Bookworm11
Contributor
I was in Cozumel from 11/9 thru 11/20. I was very lucky as even though Tropical Storm Sara came thru, we never missed a day of diving. She did shut down a bunch of dive sites, and stopped some night dives, but I dove every day from the 10th thru the 20th with Aldora except the 11th when I dove 3 times with Dressel. (They owed me dives.) I stayed at the Casa Mexicana, which was wonderful. 2 minutes from the pier, great room, wonderful breakfast, right in town, 1 minute to the dive shop, and super staff! This trip was made much more fun when i met 2 people on the dives, Sebastian, a Swiss man living in Houston staying at the hotel with me, and Wan Ting, a Tawainese woman living near NYC. We all shared meals together after diving. I dove twice a day except the day I did three with Dressel, the day after that when I did an afternoon and twilight dive with Aldora, and the 19th when I did 2 afternoon dives with Dressel. The picture is right after my 200th dive. I've gotten my 1st and 2nd dive, my 99th and 100th dive, and my 199th and 200th dive, with the DM pictured here, Rodrigo Marinho. The diving was mixed. Some days there was no current, some there was moderate, and sometimes it was strong. We did Tunich the last day (I never dove there before) and was told it was moderate for Tunich. i dove a few sites I never dove before, but ended up diving Cedral 5 times and Yucab 6. I did have a wonderful dive at Palancar Caves, which is my favorite dive site on the island. I saw a hammerhead at Punta Sur (I was the only one, and it was from afar form about 30 seconds), green moray eels (one very close, and he was in sight for 5 minutes), blue moray eels, and 2 black and white spotted moray eels, at least 4 eagle rays (one close and for a long time), a number of nudibranches, yellow stingrays, a blue stingrays, 3 sea cucumbers, at least 10 toadfish (one was HUGE), a bunch of spiny lobsters (one was enormous-I think he had to weigh 40 pounds!), 2 huge crabs, 2 octopus, pipefish, drumfish, lots of barracuda, a number of nurse sharks including a huge one, and some sea turtles, including the one who just about hit me. I know I saw other things, too. For the most part visability was great, but as time went on, visability suffered, and choppiness got worse. There were some bad rainstorms coming back on longish boat rides from dive sites, and we were very glad for the Aldora dive coats. I got more dive time in than expected where the hurricane/tropical storm developed, and it was a very nice break from work. I am pretty proud to have gotten to 200 dives in 3 1/2 years, and feel the time coming here has prepped me better for Raja Ampat and my veyr first liveaboard.
