Open water referral in Cozumel

[H20Bubbles]

We have had people do their referral dives with both Scuba Du and Blue XT Sea Diving. Out of the two, I would recommend Christi at Blue XT Sea - as all of the dives are done off the boat rather than the shore, so what you experience is a little better.

 

[charlesml3]

That's true in more ways than one. If you do your open water checkout dives in Cozumel, your comfort zone will be fairly narrow. I recommend doing them in more challenging conditions.

I had to read this a couple of times and I'm still not sure if you're being serious here. I certainly hope not. Why would you recommend a new diver with zero experience go into anything that even resembles "challenging?"

Any new diver should start with the least challenging situation possible and work their way up to more difficult dives. Throwing someone new into a tough situation is most likely going to scare them off of diving for good, or worse...

In my area there is no ready access to a good dive site. The local dive shops like to use this awful quarrey that's murkey, cold and pretty boring. I tell everyone to do their pool and coursework here but refer the open water dives to somewhere decent. I think that quarrey runs off a lot of potential divers.

-Charles

 

[halocline]

If you do a referral and finish your open water certification in Coz, you'll never want to dive anywhere else again! The place is just amazing.

I'm headed down next week with six divers. Two of them are referrals. We've had tremendous success with taking divers down to finish their open water certification in Cozumel. We always go with Roberta's Eco-Dive Cozumel/Scuba Shack. Robert Cwertina has certified several of our divers in the past. He's incredibly patient and not only knows how to dive, he knows how to teach someone else. Those two skills are completely independent.

-Charles

I second this suggestion. I have a good friend who got his certification at Roberta's, although the instructor was a guy named Juan who my friend was very happy with. Robert is a terrific guy; I've never seen him teach but from his personality, I'd bet he's a really good teacher.

There are lots of active, experienced, and highly thought of teachers in Cozumel, as it's probably one of the more popular places to get certified in the world. You probably won't go wrong.

From time to time you'll hear someone say "don't get certified in warm clear carribean waters, because you won't have the skills to dive in harsher conditions". IMO this is well intentioned but poor advice; in almost any other skill activity you typically start with the easier environments and progress to more difficult. There is the spoilage factor to consider, though!

 

[ggunn]

I had to read this a couple of times and I'm still not sure if you're being serious here. I certainly hope not. Why would you recommend a new diver with zero experience go into anything that even resembles "challenging?"

Yes, I am being serious, though "challenging" may have not been the best choice of words. I did my open water checkout dives here in Lake Travis, which is pretty cold and murky. It was not particularly easy, but I was in the hands of an excellent instructor, and once I got through it, I believe that I was a better trained diver than I would have been if I had been checked out in an easier environment. When I went to Cozumel shortly thereafter, I was able to go out on "real" dives immediately and I was very comfortable, and later when I had a chance to dive Monterrey Bay, I felt like I could handle it.

A few years later, I had the same decision to make with my daughter, and I arranged to have her cert'ed in Travis as well. When we took her to Cozumel, I didn't worry about her.