San Salvador has a reef offshore that has its top at 40-60 ft. The anchor spots are land-ward of the reef, generally over sand patches or channels, depending on how close to the wall the anchorage is. The reef varies from place to place in terms of slope to the wall drop off. Some places there are channels cut through the coral and you swim through coming out oceanside really in the deep blue. You cannot see the bottom (nor do you want to; it's several thousand feet down). It is a bit disconcerting the first time or two. However, you don't have to do the dive that way. You can swim either along the shore-ward side of the reef (also looking into the sand patches for critters) or along the top of the reef where it is most shallow. Nearly all the pre-dive instructions will take the form of, "Locate the reef, swim to the wall, then along the wall, either right or left depending on current. Return by reversing the dive." You can drift down the wall until it is vertical, if you wish. Or not. We did not experience any current to speak of. We had one dive with poor visibility and we could not find the wall, probably because the boat had turned on us just before we entered the water (and I neglected to take a compass bearing). That was more annoying than anything.
We have been diving with Club Med 4 times, twice each at Turks and Caicos and San Salvador. We have found the dive operations to be most accommodating to individual needs. The boats are quite large, holding up to about 40 people, I think. We never experienced a boat more than 3/4 and never felt crowded. Most divers are in small groups with a DM. They are taking lessons or being guided. Only the buddy divers are really on their own and I'd guess that 6-10 were buddy divers on any one trip. If I were you at Club Med, I would not worry about being forced to go as buddies totally on your own. Just explain that you are newbies and would like to go with a DM. I think they will accommodate you. You can direct questions to a specific Club Med through the parent organization. It's sometimes successful, anyway.
Having been to Cozumel a couple of times, I can sympathize with the depth issue. For my wife and me, it was not that so much as the speed of drift that bothered us. Two dives were really fast and we were moving at such a rate that it was impossible to stop without grabbing on to something solid. Those two dives were not pleasant and we have subsequently referred to them as thruway dives on which everything just zips by and you have no time to enjoy it.
I hope your boyfriend at least got himself one of the "I survived the Santa Rosa Wall" t-shirts!
