djanni
Contributor
Here's another recommendatin for Blue XT~Sea.
Recommended Operators in Cozumel
- Thread starter Rich_95492
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Rowerpilot1111
New
Hi Everyone! this is my first post on ScubaBoard (although i have been reading it for a few months now! I vistied cozumel a little over a month ago and i wanted to post something about Aldora Divers, one of the local dive operations there. After reading all the posts on here i decided to do some diving through Aldora. Every aspect of the diving was Top-Notch! There were only 4 people (plus the dive master) on our dives so it was very personal! The Dive master was very Knowledgeable and the diving was the best i had EVER done! I think what toped off my experience was that i left a pair of oakleys at the dive shop and they actually sent the sunglasses back to the U.S. with another customer and paid out of their own pocket to ship it to me! I would definitely recommend diving with them!
cozcharlie
Contributor
I am kind of late on my reply here, but Pelagic Ventures is also a good shop. Owned by a Canadian (Troy) who moved down to Cozumel about 15 years ago. I have been using them for about 5 years, friends of mine have been using them for longer than that.
Troy and Alex (divemaster) are both excellent divers who do a good job. Troy runs a laid back operation that likes to have fun and will let you dive your abilities and air consumption pattern--but they aren't so hands off as to be unsafe.
Troy and Alex (divemaster) are both excellent divers who do a good job. Troy runs a laid back operation that likes to have fun and will let you dive your abilities and air consumption pattern--but they aren't so hands off as to be unsafe.
OP
Rich_95492
Guest
Well, as a follow-up. I did dive with Aldora divers and the whole experience was great. The port was shut down on 3 days, and the way Aldora is set-up, we were able to dive the windward side. In retrospect, I wouldn't do it again. The life on that side of the island (at least where we went) was non-existent. I took my video camera down on each dive and I ended up with 60 minutes of desert on each tape. On the last (4th) dive we ended the dive at 30 minutes...nothing to see, seriously...nothing.
Use Aldora, I recommend them, but I would strongly encourage you to skip the windward side and enjoy the local food and drinks on the days that the port is closed.
Enjoy
-Rich
Use Aldora, I recommend them, but I would strongly encourage you to skip the windward side and enjoy the local food and drinks on the days that the port is closed.
Enjoy
-Rich
BaileyM
Registered
One dive op that you didn't mention Rich was Blue Magic Scuba. They are a small operator, 4 boats I think, with no more than 6-8/per boat. I know several people who have had great experiences there just recently, and I know they will treat you royally. There was just a trip report about them posted yesterday. Also, I noticed that you are from Windsor, CA. The owners are from there too, so you just might want to check out their website. But, they don't do steel tanks, so if that's what you want, then Aldora is your only choice I think.
billindenver
Contributor
- Messages
- 447
- Reaction score
- 16
- # of dives
- 500 - 999
Living underwater does steel too, and I believe someone else does LP steel...but I can't recall who. Our last trip we dove with Aldora and Dive with Martin (4 days each). The steel tanks take some getting used to, and I found that with a 3/2 full suit and booties I didn't need any extra weight...but not having weight in my front pockets made the tank want to roll me. Its not a problem, in fact I like the bottom time so much I think I may stick with the steel tanks from now on...but I did find that my feet were always slowly moving to keep me from going belly up. My dive buddy wasn't as much of a fan of the steel tanks...as she gets cold after 60 minutes anyway (in a 5 mil, booties and a full hood!) plus battling the tank was distracting for her.
We have now dove with:
1. Aldora
2. Dive with Martin
3. Dressel
4. Blue XT Sea
And I would rank them in that order with the following caveats. Dressel has free Nitrox, but they limit your dive time to one hour in the morning dives and 45 minutes in the afternoon. Since my air consumption on a 90 foot multilevel with an aluminum 80 is about an hour anyway...they edge out Blue XT Sea by a nose due to the free Nitrox, cheaper packages, guaranteed afternoon dives and nice boats. Dive with Martin is clearly better than Dressel in our eyes because Dressel doesn't handle your gear, while Dive with Martin will take it back and rinse it for you, set it up on your tanks the next morning etc (same as BXTS), plus Dive with Martin has fruit, bottled water etc during surface intervals on the beach...whereas Dressel hands you a cup of water and takes you back to Iberostar for SI's. That 5 minute boat ride back to dock though has a definite benefit for Dressel.
Aldora was head and shoulders above the other three in both my eyes and my partner. Their SI's are at a beach club where you can get anything you want, there is an abundance of water, long and warm boat cloaks and they handle your gear for you. The tanks are ridiculously full of air and if someone in your boat burns through their tank..the DM has an 8 foot Octo that he shares air with them on. That seemed quite odd to me at first, but having seen it in action it seemed to work very well and every time someone burned through a tank and had to nurse off the DM...their next dive they were more careful and didn't need to again. Spending 15 minutes attached to a DM seemed to show them that they were not paying attention to their breathing, were staying deep too long or needed to hang out a bit shallower..and they asked questions in the boat about how to improve their breathing. Aldora's boats were also the best I have been in thus far and never crowded.
I have to say, my dream op would be Aldora with pairs surfacing as one of them gets low (much like Dressel and BXTS do) instead of the entire group going up when one diver eats a tank in 38 minutes (happened on one of my dives....was an O-ring failure, not the diver's fault)....but still, I was in the boat looking at a Nitrox tank with 1950psi in it....made me want to cry....in fact, I might have shed a tear or two, but I will never admit it. One nitrox tank with Aldora costs as much as a two tank day with DWM, so leaving one with that much air in it is painful. One other small issue is that normally Aldora heads up for a safety stop at 1000psi....which to me is a bit soon on a multi-level dive where you are quite shallow by that time. Other ops are 700psi and up, which I believe is plenty of safety cushion when you are not deep.
