djanni
Contributor
Cozumel Diving with Blue-TX~Sea. 4/12 thru 4/22
We arrived in Cozumel Wed 4/11. Checked into El Cid and leisurely dropped off our gear with Christi at Blue-XT~Sea that afternoon. It was not to be handled by us again until we picked it up today, rinsed and dry, ready to be packed for the flight home.
Blue-XT~Sea packs the gear up each day and rinses it every night. When they pick you up at your dock in the morning, it's set up and ready for inspection.
Thursday morning at 8:15a, prompt as usual, Shamu was there to pick us up at El Cid’s dock. We made the next pickup and then with 6 divers aboard (capacidad) we did our first dive at Palancar Caves.
Surface intervals are an hour or so and always at shore. BXTSea provides homemade cupcakes or finger sandwiches along with various fruits and fruit drinks and more water then you can drink. Mago provided salsa, guacamole and chips on a few occasions. They have towels aboard and hooded windbreakers if you get chilled. They always offer fresh water rinses after every dive.
BXTSea’s consummate Professional Dive Master and Guide is Pedro Pablo. He has over 7,000 dives on Coz’s reefs and walls. In the grassy area near shore, he found two seahorses on one of the Paradise night dives. We also enjoyed diving with Juan, Arturo and Blanca.
Now the important stuff:
The Diving. I did 23 dives and spent 22 hours underwater. My wife and dive buddy did 26 dives and 25 hours underwater. Not bad considering we were using those puny little AL80’s.
This was our first trip to Coz since Wilma. Is it obvious Wilma spent 2 days sitting on Coz some 18 months ago? Yes. Is the diving still great? Yes. Some sites were more affected than others yet everywhere you looked you could see the soft corals and fans recovering and that was fun.
Marine life is abundant, as usual, and we saw all the usual suspects. Lots of turtles, Nurse Sharks (one was really big) and then there were the Pipefish and Garden eels. On Punta Tunich, the fish were so plentiful we had to dodge huge Scrawled Filefish, Midnight Blue and Rainbow Parrots just to keep from running right into them. Regardless of where you dive, you don't see the huge Rainbow Parrots too often either. It was amazing how close they let you get to them. That dive usually has strong current so of course I didn’t take my camera on that one. Damn.
Coz’s reef structures are amazing. The variety ranges from flat-topped rolling reefs to huge structures rising 50’ or more out of the sand. Swim throughs everywhere. Of course, there are the walls and some have sheer drop offs to 2,000 or 3,000 feet into the abyss. We did two night dives on Paradise. We know how it got its name. Octopus, Squid, King Crab, Coral Crab, Spiny Lobster, Splendid Toadfish and free swimming Green Morays and, of course, those seahorses.
We did Maracaibo, Columbia Deep, and all the Palancars and, of course, Devil’s Throat. Devil’s Throat isn’t what she used to be. Wilma opened it up pretty wide. You could drive a Hummer through what was once a long and narrow tube leading into the mini Cathedral. Still it’s an exciting dive.
We met really great people from Wisconsin, Michigan, Washington, Colorado and California. All in all, it couldn’t have been better.
Wilma or no Wilma, Coz remains one of the top Caribbean dive locations. You can believe we’ll be going back!!! ...and, thanks Christi, you have a great team.
I’ll get a few pic’s up here in a couple of days.
We arrived in Cozumel Wed 4/11. Checked into El Cid and leisurely dropped off our gear with Christi at Blue-XT~Sea that afternoon. It was not to be handled by us again until we picked it up today, rinsed and dry, ready to be packed for the flight home.
Blue-XT~Sea packs the gear up each day and rinses it every night. When they pick you up at your dock in the morning, it's set up and ready for inspection.
Thursday morning at 8:15a, prompt as usual, Shamu was there to pick us up at El Cid’s dock. We made the next pickup and then with 6 divers aboard (capacidad) we did our first dive at Palancar Caves.
Surface intervals are an hour or so and always at shore. BXTSea provides homemade cupcakes or finger sandwiches along with various fruits and fruit drinks and more water then you can drink. Mago provided salsa, guacamole and chips on a few occasions. They have towels aboard and hooded windbreakers if you get chilled. They always offer fresh water rinses after every dive.
BXTSea’s consummate Professional Dive Master and Guide is Pedro Pablo. He has over 7,000 dives on Coz’s reefs and walls. In the grassy area near shore, he found two seahorses on one of the Paradise night dives. We also enjoyed diving with Juan, Arturo and Blanca.
Now the important stuff:
The Diving. I did 23 dives and spent 22 hours underwater. My wife and dive buddy did 26 dives and 25 hours underwater. Not bad considering we were using those puny little AL80’s.
This was our first trip to Coz since Wilma. Is it obvious Wilma spent 2 days sitting on Coz some 18 months ago? Yes. Is the diving still great? Yes. Some sites were more affected than others yet everywhere you looked you could see the soft corals and fans recovering and that was fun.
Marine life is abundant, as usual, and we saw all the usual suspects. Lots of turtles, Nurse Sharks (one was really big) and then there were the Pipefish and Garden eels. On Punta Tunich, the fish were so plentiful we had to dodge huge Scrawled Filefish, Midnight Blue and Rainbow Parrots just to keep from running right into them. Regardless of where you dive, you don't see the huge Rainbow Parrots too often either. It was amazing how close they let you get to them. That dive usually has strong current so of course I didn’t take my camera on that one. Damn.
Coz’s reef structures are amazing. The variety ranges from flat-topped rolling reefs to huge structures rising 50’ or more out of the sand. Swim throughs everywhere. Of course, there are the walls and some have sheer drop offs to 2,000 or 3,000 feet into the abyss. We did two night dives on Paradise. We know how it got its name. Octopus, Squid, King Crab, Coral Crab, Spiny Lobster, Splendid Toadfish and free swimming Green Morays and, of course, those seahorses.
We did Maracaibo, Columbia Deep, and all the Palancars and, of course, Devil’s Throat. Devil’s Throat isn’t what she used to be. Wilma opened it up pretty wide. You could drive a Hummer through what was once a long and narrow tube leading into the mini Cathedral. Still it’s an exciting dive.
We met really great people from Wisconsin, Michigan, Washington, Colorado and California. All in all, it couldn’t have been better.
Wilma or no Wilma, Coz remains one of the top Caribbean dive locations. You can believe we’ll be going back!!! ...and, thanks Christi, you have a great team.
I’ll get a few pic’s up here in a couple of days.
