TheWallDiver
Registered
Sorry it's taken this long to write this up. We both came down with Montezuma's revenge on the return flight to the USA, and by the time I was well again life had gotten too busy until now.
This info might be useful for new divers traveling to Cozumel.
My wife and I are new to scuba. I contacted Christi at Blue XTC and Memo at Aldora Divers before deciding which dive op to go with. At the time I didn't own most of my equipment, so I was looking to rent most of my gear in Cozumel. As I'm a big guy I asked both dive ops if they had gear to fit me.
Christi of Blue XTC wrote back that she didn't have my size BCD and that I should buy my gear before going to Coz. Memo of Aldora Divers wrote back that they had gear that would fit me fine.
So I looked further into Aldora Divers. I checked into the quality of the gear and it was top name brands. They had the Dive Rite Transpacs that I was considering buying, and their regs were very good, and additionally they require all of their guests to use a computer, which they will supply if you don't have one.
Other great selling points were that they used 120 tanks to get more bottom time. With the big tanks and the computers they maximize your bottom time.
They also have a number of fast "6-pac" boats to get you to the best sites fast. They promise no more than 6 divers in a boat, and they supply warm dive parkas if requested.
Surface intervals are at a nice resort where food and refreshments are available for purchase.
Another point that I discussed with them was that we were new divers and didn't want to be put in a boat with advanced divers. They promised that they would never do that, and if needed they would have just my wife and I dive with the dive master.
So, we booked with Aldora and waited for our vacation to start!
As it turned out we ended up buying all of our gear prior to the trip. We picked up the gear and had it fitted to us by our local dive shop (Hollywood Divers) the night before we left for vacation (this isn't advised - we had to read all the manuals on the way to Coz)!
We did one shore dive our first day in Cozumel, renting tanks from Aquaworld, the dive operation at our hotel - El Cid La Ceiba.
We checked in with Aldora that same day and signed all the releases and made the arrangements to be picked up at the dock at La Ceiba in the morning.
We dove with Aldora 5 days, two dives a day. We had a total of 3 different Dive Masters during the week (Volrath, Gustavo, and Mateo), including one who specializes in diving the Cenotes (Mateo). We did 2 dives in Dos Ojos Cenotes with him. They were all great but Gustavo was our favorite, as he has a great sense of humor which made the surface time go by quickly.
The first two days it was just my wife and I, the other couple canceled due to rain (were they afraid to get wet?!).
We did the Cenotes with two others, Christine from Washington DC and her friend Jeffry from San Franscisco. What a great experience! I highly recommend this to anyone going to the area.
We had two photographers the fourth day, I forget their names, and the last day they canceled (rain again) and it was my wife and I only again.
The rain was a nuisance but only that. It did affect the water clarity, but other than that it's not a problem. It's warm enough that it didn't bother us at all.
Aldora was a great op! Their guys we always on time, smiling and friendly. They got us to the dive sites quickly, gave us a dive briefing, helped us don our equipment, and showed us as many of the critters on the bottom as possible.
Safety was of very high importance to them, and we always came up with 500-1000 psi in our tanks, with a safety sausage to mark our area so we didn't get run over by one of the many boats in the area.
At the end of the trip when it came time to pay up we had a problem with our credit card. Our credit card company would not approve the charges due to the large amount of fraud in Mexico. Even though I answered every question they asked me they would not approve our charge. (NOTE: I now understand this issue better. Upon our return to the USA we continued to get fraudulent charges against our credit card in Mexico, event though we were back in the states! Lesson learned. Don't let the card out of your site or someone may copy the info down).
Instead of making it a big deal, Memo told us not to get upset and worry about it, just send a check when we got back to the USA! Considering the size of the bill, I thought this was an outstanding way for Memo show his trust and respect for us.
I would not hesitate to recommend Aldora for any divers, no matter their experience levels. Aldora could not have provided me with a better experience than I had with them.
As a side note, we flew into Cancun, rented a car and drove to near Chichen Itza and spent the night at the Mayaland Hotel. We visited Chichen Itza the second day in Mexico - both places are highly recomended.
The last day in Mexico we visited Tulum and Coba while we burned off any residual nitrogen before flying home. Tulum is in a beautiful location on the coast, but the ruins are under-whelming. Coba on the other hand isn't as restored as Chichen Itza, but it has the tallest Mayan pryamid found to date, and we really enjoyed visiting the site.
