Kat
Contributor
We fly stand-by, and usually I can tell by the seat inventory that I'll be able to go. Not this time. The flight departed at 4PM on Saturday & only had 2 open seats in coach. My back up plan was Cancun, it had 7. At about 12:30P I had not booked a hotel yet, because I didn't know where I was going. I decided to gamble on ZIH & tried to book my hotel. Sold out. Panicing, I finally book a room at the Sotavento, on Playa La Ropa. It looked nice, but Trip Advisor had very mixed reviews. I did not have time to shop around, so I booked it. It was fairly cheap. $105 per night and included breakfast.
Airport & flight go great & we arrive at our hotel in ZIH at 10PM.
Check-in is a breeze. The bellman takes our luggage & we have dinner in the hotel restaurant. Our room is on the 3rd floor. After dinner we start heading upstairs, but the bellman stops us & shows us the way. We need to go downstairs. The ground floor lobby is on the 7th floor.
The room is pretty cool, no glass windows, just screens & a large veranda. The bathroom is yucky, clean but terribly run down. From our room it is 80+ stairs up to the restaurant and 100+ stairs down to the beach & pool. Whew, it's an aerobic workout! The view is amazing & the waves at night are so loud it's like a thunderstorm.
Sunday: We walk from our hotel into Zih centro to shop & sightsee and eat at some great little local restaurants.
Monday: Call Carlos at Carlos Scuba. We want to dive on Wed. Thurs. & Fri. Leave a message. We miss his return call & then he misses our return call.
Tuesday: Still have not talked to Carlos. Finally, someone actually is able to get his cell# for us & we are done with telephone tag.
Unfortunatly he only has one opening on his 6 pak boat. He says we should contact Ixtapa Aqua Paradise.
Wednesday: I am all grumpy, as I really wanted to dive with Carlos Scuba. It ends up we book with Ixtapa Aqua Paradise for Thurs. & Friday. Plus it's rehab day. No drinking the day before diving.
Thursday: Take a taxi to Puerto Mio & check in with the dive shop. There are 2 boats going out. Our boat actually has seven divers on it & 2 DM's. Our first dive is a deep dive at Solitary Rock. The vis is horrible at first. But as we get down to about 100+ it clears up. Not a very exciting dive. The other group saw a couple seahorses, so I am extra disappointed with my dive. We then head to a cove for our SI. The seas had been a little rough but the cove is nice & calm. Our 2nd dive is at Caleta de Chon. It's a terrific dive. Rays everywhere. Gazzillions of assorted fish, small coral formations, starfish, a seahorse. Unfortunalty, I am having trouble equalizing my ears & I have to end my dive early. That is the first time I have ever had ear problems on a dive.:sad_2:
We had a night dive booked, so we decide to walk to a local restaurant & have something to eat, instead of going back to the hotel. Our 1st stop is actually a bar, but we didn't know it at first. The girls spoke no english & my spanish is very poor. They only had beer to drink. The one girl went to a store & bought us some Cokes. We ordered chips & guacamole (sp?). My boyfriend does not like guacamole, but he loved this! It was fantastic. We did a little more walking & found a tiny restaurant where we had an amazing meal.
We returned to the dive shop for our night dive & were the only 2 divers booked. We dove Caleta de Chon again. No ear problems this time & the dive was amazing. I have done more than a few night dives, but this dive was one of my favorites, hands down. There was so much to see. Again, rays were everywhere. Lobster, crabs, squid...everything was out & so active. We were down for an hour, it was great.
Friday: We only booked two dive for our last diving day.
We had different divers on the boat than the previous day. There were 4 guys doing their Open Water Certs. I got to talk to them a little bit before & after the dives and they were really nice. They had a DM to themselves. There was 1 other diver, so the 3 of us had our own DM. Our 1st dive was at Pierdra de Sacramento. It was a nice dive, with plenty to see. The DM had mentioned turtles, but they were a no show. For the SI we went back to Caleta de Chon. Usually this would have ticked me off, diving the same place 3 x's in a row. But I had no problem diving it again, as I felt like there was so much to see. And I was right. I saw things I had not seen before.
Saturday: Our last day. Ahhh, where does the time go?
