Titletowndiver
Contributor
Travel
I booked this trip with Bay Adventures and have no complaints. We flew out of Chicago Midway via ATA and had no problems at all. Aside from the HORRIBLE shytown traffic, the trip down was fine. From Cancun we used the Riviera to get to the PDC ferry. I highly recommend using this service. Its cheap ($6.50), comfortable and took less than 1 hour to get to the terminal in PDC.
Accomodations
We stayed @ Brisas and had the AIC package. The rooms were nothing special but they were clean and had adequate storage for your gear on the patio to dry (although with the humidity it rarely did). The hotel is in a very convenient location to the grocery store, downtown, and its about a 1 minute walk thru the tunnel to the dock. Cab ride = $3 to downtown but isnt needed unless your either drunk or lazy. I've heard stories about how the beds @ Brisas are very hard and uncomfortable. Maybe I got lucky, or maybe these people sleep on a cloud but I had no problem with the bed at all. I actually found them quite comfortable. 1 last note on the hotel. For people staying @ Brisas for thier 1st time: When you check in save yourself a bunch of walking and ask for the room safe key and a dive locker key right away. They wont offer them too you.
Food
The people @ Brisas have yet to figure out how to keep food warm. It ranged from tepid to ice cold. The selection was usually awful but every few days they would surprise us with a decent meal. The restaurants were always horribly understaffed and you often waited quite awhile if you wanted something prepared fresh. With that being said, Would I do the AIC package again??? Absolutely. For the conveniece alone its worth it. I can't imagine having to deal w/ going into town in the morning for breakfast or even worse- having to pay the ridiculous prices @ the the restaurant for the crummy food.
Diving
We dove with Dive Paradise all week. In 6 days we only did 19 dives. Many of which were on the cattle boats. We were only able to upgrade to the fast boats on 2 days because they were so overbooked. I HIGHLY recommend upgrading your package immediately upon arrival if you dont want to get stuck on the cattle boats. The slow boats were ok and we did have a lot of fun, but if your an experienced diver and prefer getting out to the locations faster- UPGRADE UPGRADE UPGRADE. Im not going to go into much detail about the actual dives other than we had an absolutely awesome time. I've never come back from diving in Coz disappointed and this trip was no different. My favorite locations included Punta Sur, Cedral Wall and Maracaibo.
Anyone with trips planned that have specific questions email or PM me........Pix to follow!
Tim
I booked this trip with Bay Adventures and have no complaints. We flew out of Chicago Midway via ATA and had no problems at all. Aside from the HORRIBLE shytown traffic, the trip down was fine. From Cancun we used the Riviera to get to the PDC ferry. I highly recommend using this service. Its cheap ($6.50), comfortable and took less than 1 hour to get to the terminal in PDC.
Accomodations
We stayed @ Brisas and had the AIC package. The rooms were nothing special but they were clean and had adequate storage for your gear on the patio to dry (although with the humidity it rarely did). The hotel is in a very convenient location to the grocery store, downtown, and its about a 1 minute walk thru the tunnel to the dock. Cab ride = $3 to downtown but isnt needed unless your either drunk or lazy. I've heard stories about how the beds @ Brisas are very hard and uncomfortable. Maybe I got lucky, or maybe these people sleep on a cloud but I had no problem with the bed at all. I actually found them quite comfortable. 1 last note on the hotel. For people staying @ Brisas for thier 1st time: When you check in save yourself a bunch of walking and ask for the room safe key and a dive locker key right away. They wont offer them too you.
Food
The people @ Brisas have yet to figure out how to keep food warm. It ranged from tepid to ice cold. The selection was usually awful but every few days they would surprise us with a decent meal. The restaurants were always horribly understaffed and you often waited quite awhile if you wanted something prepared fresh. With that being said, Would I do the AIC package again??? Absolutely. For the conveniece alone its worth it. I can't imagine having to deal w/ going into town in the morning for breakfast or even worse- having to pay the ridiculous prices @ the the restaurant for the crummy food.
Diving
We dove with Dive Paradise all week. In 6 days we only did 19 dives. Many of which were on the cattle boats. We were only able to upgrade to the fast boats on 2 days because they were so overbooked. I HIGHLY recommend upgrading your package immediately upon arrival if you dont want to get stuck on the cattle boats. The slow boats were ok and we did have a lot of fun, but if your an experienced diver and prefer getting out to the locations faster- UPGRADE UPGRADE UPGRADE. Im not going to go into much detail about the actual dives other than we had an absolutely awesome time. I've never come back from diving in Coz disappointed and this trip was no different. My favorite locations included Punta Sur, Cedral Wall and Maracaibo.
Anyone with trips planned that have specific questions email or PM me........Pix to follow!
Tim