We were on the Nekton Pilot in late December last year in Belize and had a FABULOUS time! We enjoyed it so much, we're going to be on the Pilot in the Bahamas next June, and plan to repeat our Belize trip in the future.
Belize sights were mostly wall diving with viz typically 60-100'. For the most part, there was little to no current or surge, except for one day when a storm blew through, then viz dropped to about 30' and it was quite surgey.
The Nekton boats are not pretty to look at, but very comfortable, roomy, and easy to dive from. The cabins are large by liveaboard standards and are all ensuite, which we appreciated. The food was very yummy all week and there was always a snack mid-morning and mid-afternoon. The dive briefings are excellent and there's always crew willing to dive with you if you'd like. There's a hot tub on the sun deck, which was great mid-week when our body temps started falling. The Pilot showed she was extremely stable during our storm and nobody got sick, which was cool.
Frankly, if I have a choice of a liveaboard or a land vacation, I'd take the liveaboard hands down. We enjoyed diving 4x a day and found the trip to be one of the most relaxing vacations we've ever had. No lugging gear around, no small boats, no hassles, no crowds, no traffic, total dive freedom, etc.
Just get up, eat, go to the dive briefing, go down to the dive deck, gear up, fall off the boat, cruise around underwater for an hour or so, rinse off in the warm water shower, grab a warm towel, head upstairs, and repeat as often as you like for a week.
Surface intervals are spent hanging out, hydrating, napping, reading, editing dive photos, eating, or whatever you want to do.
I recommend Belize and Nekton heartily....but this is coming from someone who has avoided Cozumel because of the enormous cruiseship crowd that descends on the island daily.
