first time diving in Cozumel

[mbryant27]

My family and I are visiting and diving in Cozumel for the first time. My 15 year old son adn I are advanced open water divers and my other son and wife just got certified. We are staying at the most northern resort on the west side of the island. We will be going there the toward the end of August and I need to know a good dive shop to use dowen there. One that won't jerk us around and make the week a good one.
So I need your help.

Can you guide me?

Michael

 

[D_O_H]

My family and I are visiting and diving in Cozumel for the first time. My 15 year old son adn I are advanced open water divers and my other son and wife just got certified. We are staying at the most northern resort on the west side of the island. We will be going there the toward the end of August and I need to know a good dive shop to use dowen there. One that won't jerk us around and make the week a good one.
So I need your help.

Can you guide me?

Michael

If you check out the Cozumel forum, there are a ton of posts on this topic, so you may want to browse there if you don't get a lot of responses here. We dove with Christi at Blue XT~Sea and could not have been more pleased. Very safe. Very professional. Nice fast boat. Most importantly, though, Christi and her DMs are very nice people.

That said, there are a ton of great dive ops down there - a couple of others I see mentioned quite frequently but haven't dove with myself are Dive With Martin and Aldora.

Good luck and have a great time!

 

[ch0ppersrule]

I hear lots of good things about Christi (Blue XT Sea) but haven't had the pleasure of diving with her. We dove with ScubaTony and he is awesome. He will give each buddy the max bottom time allowable to their own dive experience. He will take out a max of 6 people so it is very small group with just Tony. He ensures each buddy team gets on the boat and still makes sure the other buddy teams are getting bottom time. He is very attenative to each person and we plan to dive with him exclusively from now on (okay, we will give Christi and her crew an opportunity to also impress us- which I am sure they will with all the compliments she gets).

melissa

 

[Ron Brandt]

Please give Troy a call at Pelagic Ventures....Tell hin I sent you! (Ron Brandt)

Link to website is on my sig at bottom of post !

Have a great time!!!!!

Ron

 

[mbryant27]

The only thing i am most worried about is that i have waited too late. Since we are staying so far north I guess we will havve to drive to her shop. thanks for your help.

If you check out the Cozumel forum, there are a ton of posts on this topic, so you may want to browse there if you don't get a lot of responses here. We dove with Christi at Blue XT~Sea and could not have been more pleased. Very safe. Very professional. Nice fast boat. Most importantly, though, Christi and her DMs are very nice people.

That said, there are a ton of great dive ops down there - a couple of others I see mentioned quite frequently but haven't dove with myself are Dive With Martin and Aldora.

Good luck and have a great time!

 

[herman]

Welcome to the board Michael.

I can't be of any help with the shop but I do have a suggestion for you . Make darn sure all of your divers are very comfortable doing free accents and decents. Almost all of the diving in Coz drift diving so there are NO anchor, decent or buoy lines to use as reference. A diver must be able to control their accents and decents using just their gauges and view of the bottom for reference. Many of the sites are on the deeper side which makes the ability to do safety stops very important. We had a new diver with us on a trip to Coz in May. She had considerable difficulty because they had been use to depending on anchor and buoy lines for accents/decents. Make sure your dive op understands you have new divers in the group.
Have fun.

 

[mbryant27]

thank you herman, I didn't really think of that... I have two first time ocean divers in my family. that will be the first thing i mention to my dive shop.

 

[diacovon]

I know you are back from your trip but I have been using Bottom Time Divers for many years. They have fast small boats and provide personal service. Raul Platas is the owner and can be reached at www.bottomtimedivers.net

Dave

 

[scubawife]

Michael, I'm not sure if you're aware of this or not, but dive boats will generally not go to the northern hotel zone to pick up divers. If you are staying in town or at a resort south of town they will pick you up at the town pier or your hotel pier (that is, if the hotel pier is rebuilt yet post-Wilma). I believe that Pepe's Scuba is based at the Coral Princess and their trips leave from that locations. Otherwise you will likely have to get yourself to town or the Caletta to meet your dive boat.

There are lots of great shops in Cozumel. If you have 4 divers you may want to consider going with a small operation that only takes a max of 6 divers. It may not be that much extra to get the boat to yourselves for the time you are there.

 

[DivingCRNA]

Go with Dive Palancar and ask for Jose Luis and Ishmael. They were great to us.