Still of the four we've tried...Aldora was the best experience. Despite seldom getting in the boat with less than 1400psi (group surfaces together)....the dives were still typically over an hour. On the last day I was put with a group of experienced divers and when I got in the boat I had 1050psi left and we had done 80 minutes, 88 foot multilevel swimming through palancar caves. It was the only dive I've done in Coz where we swam the entire time, down around and through the large coral formations. Because we were all decent on air the DM said we were going to swim it instead of drifting over it motionless. I very nearly hugged all of those divers when we got out...without question, best dive yet.
We have now dove with:
1. Aldora
2. Dive with Martin
3. Dressel
4. Blue XT Sea
And I would rank them in that order with the following caveats. Dressel has free Nitrox, but they limit your dive time to one hour in the morning dives and 45 minutes in the afternoon. Since my air consumption on a 90 foot multilevel with an aluminum 80 is about an hour anyway...they edge out Blue XT Sea by a nose due to the free Nitrox, cheaper packages, guaranteed afternoon dives and nice boats. Dive with Martin is clearly better than Dressel in our eyes because Dressel doesn't handle your gear, while Dive with Martin will take it back and rinse it for you, set it up on your tanks the next morning etc (same as BXTS), plus Dive with Martin has fruit, bottled water etc during surface intervals on the beach...whereas Dressel hands you a cup of water and takes you back to Iberostar for SI's. That 5 minute boat ride back to dock though has a definite benefit for Dressel.
Aldora was head and shoulders above the other three in both my eyes and my partner. Their SI's are at a beach club where you can get anything you want, there is an abundance of water, long and warm boat cloaks and they handle your gear for you. The tanks are ridiculously full of air and if someone in your boat burns through their tank..the DM has an 8 foot Octo that he shares air with them on. That seemed quite odd to me at first, but having seen it in action it seemed to work very well and every time someone burned through a tank and had to nurse off the DM...their next dive they were more careful and didn't need to again. Spending 15 minutes attached to a DM seemed to show them that they were not paying attention to their breathing, were staying deep too long or needed to hang out a bit shallower..and they asked questions in the boat about how to improve their breathing. Aldora's boats were also the best I have been in thus far and never crowded.
I have to say, my dream op would be Aldora with pairs surfacing as one of them gets low (much like Dressel and BXTS do) instead of the entire group going up when one diver eats a tank in 38 minutes (happened on one of my dives....was an O-ring failure, not the diver's fault)....but still, I was in the boat looking at a Nitrox tank with 1950psi in it....made me want to cry....in fact, I might have shed a tear or two, but I will never admit it. One nitrox tank with Aldora costs as much as a two tank day with DWM, so leaving one with that much air in it is painful. One other small issue is that normally Aldora heads up for a safety stop at 1000psi....which to me is a bit soon on a multi-level dive where you are quite shallow by that time. Other ops are 700psi and up, which I believe is plenty of safety cushion when you are not deep.
Still of the four we've tried...Aldora was the best experience. Despite seldom getting in the boat with less than 1400psi (group surfaces together)....the dives were still typically over an hour. On the last day I was put with a group of experienced divers and when I got in the boat I had 1050psi left and we had done 80 minutes, 88 foot multilevel swimming through palancar caves. It was the only dive I've done in Coz where we swam the entire time, down around and through the large coral formations. Because we were all decent on air the DM said we were going to swim it instead of drifting over it motionless. I very nearly hugged all of those divers when we got out...without question, best dive yet.
gedmondson
Guest
Bill - Awesome update. Thanks for posting. I dive again with Aldora this coming June. BTW, did you take any pictures you want to share with us?
billindenver
Contributor
- Messages
- 447
- Reaction score
- 16
- # of dives
- 500 - 999
You want pictures? Oh yeah, I have pictures...
Unfortunately, they are on my laptop which I inadvertently left at work....so I will have to get them for you later this weekend. I've got turtles in plenty, an eel longer then me and fish like mad. I even have pictures of a certain tech diver and his wife that swim around these boards..but I keep forgetting to send them to him. I'll do that this weekend as well...sorry Reg..slipped my mind. I will post them in a trip review or something similar rather than derail the recommended operators thread.
I intend a summer trip this year as well....so a couple of months from now. I believe I want to stick with steel tanks, but will be solo this trip so not sure who I'm going to dive with. Aldora is certainly very high on the list..but tossing around the other steel guys as well and bang for the buck wise, Dive with Martin really is very very good. With Aldora it's the group comes up together thing that bugs me....I put a lot of thought into conserving my air to increase my bottom time and would really prefer to dive my computer if reasonable.
The great news about choosing a dive op for Cozumel is that no matter which one you go with...you will come out of the water amazed and overjoyed by the experience. As we have tried other ops we have found that the experience can, in fact, be improved upon....which makes you wonder...can it get better still?
Of those we have tried, Aldora stands head and shoulders above...and if every trip we made in the future put us on an Aldora boat...we certainly would not be suffering. There are a few others though that I want to get an eye on before we set our loyalty in stone.
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My son & I dived with Aldora. Best operation we've ever dived with. Fantastic local dives, great experience diving cenotes on mainland with Mateo. You can't go wrong with Aldora, Memo is is a great director.
Good diving, Craig
Good diving, Craig
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