Moodiejeff
Contributor
Part 1:
OK, Once again i'm the king of procrastination... here's my long trip report on our 9 glorious days in Cozumel. I hope this is in someway helpful to those out there planning a trip to Cozumel.
After finding out CoCoview in Roatan was booked (it was a very last minute vacation), Mia and I headed down to Cozumel Jan. 31 - Feb. 9th of 2005 staying at The Presidente & diving with Christi's op - Blue XT~Sea. We were looking to go later in the month but Christi was completely booked so we rearranged our plans and went earlier so we could dive with her & her crew... Yes, we love Christi that much!
Hotel was a tough decision... we originally were going to stay at Caribe Blu but since it was so last minute they couldn't guarantee a king size bed for us. Since it was Mia's 30th birthday during the trip I figured I'd pull out all the stops and splurge. Wise choice.
Flight was booked through Funjet. Flew United nonstop from Chicago - Grand Total of $238 (including taxes) per person!
Accomodations:
Like I said, we stayed at The Presidente which we booked through Funjet. This was my 4th time at The Presidente but the 1st time I ever booked through Funjet. Next time I will go back to booking directly through the hotel, I think it's easier to get a room upgrade that way (as well as the kind of bed you want!). Of course being the priss that I am I had to get an Ocean view room... they put us in the south wing all the way down at the end. The view was fantastic and you basically had the beach right there off your patio but it was waaayyy too far to walk with all of the dive gear, not to mention our extremely loud upstairs neighbors. I think we lasted in that room about 20 minutes before I decided to switch to the rooms that ring the dive shop in the north wing, can't recall what they're called. That's our 3rd time in those rooms (in fact I think we had the exact room last time) and we love it, right near the beach and close to the pier. Upgrade alone was around $100 per night so that added quite a hefty sum to the total. Last time we upgraded it wasn't near that much but it is high season (or maybe funjet discrimination). A LOT of money but worth it (to me at least). One extremely annoying thing they've started is they try to rope you into a timeshare kind of presentation... God, I HATE that! We successfully avoided the woman the whole week.
Staff was great, especially the "greeters" at the front. Hell, they even remembered me at Scuba Du and we haven't used them in 2 years.
Shore Diving:
One of the reasons we chose The Presidente was the excellent shore diving just steps from your room. A highlight was a night shore dive... On our way back in we were cruising across the sand with our heads down looking for small stuff when I looked up and not 5 ft. from us was a Spotted Eagle Ray barrelling down on us! We all hit the brakes (it was like in a cartoon, I swear, I think I even screamed into my regulator!) and stared for a few seconds... the Eagle Ray turned, swam a bit away then circled us before taking off. Between the 2 of us neither could get a good picture but we do have some blurry shots to prove that it happened! I'll tell ya, that was definitely one of the coolest things that have ever happened to me, above or below water! Worth the price of admission right there. Don't let anybody tell you that you won't see anything good on a shore dive. Octopi, Eels, Barracuda are all out there. If the water temps were warmer we'd have done more. As it is, we did 3 in 9 days... not too bad but much less than we planned.
Boat Diving:
Obviously if we rearranged our trip to dive with Blue XT~Sea we knew we were going to get the best service and we weren't disappointed. 2 new (er) DMs (Pedro & Javier) than when we last dove with them but Shamu & Mago are the same! Our time was split pretty evenly between the 2 DMs, both of which are great. It was refreshing when each DM gave their briefing and told everybody to go sloooww... Now that's what I wanted to hear. We could take our pick of whatever sites we wanted and we had nice long surface intervals at a beach or dock with snacks, water and juice.
Pedro & Javier are all around great guys with good senses of humor and excellent skills as dive guides. If I asked for something, Pedro would find it for us. The only thing he didn't deliver was a Hammerhead and I asked for that as a joke.
I won't bore you with site descriptions (we did most of them) , you all know them anyway. Standout encounters include numerous Turtles, Eagle Rays, Nurse Sharks, Pipe Fish, a Seahorse (which I missed but Mia saw), Octopi, Squid and lots of Splendid Toadfish.
Dives times ran the gamut from morning to afternoon, twilight and night dives. Christi was pretty full but she made sure that we got to dive at least 2 tanks a day. On Sat. a Norte came through and they closed the port to small boats. Christi promptly rented a larger boat so 5 of us could get out that day. The waves weren't that high and not 15 minutes after we were picked up they opened the port to all boats. If Christi had just waited a little bit she could have saved herself a lot of money but her main priority was her customers and made sure that we got out. That day we did 2 dives, SI at The Presidente, then a twighlight and night dive. For a day when a Norte came through, we certainly got a lot of diving done.