I wish we had dove more, more, more. Ixtapa Aqua Paradise was great! I would dive with them again. I would not call Ixtapa- Zih a dive destination, but if you are going there, be sure to dive. It was so much better than what I was expecting. And because of my low expectations I didn't make the diving a priority. Other than that it was a great vacation. Fantastic food, beautiful weather, picture perfect location & warm, wonderful people.
Airport & flight go great & we arrive at our hotel in ZIH at 10PM.
Check-in is a breeze. The bellman takes our luggage & we have dinner in the hotel restaurant. Our room is on the 3rd floor. After dinner we start heading upstairs, but the bellman stops us & shows us the way. We need to go downstairs. The ground floor lobby is on the 7th floor.
The room is pretty cool, no glass windows, just screens & a large veranda. The bathroom is yucky, clean but terribly run down. From our room it is 80+ stairs up to the restaurant and 100+ stairs down to the beach & pool. Whew, it's an aerobic workout! The view is amazing & the waves at night are so loud it's like a thunderstorm.
Sunday: We walk from our hotel into Zih centro to shop & sightsee and eat at some great little local restaurants.
Monday: Call Carlos at Carlos Scuba. We want to dive on Wed. Thurs. & Fri. Leave a message. We miss his return call & then he misses our return call.
Tuesday: Still have not talked to Carlos. Finally, someone actually is able to get his cell# for us & we are done with telephone tag.
Unfortunatly he only has one opening on his 6 pak boat. He says we should contact Ixtapa Aqua Paradise.
Wednesday: I am all grumpy, as I really wanted to dive with Carlos Scuba. It ends up we book with Ixtapa Aqua Paradise for Thurs. & Friday. Plus it's rehab day. No drinking the day before diving.
Thursday: Take a taxi to Puerto Mio & check in with the dive shop. There are 2 boats going out. Our boat actually has seven divers on it & 2 DM's. Our first dive is a deep dive at Solitary Rock. The vis is horrible at first. But as we get down to about 100+ it clears up. Not a very exciting dive. The other group saw a couple seahorses, so I am extra disappointed with my dive. We then head to a cove for our SI. The seas had been a little rough but the cove is nice & calm. Our 2nd dive is at Caleta de Chon. It's a terrific dive. Rays everywhere. Gazzillions of assorted fish, small coral formations, starfish, a seahorse. Unfortunalty, I am having trouble equalizing my ears & I have to end my dive early. That is the first time I have ever had ear problems on a dive.:sad_2:
We had a night dive booked, so we decide to walk to a local restaurant & have something to eat, instead of going back to the hotel. Our 1st stop is actually a bar, but we didn't know it at first. The girls spoke no english & my spanish is very poor. They only had beer to drink. The one girl went to a store & bought us some Cokes. We ordered chips & guacamole (sp?). My boyfriend does not like guacamole, but he loved this! It was fantastic. We did a little more walking & found a tiny restaurant where we had an amazing meal.
We returned to the dive shop for our night dive & were the only 2 divers booked. We dove Caleta de Chon again. No ear problems this time & the dive was amazing. I have done more than a few night dives, but this dive was one of my favorites, hands down. There was so much to see. Again, rays were everywhere. Lobster, crabs, squid...everything was out & so active. We were down for an hour, it was great.
Friday: We only booked two dive for our last diving day.
We had different divers on the boat than the previous day. There were 4 guys doing their Open Water Certs. I got to talk to them a little bit before & after the dives and they were really nice. They had a DM to themselves. There was 1 other diver, so the 3 of us had our own DM. Our 1st dive was at Pierdra de Sacramento. It was a nice dive, with plenty to see. The DM had mentioned turtles, but they were a no show. For the SI we went back to Caleta de Chon. Usually this would have ticked me off, diving the same place 3 x's in a row. But I had no problem diving it again, as I felt like there was so much to see. And I was right. I saw things I had not seen before.
Saturday: Our last day. Ahhh, where does the time go?
I wish we had dove more, more, more. Ixtapa Aqua Paradise was great! I would dive with them again. I would not call Ixtapa- Zih a dive destination, but if you are going there, be sure to dive. It was so much better than what I was expecting. And because of my low expectations I didn't make the diving a priority. Other than that it was a great vacation. Fantastic food, beautiful weather, picture perfect location & warm, wonderful people.
