We first dove Cozumel in 2008 and it was one of our first destination dive trips. I remember the reefs teeming with life. It was either that trip or a subsequent one that we found BlueXTsea and Pedro and looked forward to visiting them as frequently as we could. Fast forward to having kids and moving to a state that isn’t known for its diving and time got away from us. The majority of diving I’ve done in the last 10 years has been of the PSD variety with only two trips down here in the last 12 years with the next most recent being 5 years ago. We planned our current trip about 6 months ago with grandparents along for the ride as babysitters. hearing that Pedro retired we went looking for a new dive shop. I’m not here to badmouth them so they won’t be named but after reading great reviews both here and other places we went with someone that advertised small boats that had been in operation for a long time.
This was also our first time diving jacket BCD’s… in forever. We traded out the majority of our personal gear for a travel crib in order to keep the airlines happy with baggage weight. The first day of diving went fine enough- my BCD inflator was broken and the DM swapped me his setup. It was 2 sizes too big but not really a big deal. The bigger issue was the boat not having a gas analyzer. We were diving 32%. My wife’s computer failed on our second dive of the day and she requested a rental computer for the next day of diving. I might have higher standards than most but I don’t think it’s out of line. None of the other divers requested to check their tanks of course.
The boat was to pick us up at 7:40 and by 8am there was no boat and no text. I texted the dive shop and they said they would be there at 8:15. At 8:45 we left the pier and started to head back to our room to put our gear away. We were halfway across the beach when we saw our boat pulling up to the dock. We got on the boat in an attempt to salvage our morning. No analyzer, no dive computer. Thats a pretty big problem. Definitely not up to any GUE standards and the “expert halo” alarms were going off in my head.
The dive sites they chose were largely devoid of life other than seeing a dolphin (super cool!). We were on the boat with two other divers that turned out to be brand new. At one point I held a GUE tech 1 cert and have well over 500 dives. I try and maintain that same standard on all of my dives although diving with a long hose setup and a jacket BCD was pretty goofy.
We voiced our concern and cancelled the next day of diving. I was told they would not charge me for a late cancellation and then sent me 3 different invoices before seemingly getting it right.
Aside from the dive operation and dive sites being lackluster so was our resort. We stayed at Allegro- there were people having sex in the hot tub at 4pm and the food (other than the Asian) was terrible.
Someone please tell me Bonaire hasn’t suffered this same fate? That’s our plan next winter and it’ll have been 15 years since our last visit.
Also, I used to be a super active member here in the DIR forum but can’t remember my log-in. We’re hoping to get back into travel diving now that we no longer have the Great Lakes in our backyard so hopefully I will be sticking around and not just making this one post-and-ghost.
