Help me decide on a location

[misdmnr]

I have been to Coz every year for the last 4 years and have gone el cheapo to ritzy. Regardless of hotel you will not find a better dive operator than Dive With Martin. Smaller groups 4-8 people, super clean boats, excellent staff (all of them, I prefer David as he has some slick tricks he does at the end of the dive that are pretty amazing) price is right in the ball park. There are some shady dive ops in Coz and it seems like every year we hear of someone not coming back....another reason we use Dive With Martin! Heck they even rinse and store your gear for you for no extra charge!!! I'm on vacation, I'm lazy. BTW I am not affiliated with Dive With Martin...I'm just a very happy customer.

As far as resort goes...middle of the road you can't go wrong with Park Royale. Close enough to downtown and has a beach. Many resorts do not as the island mostly has a coral rock shore line. On the cheap I've done Hotel Cozumel twice. On the high end I've done Secrets Aura (getting a meal, though fabulous takes an hour to complete) and it is on the south end of the island, so some dive ops won't pick up there...Dive With Martin does.

There are some super fantastic places to go in town....Wet Wendy's for the OMG best margaritas (Cucumber, cilantro, pineapple) or the Thirsty Cougar, same owners. Indio is a restaurant back off the main area that serves a lot of people who now reside in Coz year round and locals and has great food.

The island is safe and I have been all over downtown at night and NEVER felt unsafe.

If you have any questions feel free to ask. Where ever you go I hope you have a great vacation.

 

[DDMTX]

I'm really glad to see someone do a rave up for Ocean Frontiers on GC. I dove with them for a week a few years ago, yet they still rank among the top org's I've ever used anywhere on the planet. The really cool think was once they were comfortable with my skill level (I'm a DM) they would do the dive briefing for the group, then advise that my buddy and I were free to go with, or do our own thing. As a result, we got a lot of superb bottom time we might have missed by staying with the rest of the group that tended to blow through their air pretty quickly. OF also did a tremendous job in on-shore courtesies as well, including excellent and knowledgeable boat crews, and dock-to-boat-to-dock gear handling, with all your gear being rinsed for you post-dive. We stayed at a condo on Rum Point which was very cost-effective, and thereby did a lot of our meals there, which also kept the budget in check.

 

[drrich2]

A few thoughts:

1.) Is a beach a 'nice idea' and 'pretty scenery,' or do you guys actually do something on it when you have one? As you can see in earlier posts, demanding a beach rules out some places. You can lay in a chair roasting in the sun without the chair sitting on sand.

2.) What 'other things' do you want to do? Hanging out at bars boozing, dancing, rainforest hikes, viewing Mayan ruins, deep sea fishing, dolphin encounter excursions, shopping, visiting Spanish forts, etc...?

3.) Cozumel has a strong reputation for excellent 'bang for the buck' fine Caribbean diving on a budget. I doubt you're going to beat it, from that perspective.

4.) Much of the diving in Cozumel is drift diving; the dive equipment of standing on a moving side walk. It can be fun and some of us really like it. And some, like my wife, strongly do not. Excellent viz., warm water, varied reef topography, some fairly big things (e.g.: black grouper), overall quite nice...

5.) Bonaire can be good value if you shore dive a lot, and consider how cheap the dive resort & diving are to balance out how expensive the airfare is. Most places don't have a sandy beach, though. Eden Beach Resort and a few other places do. To wring maximum value out of a Bonaire trip, plan to driving around in a rental truck doing lots of shore dives.

6.) So far my most 'bang for the buck' lots of dives & cheap overall trip has been to Key Largo, Florida, diving with Rainbow Reef Dive Center. Key Largo doesn't have much in the way of a sandy beach, from what I saw. But there are other places in Florida that do. I hear West Palm Beach is warm water drift diving, and in Florida, you'd have the option of a diverse range of non-diving things to do. My point is, you can get the 'tropical dive vacation' in Florida if you want to, and have sandy beaches and diverse non-dive activities available, too.

Richard.