Hi Gang,
I have not been to Cozumel for 5 years and am thinking about going back this coming January.
The last two time there we dove with Dive With Martin and had a great time, fast boats, no crowds and all the good sites.
We know that Martin passed away a few years back and was wondering if the operation is still as good as it used to be. Has anyone been out with them lately?
Would like opinions on who runs good dive operations these days.
Look forward to hearing from you.
BK
I dove with them this year and found them to be a whole lot of fun. The crew was nice, the office was helpful and the price was fantastic. Since you asked about other dive ops, I'll throw in my opinion. I've dove with 5 Cozumel Ops:
1. Aldora
1. Living Underwater
3. Dive with Martin
4. Dressel (must stay at Iberostar to dive with them)
5. Blue XT Sea
That is the order of preference for me and my dive buddy. Aldora and Living Underwater are both such incredible ops that I have to rank them tied at the top. Aldora has a lot more resources with more boats, DM's etc so they can group you with a like group of people a bit easier but Jeremy at Living Underwater treats you like you are royalty visiting the island and is a virtual attitude twin to Sherief at Aldora. Aldora and Living Underwater both use steel 120s so you have 50% more air in the tank which makes our average dives on last month's trip (dove with both ops that week because honestly we couldn't decide day to day which one we liked more) a little over 1:30 while diving deep and riding the deco line back up (our request). Both of them also have fantastic boats.
Dive with Martin was our favorite aluminum tank op by a pretty good margin. They treat you well, are friendly and knowledgeable, their prices are fantastic and their boats are pretty good. I really enjoyed Dive with Martin and would happily dive with them again.
Dressel edges out BXTS in my mind because of the free nitrox, 4 dives per day available every day and package rates that are pretty innexpensive...but you get an hour in the morning and 45 minutes on afternoon dives...which is irritating. And you have to be staying at Iberostar to use them...which is pretty cool for SI's 5 minutes from southern dive sites.
There are many other ops that get very good reviews as well. Use the search feature and you will find a ton of info that will have you reading for the next month...but the above is the opinion of my dive buddy and I on those that we have spent time with. It must be said though that any boat on Coz will take you to a pretty fantastic dive site. You would have to try pretty hard to go too terribly wrong.
ENJOY your trip!
this forum for the word Martin I am confident that you will find more opinions than you wanted.
