Just got back from Cozumel staying at Casa Mexicana (downtown San Miguel) and diving with Christi's op. In a nutshell - best 7 day vacation ever. This has been our second trip to Cozumel and there was no comparison to 'all-inclusive' way
(Occidental Grand) we did the first time.
Getting there
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As before, we took a direct flight Philadelphia-Cancun and got upgraded to the first class free of charge (nice perk of being a preferred member). Being fairly familiar with Cancun airport, we jumped on a shuttle bus to Terminal 2 and made it there just in time to board the ADO bus to Playa Del Carmen. About an hour later we arrived to the ferry dock and landed at the 'ocean view' table at Senior Frogs waiting for the next ferry. About an hour (and three beers as well as some colored chips) later we were sitting on the 2pm ferry about 40 minutes away from arrival to Cozumel. A short walk from the ferry pier and we were checked in at Casa Mexicana by 4pm.
Hotel
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Awesome! Ocean view room on the 4th floor with a balcony and two loungers - it does not get any better. Room is spacious, very clean, 32" LCD TV and all Spanish programming you ever wanted (CNN and Fox too). Breakfast comes included with Mexican breakfast specialties (different every morning), eggs to order (huevos any way you want them), Belgian waffles, yogurts, fresh fruits and etc. Starts at 7am which is great since our boat departed the nearby city pier at 8am (although it worked out to be more like 9:30am departure for us (which was great for us) - thanks Jay&Amy!). Perhaps the only slight nuisance we encountered during our stay were our room key cards had to be re-programmed every two days after 12 noon...not sure what that was about...
Overall: great value.
Diving
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Even better! We decided to get our AOW certification this time around and ended up doing Peak Performance Buoyancy (very helpful indeed), Night diving (probably the best dive yet), Fish Id (well, it is what it is - since no other divers were interested in doing the wreck site we had to go with that) in addition to Navigation (was not quite as easy as it sounds) and Deep diving. Our instructor was Blanca and we thoroughly enjoyed diving with and learning from her. We ended up diving 5 days overall and took one day off to drive around the island and visit some touristy sites on the East side.
We were done with AOW in two days and dove the rest of the time with Pedro as our dive master and two other couples. Pedro is the best dive master we ever had the pleasure of diving with - we were never feeling rushed, he took his time descending/ascending and the entire time in between, watched the group closely and kept us pointed the right way to see the critters on every single dive. We used rental regulators and BCDs - the gear was in good working order and was waiting for us completely ready to go before we would get on the boat every morning. The staff also took care of packing everyone's gear before and after each day - so all we had to do was get out of our suits and walk back to the hotel.
We dove our computer/air limits every dive, with most dives lasting 55 - 65 minutes. Water temperature was 81 F the whole time although we could definitely feel slight thermoclines at some sites. Most people would be comfortable in a 3mm although I brought my 5mm suit and was quite comfortable the whole time. Surface intervals were spent on Paradise and Palancar beaches munching some fresh fruits and some local pastries provided for us. Bottled water was provided before and after each dive. We dove the following sites: El Cedral, Palancar Gardens, Palancar Bricks, San Francisco Reef, La Franchesa, Dalila, Santa Rosa wall, Punta Tunich, Paradise reef (night dive) and my personal favorite - Palancar Caves. Healthy corals, amazing swim-throughs, lots of fish - large groupers, schools of snappers/grunts, barracudas, sleeping sharks, multiple rays, turtles on every dive, some squids (although many more on the night dive), tons of squirrelfish, angelfish and parrotfish varieties, eels, as well as some small critters. I had a chance to use my new Canon S50/WP-DC300 newbie setup (internal flash) on some of the dives - so I will be posting more pictures to
my gallery as they exit final processing but here is a sneak preview:
Overall: we enjoyed every single dive this trip and BlueXTSea is certainly one of the top-notch diving operations in town.
Food
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We visited some of the recommended places in town for lunch/dinner and here's my brief summary (in no particular order):
Camilos - best ceviche in town. Make sure you try fish and shrimp tacos as well (visited twice for lunch)
Casa Denis - very tasty local (Mayan) specialties. Try the Lime soup, skip the enchiladas and ceviche. Awesome tacos and some fish dishes (visited twice)
Kinta - you have to visit that place at least once. Although pricy compared to others, this is where you'll get the best gourmet food in town.
El Capi Navigante - highly recommended seafood restaurant. Don't miss 'Capi lobster'.
La Mission on 30th - although a short walk away from the square, the place serves authentic local cuisine. Make sure you come hungry if you go for the Mexican Combo plate.
La Choza - despite some recommendations we failed to see the value in that place. Pescado Vera Cruz and fajitas were similar to what you'd get at your local TGI Friday's - perhaps the chef was out of town or something...
Coconuts Bar & Grill (East side) - awesome view, good fish tacos and burgers, yummy margaritas.
Senior Frogs - skip that place unless you're here for drinks.
Overall: the food's great anywhere you go, skip the AI buffet...
The island
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Having not seen the 'other' side of the island on our last visit, we decided to take a day off diving, rent a car and explore the touristy sites. So we stopped by the recommended Isis rent-a-car and they picked us up at Casa Mexicana in the morning. We got a nice little 1960s model VW 'Beetle' for $30 all insurance included and headed to San Gervasio ruins. Overall pretty decent ruins but clouds of mosquitoes and biting flies were too much to tolerate so we gave up within an hour and proceeded around the east side of the island to Punta Sur.
This is one scenic route around the island. About $10 per person admission fee to Punta Sur ecological park and and a couple of miles of dirt road to the snorkeling site...The beach was virtually deserted as were all of the other beaches we passed on the way, a small group of snorkelers was in the water. Not much to write home about snorkeling off Punta Sur - its a fairly long swim, pretty shallow reef with some fishes but not much else. We enjoyed the beach and the hammocks until the place closed around 3pm or so and we headed back up the beach to Coconuts bar and grill. As I mentioned above - nice view, good fish burgers and seafood tacos...
Overall: its a nice, relaxing drive around the island and it is worth it if you want/can take some time off diving to explore the beaches/sites. Also we had BlueXT drop us off at the Paradise beach on our last day of diving - very nice beach club if you're into that kind of thing.
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