Lessons Minor Cenote Incident - Lessons to be Learned

[Bookworm11]

Rigo Amador, The Cenote Guide, is great. I did two days of diving with him. He does cenotes that not everybody does. He does extremely thorough briefings, and has very reasonable prices. My two days, I was the only diver. The first day, my BCD broke before we started the first dive. Another dive guide worked on it for an hour to patch it up so I could use it. Rigo said I could pay less as we would only go to one as we didn't have enough time, and I could decide the money, which I found incredibly fair. I'm going back to dive with him this November.
I waited until I had 80 dives to try out cenote diving. I'm addicted, but agree you should have some diving under your belt before doing any cenotes. They can be dangerous, you need great buoyancy, and they can be claustrophobic.

 

[LeeMajors]

Not shocking. We found a diver on our open water dive in Cozumel and the dive master says “happens at least once a week to me personally. Sometimes more”.

Been diving for over 30 years and never heard that before, although I’m new to Mexico diving. Never saw that in the Bahamas or Caymans. Maybe it’s that so many new divers go to Mexico? The Caribbean has gotten pricey.

 

[livewire]

Cozumel 100% attracts a lot of new divers, and price is one of many reasons. Warm clear water, lots of beginner level sites, price for any budget, and accessible air access for most of the US... it all creates mass appeal for new divers. Plus it’s also a big cruise ship destination where cruise passengers can choose diving as a port excursion. Big crowds plus popular sites mean lots of boats on the same reef, and groups will often get mixed up. Inexperienced divers will follow the wrong guide, sometimes all the way back to the wrong boat. Confusing for sure, but still a lot less dangerous than if it were to happen in a Cenote.

I've been to both Bahamans and Caymans, and while GC and Nassau are also big cruise ship destinations, I personally haven't seen the dive sites there carry the same type of crowd density on reefs I've seen in Cozumel sometimes. I could be wrong though, I've dove those destinations less often. That said, it's easy to beat the crowds in Cozumel--you just have to go with one of the smaller ops that go first thing in the morning as soon as the port opens.