Currents were a bit screwy, twice they were running backwards at Colombia which meant a looong swim across some sand flats. If I was going to complain about anything, this would be it but since it happened to both DMs on different days I figure S#*t happens. We even got to do part of Devil's Throat due to this "accident".
Water temp was pretty cold, my computer said 77-79 but Pedro told me it was more like 75. I wasn't that cold but Mia was layered up like we were ice diving - A .5 mm, 3mm, 3mm shorty and a beanie. I dove with a 3/2mm. Javier even put on a wetsuit on one occasion... I wish I would have gotten a pic of that. For those of you who don't know, Javier dives in a speedo - ALL the time!
Ended up with 19 dives in 7 days of diving. We dove with a great bunch of people... I hope I didn't get in anybody's way with my camera.
Cenote:
In our correspondence with Christi before we came down we expressed interest in going to the mainland to dive the Cenotes and see Tulum. She then set us up with Diego who is a Tech diver on Coz, he also runs tours to the mainland doing things like Cenotes, Tulum, above ground caverns etc. If you're cave certified i'm sure he can guide you in the caves on Coz as well.
Here's the lowdown: Diego meets you at the ferry in Coz, buys your tickets and briefs you on the ride to PDC. When in PDC you get in his truck, drive the hour to wherever you're going (Cenote, Tulum, Cavern), he then pays all admission fees and guides you in the Cenote (for diving at least). Then drops you off at the entrance of Tulum, gives you the admission fee and will wait for you outside until you're done. Whether you hire a guide or not is up to you. Takes you back to PDC, buys you lunch then drops you at the ferry. Diego is a super nice guy, speaks perfect english and is full of knowledge about all the sites around there. He's also a Cave certified instructor so he is a great guide for the Cenotes. Price was in the $125 range per person. Money well spent I say since Diego does all the work. Money was paid to Christi at the end of the trip who will then reimburse Diego.
We ended up doing Grand Cenote, if you've never done a Cenote before you need to try it at least once. Mia absolutely flipped over it... I thoroughly enjoyed it as well. The water is so clear it's unbelievable.
To be continued...
OK, Once again i'm the king of procrastination... here's my long trip report on our 9 glorious days in Cozumel. I hope this is in someway helpful to those out there planning a trip to Cozumel.
After finding out CoCoview in Roatan was booked (it was a very last minute vacation), Mia and I headed down to Cozumel Jan. 31 - Feb. 9th of 2005 staying at The Presidente & diving with Christi's op - Blue XT~Sea. We were looking to go later in the month but Christi was completely booked so we rearranged our plans and went earlier so we could dive with her & her crew... Yes, we love Christi that much!
Hotel was a tough decision... we originally were going to stay at Caribe Blu but since it was so last minute they couldn't guarantee a king size bed for us. Since it was Mia's 30th birthday during the trip I figured I'd pull out all the stops and splurge. Wise choice.
Flight was booked through Funjet. Flew United nonstop from Chicago - Grand Total of $238 (including taxes) per person!
Accomodations:
Like I said, we stayed at The Presidente which we booked through Funjet. This was my 4th time at The Presidente but the 1st time I ever booked through Funjet. Next time I will go back to booking directly through the hotel, I think it's easier to get a room upgrade that way (as well as the kind of bed you want!). Of course being the priss that I am I had to get an Ocean view room... they put us in the south wing all the way down at the end. The view was fantastic and you basically had the beach right there off your patio but it was waaayyy too far to walk with all of the dive gear, not to mention our extremely loud upstairs neighbors. I think we lasted in that room about 20 minutes before I decided to switch to the rooms that ring the dive shop in the north wing, can't recall what they're called. That's our 3rd time in those rooms (in fact I think we had the exact room last time) and we love it, right near the beach and close to the pier. Upgrade alone was around $100 per night so that added quite a hefty sum to the total. Last time we upgraded it wasn't near that much but it is high season (or maybe funjet discrimination). A LOT of money but worth it (to me at least). One extremely annoying thing they've started is they try to rope you into a timeshare kind of presentation... God, I HATE that! We successfully avoided the woman the whole week.
Staff was great, especially the "greeters" at the front. Hell, they even remembered me at Scuba Du and we haven't used them in 2 years.
