mruseless
Contributor
Sorry it took so long to post this! My wife and I got back from diving in Cozumel May 10-19.
Just as some background about our experience as divers: My wife and I are what I would call intermediate divers. She has logged 80 dives, I have logged 84. We have good (but not perfect) buoyancy control and trim. On a typical 80 foot multilevel dive for 45 minutes, my wife finishes with about 1200 psi and I finish with about 1000 psi, so we are OK on air consumption.
Travel: Flew Continental from Denver to Cozumel through Houston. No problem. Coming back, it was a good thing we had a 3-hour layover in Houston, because it took more than an hour to get through customs! So beware of that.
Accomodations: We stayed at the Wyndham, which used to be the Reef Club. Nice, but not spectacular. The place was very clean, and we were satisfied with the food if not thrilled. Even in May, which is low season, it was difficult to get reservations for the resorts three restaurants. We did manage to get reservations a couple nights, but the rest of the time we ate at the buffet. By the last day it was pretty tiresome. But you could always find something that was OK. The burgers and lunch fare was actually pretty good. Or maybe it was because we were starving after diving
Diving: We went out with Sand Dollar Sports because it was right there at the resort. The first day out (Monday) was unplanned for us, since we intended to start diving on Tuesday. The only boat they could fit us on was the Express, a big 24-diver cattle boat with 18 divers. We prefer 6-pack or 8-packs boats, so we weren't thrilled about this. But we were determined to make it a good time. The boat was fairly well run, but they divided us into only 2 groups of 9 divers each. I was hoping for 3 groups, oh well. It was a nice dive to start the vacation, except I couldn't really see anything because I had a new mask and apparently didn't clean it well enough since it kept fogging up on me. After the dive, the DM used a lighter to burn the silicone away. Never seen that trick before. It had me a little nervous watching him put flame to my new $100 Micromask, but it worked like a charm.
We logged 16 dives over the week, and were on the 6-pack boat Ada Christina for the rest of the week (except the very last day, when we went out on Roman Holiday, and 8 diver boat). Overall, we were happy with the operation. They were friendly and safety oriented in the pre-dive briefings, and they watched you pretty close until they were familiar with your skill level. The divemasters were good, but not great. They pointed out all the big stuff, but really didn't find much of the small stuff that is often more interesting to me.
I noticed that several of the dive masters did not use computers, instead sticking to a relatively flat profile. We took very short surface intervals, some as short as 30 minutes. My wife and I use Suunto computers which don't like short SI's so I'm sure our NDT was penalized a little. However, the dives were pretty short (45 min) so it didn't matter.
The other relatively minor complaint was that they stuck to a schedule. I've heard that more and more ops in Cozumel are doing this. They have a board posted, with the two morning dives listed for each day. Even in a 6-pack boat, where all the divers have dove the sites, they would not deviate from the schedule. I wondered if this could be for insurance reasons, or maybe just a kind of dumb company policy. Anyway, you could get 4 dives in a day, but if you dove in the afternoon, they went to the same 2 sites as the morning dives. At least they took different routes on the bottom, so that was fine. But it did mean reverse a profile dive for the 1st dive of the afternoon.
As far as the reefs go, they seem to be recovering well. We last dove here before Hurricane Wilma in 2005, and the difference was striking. But the marine life has recovered, now it just needs another 10 years for the coral. I did see a lot of new coral growth, but there is still sand in every coral head and every sponge.
Overall, Cozumel is still a great place to dive, but if you book with Sand Dollar, make sure you request the 6-pack boat.
Just as some background about our experience as divers: My wife and I are what I would call intermediate divers. She has logged 80 dives, I have logged 84. We have good (but not perfect) buoyancy control and trim. On a typical 80 foot multilevel dive for 45 minutes, my wife finishes with about 1200 psi and I finish with about 1000 psi, so we are OK on air consumption.
Travel: Flew Continental from Denver to Cozumel through Houston. No problem. Coming back, it was a good thing we had a 3-hour layover in Houston, because it took more than an hour to get through customs! So beware of that.
Accomodations: We stayed at the Wyndham, which used to be the Reef Club. Nice, but not spectacular. The place was very clean, and we were satisfied with the food if not thrilled. Even in May, which is low season, it was difficult to get reservations for the resorts three restaurants. We did manage to get reservations a couple nights, but the rest of the time we ate at the buffet. By the last day it was pretty tiresome. But you could always find something that was OK. The burgers and lunch fare was actually pretty good. Or maybe it was because we were starving after diving
Diving: We went out with Sand Dollar Sports because it was right there at the resort. The first day out (Monday) was unplanned for us, since we intended to start diving on Tuesday. The only boat they could fit us on was the Express, a big 24-diver cattle boat with 18 divers. We prefer 6-pack or 8-packs boats, so we weren't thrilled about this. But we were determined to make it a good time. The boat was fairly well run, but they divided us into only 2 groups of 9 divers each. I was hoping for 3 groups, oh well. It was a nice dive to start the vacation, except I couldn't really see anything because I had a new mask and apparently didn't clean it well enough since it kept fogging up on me. After the dive, the DM used a lighter to burn the silicone away. Never seen that trick before. It had me a little nervous watching him put flame to my new $100 Micromask, but it worked like a charm.
We logged 16 dives over the week, and were on the 6-pack boat Ada Christina for the rest of the week (except the very last day, when we went out on Roman Holiday, and 8 diver boat). Overall, we were happy with the operation. They were friendly and safety oriented in the pre-dive briefings, and they watched you pretty close until they were familiar with your skill level. The divemasters were good, but not great. They pointed out all the big stuff, but really didn't find much of the small stuff that is often more interesting to me.
I noticed that several of the dive masters did not use computers, instead sticking to a relatively flat profile. We took very short surface intervals, some as short as 30 minutes. My wife and I use Suunto computers which don't like short SI's so I'm sure our NDT was penalized a little. However, the dives were pretty short (45 min) so it didn't matter.
The other relatively minor complaint was that they stuck to a schedule. I've heard that more and more ops in Cozumel are doing this. They have a board posted, with the two morning dives listed for each day. Even in a 6-pack boat, where all the divers have dove the sites, they would not deviate from the schedule. I wondered if this could be for insurance reasons, or maybe just a kind of dumb company policy. Anyway, you could get 4 dives in a day, but if you dove in the afternoon, they went to the same 2 sites as the morning dives. At least they took different routes on the bottom, so that was fine. But it did mean reverse a profile dive for the 1st dive of the afternoon.
As far as the reefs go, they seem to be recovering well. We last dove here before Hurricane Wilma in 2005, and the difference was striking. But the marine life has recovered, now it just needs another 10 years for the coral. I did see a lot of new coral growth, but there is still sand in every coral head and every sponge.
Overall, Cozumel is still a great place to dive, but if you book with Sand Dollar, make sure you request the 6-pack boat.
