never heard of Eagle Ray Divers. The man that I was speaking with kindly offered to look them up on the internet and even called them for me. Now that is customer service! They were willing to help us find a competitor’s dive operation and never once tried to persuade us to book with them. The only thing they asked was to consider them the next time we were in Cozumel. If it wasn’t for the deposit that we had already paid to Eagle Ray, we would have booked with them that day for being so nice. We will defiantly book with them next time after the experience we had with Eagle Ray.
Okay, so I speak with Chellie on the phone and get directions to Eagle Ray. She tells me to take a taxi to Carletta and someone would be there waiting for us. We did as instructed and arrived at a small harbor about ten minutes away. As we exited the taxi, we look for the dive shop. To our surprise, there was no dive shop. A few moments later, a man approached us from a pickup truck and tells us that we missed the boat. Now, this man is wearing a tee shirt, blue jean shorts and a floppy hat with no insignia of any kind to indicate that he is associated with Eagle Ray Divers. I explained to him that I just spoke with Chellie 10 minutes prior to our arrival and she assured me that someone would be waiting on us. He told me that they were but the boat left 45 minutes ago. I looked at my watch which showed the time of 8:45am. I remember thinking that if the boat left 45 minutes ago then it left as our cruise ship arrived at 8:00am. This man began talking in a hurried voice saying “it’s okay, it’s okay. I’ll call a fast boat and taxi you out to the dive boat”. I told him that I didn’t even know who he was and that my wife and I surely weren’t going to jump onto a boat with him to be taxied out to another boat which was supposed to be waiting on us in the first place. He had still not identified himself or who he worked for. He just kept saying ‘it’s okay; I’ll take care of it’. I insisted that he call Chellie and let me speak with her. After arguing with him over this, he dialed a number and handed me the phone. I just couldn’t believe that this was an organized dive operation and remember thinking that this jerk was probably someone trying to rob us. To my surprise, Chellie answered the phone. I told her what was happening and asked her what kind of operation she was running. I told her that I had no idea who this man was and asked her where the dive shop was located? She told me that there was no dive shop (a total surprise to us) but assured me that everything was fine and that this man would take us to the dive boat. She told me that this happened all of the time.
I asked this man what his name was and was in total shock when he responded “I am Antonio, the owner of Eagle Ray Divers”……… The owner of Eagle Ray Divers!! Are you kidding me!! We should have run away right then……. Having been anticipating this dive for quite some time, we gave in and asked, okay, what do we need to do? Antonio looked at us in frustration and said “Y’all are being rude. I don’t want to take y’all diving. I will refund you your money”. We are being rude?? What?????........... A strange man, in a foreign country, approaches us and tells us that he wants to taxi us out to a boat, which we were supposed to meeting at Eagle Ray Divers dive shop (which doesn’t exist) and we’re not supposed to question this?? In total shock (once more) we began to walk off after telling him a few choice words.
It was about that time that we realized that the taxi had already left and we had no idea how we could even summons another one. Great!! Stuck in a fishing harbor with a man named Antonio who claims to be the owner of a dive shop that doesn’t exist!!........and to top it all off, we are going to miss out on scuba diving Cozumel after anticipating this dive for weeks………..
I see that Antonio is standing by his truck, talking on the phone. When he gets off of the phone, he approaches us, now wearing a Eagle Ray Divers hat and tells us that he will now take us diving………Are you kidding me??...............Now we are really stuck in a difficult situation……. We are in Cozumel and won’t be able to come back any time soon. We have to be back on the cruise ship by 4:00pm and have been looking forward to diving in Cozumel for weeks…………We put our gut feelings aside and told him to do what he had to do to get us on the dive boat. He placed a phone call and a boat arrived a short time later.
We boarded the boat off of a concrete ledge which was about five feet higher than the boat itself. No pier in site…….The boat left out of the harbor and traveled a short distance along the coast line. In disbelief, we observed 3 people snorkeling in the water in front of us, a woman and 2 YOUNG children. The driver of the boat left them in the water, alone, to pick us up from the harbor. We picked these people up and began traveling the opposite direction along the coast line. Knowing that we had to board another boat, we didn’t put on our wetsuits and remained in shorts and tee shirts. We were soaking wet by the time we arrived at a pier 20 minutes from were our journey began. At this pier, there were 6 or 7 people also waiting to dive with Eagle Ray Divers. Antonio tells them that he is sorry for being late but the cruise ship was late to dock………What cruise ship was he talking about?? We were the only people to get off of a cruise ship and it arrived right on time……..
