Hello,
I am the owner of Salty Endeavors. I would like to add something facts to this thread.
Living4expereinces presented herself as a Travel Agent seeking a "professional discount." As Salty Endeavors employs a travel agents ourselves, I thought this was a *highly* unusual request because, after all, travel agents already get deep discounts on any excursion. I requested her agent number from her, but she never provided it to me. I researched her name and business name and I was not able to find either listed in the IATA database. I am not saying she is not a travel agent - merely the unwillingness to provide credentials, and of course not existing in the national registry certainly is interesting. Furthermore, a Google search of her travel agency (Radcom Travel) yields no business with that name.
She was not staying at the Hotel Cozumel as she indicates in this thread. We picked up her for 3 days of diving at the El Cantil condos. A strange place to stay if you are a travel agent. Even stranger now that I read here she claims to be staying at Hotel Cozumel. For the record, pier use at Hotel Cozumel has always been free of charge. For the record number 2 - you cannot possibly get to the El Cantil pier without being a guest. As it is a private condo building and not a resort, that place is in full lockdown mode.
Living4experiences presented herself to me and my staff as accumulated, in her words, "at least over 3000 dives." That is an impressive number of dives for anybody - particularly someone who in this thread admits to it being their 8th dive trip. Seeing as she is averaging 375+ dives per dive trip, I am disapointed we only got 3 from her.
The Divemaster she dove with on day three is Martin. Martin did at one time (maybe still does) hold the record for the longest time spent in a manned bell chamber at depth. You see, Martin is a Deep Saturation diver. There are few people on Cozumel (maybe none outside the chamber doctors) that understand depth and decompression as well as Martin does. On this particular day, when diving with Living4expereinces, Martin was on dives 1 & 2. Martin went on to have dives 3 & 4 the same day. All dives utilized 21% air.
Our dive team is on strict rules to not play with our client's dive computers. The only computers my dive team are allowed to set are the Mares Pucks we use for rentals. That is it. Living4expriences asked Martin for help setting her dive computer. In her own words the dive computer was new to her and she did not know how to set it. Following company policy, Martin refused. After speaking with the Boat Captain, and the other 3 divers on the boat that day, none of them witnessed Martin handling her dive computer. For what it is worth, she also asked for help with her setting up her BC. She requested we bring a rental BC on the boat in case she could not figure out how to use her new BC.
In her own words her dive computer was in FreeDiving mode - it was counting dive time and depth, but not monitoring Deco and did not show a safety stop. She also then tells me the computer was set into Nitrox mode. I am no dive computer genius, but I know dive computers are either in Nitrox mode, or Freedive mode, and it is impossible for it to be in both.
I asked Martin if he was ignoring Living4experinces. He told me he tried showing her a few small items, but her buoyancy was such that he needed to protect the reef from her, so he stopped showing her the small things. This is under my direction as I tell my staff to not show the small things to divers with poor control of their bouyancy.
I asked the Captain that was on the boat that afternoon if he noted anything out of the ordinary. He laughed and said "well Martin was being Martin." If you know Martin, you know this translates to an overly excited and happy individual that does not shut up or stop laughing. That's why he's my number one requested DM from our divers.
I called and asked the other 3 divers for their expereince that day (normal protocol from me anytime I get a negative report from a diver). None of the three divers noticed anything out of the ordinary on this day.
Living4exper4einces then tells me about her hospital visit. Certainly nothing to take lightly as safety is our number one goal. Twice before I have had our divers check themselves in at the chamber for medical assistance without notifying me. Both times previous the doctor on duty has called me directly to inform me of what is happening. One of those times was me getting woken at 4am. The second time was mid-afternoon when the patient was discharged without a chamber ride. So I thought it was strange that one of my divers had recieved medical care from this hospital, and yet the hospital never notified me. So I quickly fired off a text message to the physician asking him why I was not contacted about my diver. The response was simply, "there was no need to." Again, consider I was previously called to the hospital for a diver that was discharged without recieving medical care.
In regards to my dive team handling a pufferfish on the night dive - Living4experiences did not do a night dive! How they can claim what happened during a night dive, when they never in fact did a night dive, is head scratching to me. Never the less, I will comment that our dive team is in strict adherance to never touch the animals or reef. If you Google search my name (full name in my signature below) you will find pages of returns on my life protecting, studying, and teaching about marine life and participating / directing reef conservation.
There is much more I could add to this thread, but I think you see where this is going.
There is no business owner in Cozumel that cares about his divers more than I do. But I am not willing to accept or entertain repeated lies or embelishiment for the purpose of a good story.
Happy diving everyone!
