SCUBA Diving near Playa Del Carmen

[theWhiteSturgeon]

Hello ScubaBoard,

(First Post)

theWhiteSturgeon here with a question about diving in the Playa del Carmen area of Riviera Maya. Within ten days I will be staying at the Iberostar Paraiso Lindo near Playa Del Carmen. There is an onsite dive shop; Dressel Divers. Using them would definately be the most convient but being located at a highly populated resort can mean high prices and a general lack of care. Has anyone used Dressel Divers before? Also does anyone know of any close by dive shops that are good. Any information would be helpful. Thank you.

theWhiteSturgeon

 

[lthomas132]

Dressel is a great shop in Cozumel anyway. They are assosicated with Iberostar resorts and all have large dive boats.I would advise diving with them due to the distance you would have to travel each way to get to another dive shop. Most of these AI's won't allow other dive shops to pick you up at the resort; some do it anyway. Taxis aren't cheap there and take some time to get to where you are going. Just check with Dressel about how many divers will be going on one boat, dive locations, etc. With as few of dives as you have be sure to have a Dive Instructor with you and not just a guide IMO.

 

[dfx]

We dove with Dressel at that Iberostar. Very well run shop, nice staff and good DMs. Very safety conscious and well aware of what a newbie may or may not need or want. My only complaint would be that we kept going to the same dive sites multiple times during our stay (which may have been because they were a boat short at that time - they normally have two, but only had one when we were there) BUT it really didn't matter, because you see different stuff on different dives anyway, even if it's the same site.

Book online ahead of time and they give you (I think) a 20% discount on top of any package deal discount that you choose.