A short time later a second boat arrived and we all began to, ummm, climb aboard……….The pier was so high, that the roof of the boat was only about 6 inches higher than the pier…… We pretty much had to jump off of the pier and land 6 feet below on the back deck of this boat………I still couldn’t believe that this was an organized scuba diving operation. It felt like we just hired someone who owned a boat to take us out to a dive site in Cozumel. As the boat proceeded to the dive site we geared up for our dive. We then learned that Antonio was going to be our guide as he went over the basic instructions for scuba with my wife………Great!! I guess it was a little easier for me to overlook all of the negatives when my excitement for diving was so high….My wife on the other hand was not very happy that this man would be guiding us and her excitement was replaced by pure evil thoughts. Since she loves me so much, she suppressed these thoughts and agreed to continue with the dive. There was a 14 year old boy who would be joining us on this dive. He had received his OW certificate 2 weeks prior to this dive and his mother wanted him to dive with an instructor on a shallow dive while she went with the other group on a deep dive.
The boat arrives at the dive site (Palancar Caves) and we are ready to jump into the water…….Wait, what do you mean there is no platform on the boat to enter the water?? That’s right, we had to climb onto the side rail of the boat, 2 feet high, with full scuba gear and fins while holding on to a 2x4 post which was supporting the roof. Could this day get any worse?? The answer is YES!!
We jump into the water and begin our dive…………It’s about time….we are finally diving. As we descend, we are greeted by an abundance of marine life. Wow!! Cozumel diving is great!! About 10 minutes into our dive, my wife at my side, Antonio spots a sea turtle and points it out to us. He motions to me that he will take my wife’s hand so I could photograph the turtle. We are at about 36fsw. As he takes my wife’s hand, I swim over to the turtle to take some photos and video. After taking photos of the turtle, I turn back towards Antonio and my wife. I see them about 30feet away and noticed that they have ascended to about 25fsw. As I began to swim back towards them I notice Antonio jerking on the shoulder straps of my wife’s BCD and then observed him remove one of the integrated weight pouches. From my wife’s movements, I could tell that she was not relaxed. She was swimming with both feet and both arms and appeared to be trying to get away from Antonio. All of a sudden, she bolts to the surface with Antonio holding onto her leg in an attempt to slow her ascent. By this time, I have ascended to about 25fsw. I look below me and see the 14 year old boy, by himself at about 36fsw. I look up and see my wife and Antonio at the surface with my wife climbing onto the ladder of the boat. Not knowing what in the world was going on and refusing to leave a 14 year old child in the water alone, I signal for him to ascend to me. When he got to me, I signaled that we were going to ascend to 15fsw and stop. I don’t think he understood this, so I emptied his BCD, held his hand and ascended with him to 15fsw. Approximately 1 minute later, Antonio enters the water and descends to us. He signals that my wife is okay and to follow him. Not knowing what just happened, I signal to him that I was going to ascend. He again signaled that my wife was okay and to follow him. Knowing my wife, I assumed that she probably told him that she would just wait in the boat and she wanted me to finish the dive. We continued on with the dive which ended up being a pretty good dive.
After the dive, I climbed back onto the boat and sat with my wife. She told me that when Antonio took her hand, she became very uncomfortable since she didn’t like him and would have rather not been around him. He began adjusting her BCD and removed one of the weight pockets. She said that in the process, he pulled on her regulator hose, causing her regulator to shift in her mouth. This caused her to suck in water and she began to choke. She panicked and bolted for the surface. Antonio came over and told us that my wife was over weighted and he was trying to remove some of the weight from her BCD. My wife’s buoyancy was fine when she was with me for the first ten minutes of the dive……even if she was a little over weighted (she had 12 pounds of lead and was wearing a 3mm wetsuit and has dived with this weight before) an instructor should know and realize that a person who has very little experience underwater will panic if you start jerking and removing things from them underwater. Especially since they can’t communicate with you and you damn near jerk their regulator from their mouth……. Hell, I think I would have panic too if the same thing would have happened to me….
After completing the second dive, we began the long journey back to the harbor. The boat that we were on traveled at a lightning fast speed of about 10 miles per hour. It took us almost an hour to get back to the harbor.
If you want to hire a boat to take you to a dive spot in Cozumel, I guess you could hire Eagle Ray Divers. Although I’m sure that you could find a local fishing boat to bring you there for a lot cheaper. You would probably even receive better service. If you want to hire a competent dive shop to bring you on a scuba diving trip, stay away from Eagle Ray Divers. They are unprofessional, unprepared, unfriendly and unsafe……This was one of the worst experiences of our lives!! One of the reasons that we decided to book Eagle Ray was Chellie. However, we never even met her.
Outcome will be much better I promise.