Shore Diving:
One of the reasons we chose The Presidente was the excellent shore diving just steps from your room. A highlight was a night shore dive... On our way back in we were cruising across the sand with our heads down looking for small stuff when I looked up and not 5 ft. from us was a Spotted Eagle Ray barrelling down on us! We all hit the brakes (it was like in a cartoon, I swear, I think I even screamed into my regulator!) and stared for a few seconds... the Eagle Ray turned, swam a bit away then circled us before taking off. Between the 2 of us neither could get a good picture but we do have some blurry shots to prove that it happened! I'll tell ya, that was definitely one of the coolest things that have ever happened to me, above or below water! Worth the price of admission right there. Don't let anybody tell you that you won't see anything good on a shore dive. Octopi, Eels, Barracuda are all out there. If the water temps were warmer we'd have done more. As it is, we did 3 in 9 days... not too bad but much less than we planned.
Boat Diving:
Obviously if we rearranged our trip to dive with Blue XT~Sea we knew we were going to get the best service and we weren't disappointed. 2 new (er) DMs (Pedro & Javier) than when we last dove with them but Shamu & Mago are the same! Our time was split pretty evenly between the 2 DMs, both of which are great. It was refreshing when each DM gave their briefing and told everybody to go sloooww... Now that's what I wanted to hear. We could take our pick of whatever sites we wanted and we had nice long surface intervals at a beach or dock with snacks, water and juice.
Pedro & Javier are all around great guys with good senses of humor and excellent skills as dive guides. If I asked for something, Pedro would find it for us. The only thing he didn't deliver was a Hammerhead and I asked for that as a joke.
I won't bore you with site descriptions (we did most of them) , you all know them anyway. Standout encounters include numerous Turtles, Eagle Rays, Nurse Sharks, Pipe Fish, a Seahorse (which I missed but Mia saw), Octopi, Squid and lots of Splendid Toadfish.
Dives times ran the gamut from morning to afternoon, twilight and night dives. Christi was pretty full but she made sure that we got to dive at least 2 tanks a day. On Sat. a Norte came through and they closed the port to small boats. Christi promptly rented a larger boat so 5 of us could get out that day. The waves weren't that high and not 15 minutes after we were picked up they opened the port to all boats. If Christi had just waited a little bit she could have saved herself a lot of money but her main priority was her customers and made sure that we got out. That day we did 2 dives, SI at The Presidente, then a twighlight and night dive. For a day when a Norte came through, we certainly got a lot of diving done.
Currents were a bit screwy, twice they were running backwards at Colombia which meant a looong swim across some sand flats. If I was going to complain about anything, this would be it but since it happened to both DMs on different days I figure S#*t happens. We even got to do part of Devil's Throat due to this "accident".
Water temp was pretty cold, my computer said 77-79 but Pedro told me it was more like 75. I wasn't that cold but Mia was layered up like we were ice diving - A .5 mm, 3mm, 3mm shorty and a beanie. I dove with a 3/2mm. Javier even put on a wetsuit on one occasion... I wish I would have gotten a pic of that. For those of you who don't know, Javier dives in a speedo - ALL the time!
Ended up with 19 dives in 7 days of diving. We dove with a great bunch of people... I hope I didn't get in anybody's way with my camera.
Cenote:
In our correspondence with Christi before we came down we expressed interest in going to the mainland to dive the Cenotes and see Tulum. She then set us up with Diego who is a Tech diver on Coz, he also runs tours to the mainland doing things like Cenotes, Tulum, above ground caverns etc. If you're cave certified i'm sure he can guide you in the caves on Coz as well.
Here's the lowdown: Diego meets you at the ferry in Coz, buys your tickets and briefs you on the ride to PDC. When in PDC you get in his truck, drive the hour to wherever you're going (Cenote, Tulum, Cavern), he then pays all admission fees and guides you in the Cenote (for diving at least). Then drops you off at the entrance of Tulum, gives you the admission fee and will wait for you outside until you're done. Whether you hire a guide or not is up to you. Takes you back to PDC, buys you lunch then drops you at the ferry. Diego is a super nice guy, speaks perfect english and is full of knowledge about all the sites around there. He's also a Cave certified instructor so he is a great guide for the Cenotes. Price was in the $125 range per person. Money well spent I say since Diego does all the work. Money was paid to Christi at the end of the trip who will then reimburse Diego.
We ended up doing Grand Cenote, if you've never done a Cenote before you need to try it at least once. Mia absolutely flipped over it... I thoroughly enjoyed it as well. The water is so clear it's unbelievable.
To be continued...
