Hi!
I will be going to Cozumel in April. Let me know how it was.
We enjoyed our week in Cozumel in spite of the fact that the airline (skyservices) lost my wife's luggage which arrived 3 days late. We stayed, all inclusive, at the Holiday Village White Sands. Dive Palancar is onsite and the reefs are a 10 min boat ride away, very convenient. The boats are comfortable and clean. They come back to the dock after each dive and schedule 4 dives per day, deep -> shallow morning and deep -> shallow afternoon. I wasn't overly impressed with their safety however. On one dive they sent one diver up alone after he had sucked his tank dry in 20 min. My wife wasn't with me on that dive and I said that I didn't have a buddy and the dive master replied, "Photographers don't need buddies; your camera is your buddy".
On one dive the dive master asked if anyone used air fast and this guy said "I do" so the dive master paired him with the guy's wife and told him "relax and breath slow, OK?" at 15 min into the dive this guy is having trouble with his bouyency control, is swimming vertically, and is caught against a vertical coral wall. His wife is 15 ft away, the dive master 20. I pulled him off the wall and down, air streaming from him like a locomotive at full steam 1 min later he was out of air and the dive master was beside him and sent him up with his wife. At the end of my dive, back on the boat, he showed me his pressure gauge = 0 psi and said, "That's it I am never going to dive again, I was really scared" The dive master said "Naw just do some shallow dives".
All our dives were drift dives.
Diving was interesting. The deep dives 80-90 feet took us through the coral reef which was full of wide tunnels and canyons. The shallows 40-60 ft were along the edge of the drop and provided lots of photo opportunities. We did one dive at Punta Sur about 120 ft (38.7m on my computer). The policy on their web page indicated that computers are mandatory for deeper dives". Two of the divers said they didn't have one and the dive master just said "stay above me then". My computer was down to 0 min no decompression time at one point in the dive.
I would not recommend novice divers go out with this crew but my wife and I with 60 dives each were comfortable at all times.
I tried to attach a couple of photos but failed to succeed so if you want some e-mail me at
eugene_pommier@sympatico.ca and mention this post.
Gene