The other site that came highly recomended was Uxmal, but that was too far from Cancul or Cozumel to due unless I wanted to spend more time on the surface than I had available
.
Wally
This info might be useful for new divers traveling to Cozumel.
My wife and I are new to scuba. I contacted Christi at Blue XTC and Memo at Aldora Divers before deciding which dive op to go with. At the time I didn't own most of my equipment, so I was looking to rent most of my gear in Cozumel. As I'm a big guy I asked both dive ops if they had gear to fit me.
Christi of Blue XTC wrote back that she didn't have my size BCD and that I should buy my gear before going to Coz. Memo of Aldora Divers wrote back that they had gear that would fit me fine.
So I looked further into Aldora Divers. I checked into the quality of the gear and it was top name brands. They had the Dive Rite Transpacs that I was considering buying, and their regs were very good, and additionally they require all of their guests to use a computer, which they will supply if you don't have one.
Other great selling points were that they used 120 tanks to get more bottom time. With the big tanks and the computers they maximize your bottom time.
They also have a number of fast "6-pac" boats to get you to the best sites fast. They promise no more than 6 divers in a boat, and they supply warm dive parkas if requested.
Surface intervals are at a nice resort where food and refreshments are available for purchase.
Another point that I discussed with them was that we were new divers and didn't want to be put in a boat with advanced divers. They promised that they would never do that, and if needed they would have just my wife and I dive with the dive master.
So, we booked with Aldora and waited for our vacation to start!
As it turned out we ended up buying all of our gear prior to the trip. We picked up the gear and had it fitted to us by our local dive shop (Hollywood Divers) the night before we left for vacation (this isn't advised - we had to read all the manuals on the way to Coz)!
We did one shore dive our first day in Cozumel, renting tanks from Aquaworld, the dive operation at our hotel - El Cid La Ceiba.
We checked in with Aldora that same day and signed all the releases and made the arrangements to be picked up at the dock at La Ceiba in the morning.
We dove with Aldora 5 days, two dives a day. We had a total of 3 different Dive Masters during the week (Volrath, Gustavo, and Mateo), including one who specializes in diving the Cenotes (Mateo). We did 2 dives in Dos Ojos Cenotes with him. They were all great but Gustavo was our favorite, as he has a great sense of humor which made the surface time go by quickly.
The first two days it was just my wife and I, the other couple canceled due to rain (were they afraid to get wet?!).
We did the Cenotes with two others, Christine from Washington DC and her friend Jeffry from San Franscisco. What a great experience! I highly recommend this to anyone going to the area.
We had two photographers the fourth day, I forget their names, and the last day they canceled (rain again) and it was my wife and I only again.
The rain was a nuisance but only that. It did affect the water clarity, but other than that it's not a problem. It's warm enough that it didn't bother us at all.
Aldora was a great op! Their guys we always on time, smiling and friendly. They got us to the dive sites quickly, gave us a dive briefing, helped us don our equipment, and showed us as many of the critters on the bottom as possible.
Safety was of very high importance to them, and we always came up with 500-1000 psi in our tanks, with a safety sausage to mark our area so we didn't get run over by one of the many boats in the area.
At the end of the trip when it came time to pay up we had a problem with our credit card. Our credit card company would not approve the charges due to the large amount of fraud in Mexico. Even though I answered every question they asked me they would not approve our charge. (NOTE: I now understand this issue better. Upon our return to the USA we continued to get fraudulent charges against our credit card in Mexico, event though we were back in the states! Lesson learned. Don't let the card out of your site or someone may copy the info down).
Instead of making it a big deal, Memo told us not to get upset and worry about it, just send a check when we got back to the USA! Considering the size of the bill, I thought this was an outstanding way for Memo show his trust and respect for us.
I would not hesitate to recommend Aldora for any divers, no matter their experience levels. Aldora could not have provided me with a better experience than I had with them.
As a side note, we flew into Cancun, rented a car and drove to near Chichen Itza and spent the night at the Mayaland Hotel. We visited Chichen Itza the second day in Mexico - both places are highly recomended.
The last day in Mexico we visited Tulum and Coba while we burned off any residual nitrogen before flying home. Tulum is in a beautiful location on the coast, but the ruins are under-whelming. Coba on the other hand isn't as restored as Chichen Itza, but it has the tallest Mayan pryamid found to date, and we really enjoyed visiting the site.
The other site that came highly recomended was Uxmal, but that was too far from Cancul or Cozumel to due unless I wanted to spend more time on the surface than I had available
.Wally
