Where to get PADI AOW - Yucatan/Belize/Honduras area

Please register or login

Welcome to ScubaBoard, the world's largest scuba diving community. Registration is not required to read the forums, but we encourage you to join. Joining has its benefits and enables you to participate in the discussions.

Benefits of registering include

  • Ability to post and comment on topics and discussions.
  • A Free photo gallery to share your dive photos with the world.
  • You can make this box go away

Joining is quick and easy. Log in or Register now!

Messages
4
Reaction score
0
Location
United States
# of dives
25 - 49
Hello. I am PADI OW with about 30-40 dives. Last year I was on an awesome dive trip (Sipadan, for people familiar w it) in a group of ~8 people. Although Ive done a good bit of diving I got paired with a new diver because everyone else but he and I was AOW. It was frustrating.

I am planning a vacation to Mexico for 1 week with my girlfriend (I think we're planning to stay in Tulum, do a little diving, take some Spanish class), after which I will have a second week for just myself. I am looking to get my AOW during that second week so next time I am in an exotic locale with just dive people I get put with the better group.

Sorry for the long story - question is, where should I go to get my AOW?? I was thinking Utila because I've heard it is really cheap, but it turns out its not so easy to get there from Tulum (unless you take the Diana Nyad route). I can stay around Yucatan area (ie Cozumel) or trek down to Belize very easily.

Does anyone have any advice on locale to get my PADI AOW? I am looking for a classy, dive-nerd style operation where I'll learn alot from the course. I'd be very happy for recs Cozumel vs. Belize generally (although quality of diving is secondary to quality of course), or recs for specific shops I should look into that are cheap and/or good rep!

Thank you in advance
 
As you said: Your destination will be dictated by available air destination connections.

Flying to The Bay Islands from just about anywhere is just this side of impossible.

Where to go to get PADI AOW ?

I would say the best place to do that would be the same pace to get a Spanish Language Class... Your local Community College. Do it back home.

The nerdiest version, and I appreciate your descriptor :wink:, would be a PADI trading center that is also an IDC provider. They will have multitudes of DMs swarming around working off their bills, assisting in training, carrying tanks, making coffee. They tend to re-dot i's and re-cross the t's.

After your dive experience in Sipadan, I suggest to you that your log book would mean more to me as a dive leader than an AOW patch on your jacket. Experience is way more important than some "next plastic card".

AOW is merely a tool to expose divers to varying new skill sets and new diving entries/exits, and some conditions which may be night diving. All good experience, but nothing much you can't learn by putting that money to more dives with experienced friends combined with reading (the Encyclopedia of Diving) It is a "certification" only in a technical sense.

AOW or similar certs (including nitrox) are best done back home. Enjoy your short hours in paradise enjoying what is there, versus staring at a manual of SCUBA diving or Conversational Spanish.

Any one given PADI class should be identical to the one in the next town over.

BTW- Your experience with a dive op that summarily buddies you with the only one other non-AOW diver demonstrated some dubious decision making, but sometimes you gotta do what they tell you. Make them look at your log book.
 
AOW is, what, just a 2-day course, right? If you're already going to be in Tulum, it seems silly to me to trek to Belize or even farther afield to Honduras just to do AOW and a few more days of diving. Now, if you had said you plan to do the Rescue course or even Divemaster course--a commitment of many more days--I'd say relocating would be worth considering. If you're already going to be in Tulum, then just use a dive shop anywhere between and including Tulum and Cozumel. For a bit nicer diving, go to Cozumel rather than staying on the mainland. But if you're going to be spending a chunk of your time doing an AOW class, that chunk of time could just as well be anywhere, since you're going to be focused on the class and not so much the pretty fishes.

By the way, don't expect the diving to be even remotely as nice as Sipadan.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Doc
If your main purpose is to get your AOW I'd just jump on the ferry and stay in Cozumel. The diving is good and it should be easy and fun to get the cert and some additional dives. As far as I remember, AOW is mainly diving and cracking a book open in the bar. But, if you have an interest in seeing other areas, and the money and time to go there, Belize and Roatan are two places any diver would like to be. Any way you do it you can't lose. Have fun.
 

Back
Top Bottom