Papa Hogs Diving

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Stayed a Villablanca a couple trips and dove with Papa Hogs each time. Had a great time. Margaret is a real sweetheart and Mike's got a sarcastic sense of humor. They run a tight op and always took good care of us.
 
it's been a few years since i dove with papa hogs but all of the comments really fit my experience with them. i would say overall they were ok, although i dont like small boats without tops. (thats what we had) mike and margaret were very nice folks, but their operation is only as good as the crew that takes you out. you should do fine, if your not comfortable after your first dives try another operation, several come highly reccomended on this forum
 
renpirate:
My wife and I dove with them last year. Margaret was a real sweetheart and was very helpful. Mike was a bit of a jerk the first two days, but really nice after that. From what I have heard he is getting burnt on the business. They have (had?) several small fast boats and one big boat. .
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Do you mean burnt as in burnt out? Even as a small time scuba instructor up here in Canada I'm getting burnt in more ways than one and often have the same sence of humor as Mike.

At Christmas they had six boats back in the water.....

And...they took one hell of a loss on the building(s) and contents.

Ron
 
Ron Brandt:
Do you mean burnt as in burnt out? Even as a small time scuba instructor up here in Canada I'm getting burnt in more ways than one and often have the same sence of humor as Mike.

At Christmas they had six boats back in the water.....

And...they took one hell of a loss on the building(s) and contents.

Ron
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My wife and I stopped by to see the damage, which was pretty bad. Hopefully they will be able to recover quickly. It sounds like they have gotten operations back fairly quickly. I wish them all the best.
 
I was looking over there web site, It looks like they have a hand in everything sounds like a pretty good set up. Hotel, restraunt, store and dive shop. What else would you need in life haha.
 
I really liked all their divemasters and boat captains. They were all very accommodating and professional. I also enjoyed their boats, the covered ones, though I've never been on the big boat. Margaret, as everyone has said, is a sweetheart. Mike is OK overall but does tend to come off as a jerk. The major complaint about their outfit is the disorganization in the mornings. There were times we'd all be on a boat ready to go and Mike would have us come back to the dock to unload everyone and all the equipment only to load up on another small boat, a real Keystone Cops routine. It's always entertaining watching Margaret and Mike argue about who should be going where. Seems this is something they could have planned for in advance. Sometimes it seemed like they were doing this for the first time. Granted some of this could be attributed to last minute change of plans with divers but mostly it seemed unnecessary. Even the divemasters and boat captains complained that this was the usual routine every day. We've dived with them on two different week long trips now and have had ample opportunity to experience the routine. We decided to move on to another operator on our last trip and never looked back.
 
Amy WJ:
I Margaret, as everyone has said, is a sweetheart. Mike is OK overall but does tend to come off as a jerk. The major complaint about their outfit is the disorganization in the mornings. There were times we'd all be on a boat ready to go and Mike would have us come back to the dock to unload everyone and all the equipment only to load up on another small boat, a real Keystone Cops routine. It's always entertaining watching Margaret and Mike argue about who should be going where. We decided to move on to another operator on our last trip and never looked back.
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Mike was probably trying to fine tune the either the boats/clients/dm's so they were appropriately matched up to the dive site.....not a bad idea in it's self.

I personally come off as a jerk from time to time on this board and in life as well...we all can...it's called stress and believe it or not sometimes our jobs don't get easier as time goes on, especially when you look at what Mike and Margaret have to manage.

I have watched many times as their boats loaded up and boat captains were getting tense but just think about the logitics of pleasing everyone with an operation that size!

I have experience in getting 25 high school students geared up to run a Discover Scuba at 7:00AM in a city pool and under the gun for time on a pool rental.

Ron
 
I say this with two dive trips with PH's thus far. If you are at another hotel and the boat picks you up you don't have to deal with Mike. If you dispatch from their pier you will have to interface with him. I suggest that if you are not an extremely easy-going person I would not deal with Mike. I don't plan to use PH's again but if I did I would make sure to only see Margret twice, once to sign-in and once to pay up.

My 2 cents.
 
Is Mike really that bad or are some of you just way to sensative? IMO is the guy is that bad he would not have a successful dive shop in diving paradise.
 
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