Travelling to Barcelo maya tropical looking for thoughts on who to dive with

[Ryanhumberstone]

Hi everyone I'm going to be Travelling to mexico next month and staying at Barcelo maya tropical, my girlfriend and I are interested in hearing advice from others as to what dive operation in the area is best and any personal expierence anyone may have, I'm not bothered if I have to travel off site and would love to visit cozumel. Any help or reccomendatins would be awesome! Thanks
Ryan

[DandyDon]

Welcome to SB...

Ok, that seems to be in Puerto Aventuras. I've never even stopped in there, but such info may help others in offering suggestions. It's about 22 Km/14 miles from Playa del Carmen and the ferry to Cozumel. You can also this forum for Aventuras and see what comes up.

Do you have a rental car, or how are you getting from Cancun? Need any other info...??

[spc751]

I just got back from two weeks at the Grand Paladium which is about 5 km south of the Barcelo Tropical. I did all my diving with GeoFish Dive in Playa del Carmen and was very happy the service. They are a small, friendly and professional shop. They can also arrange a direct boat ride to Cozumel to avoid the ferry.
I took the Colectivo into Playa del Carmen every day to go diving. The Colectivo cost me $3.00 each way. It took only 10 minutes longer than a taxi and was a lot cheaper.
I am going to be at the Barcelo Colonial (part of the same Barcelo complex as the Barcelo Tropical) from Jan 29 to Feb 12. Will you be there during that time?

[TSandM]

Because we have a couple of students who will be down there shortly, I did some research on dive ops with friends I have who live there. THIS operation was highly recommended by someone who doesn't work for them and doesn't have anything to do with open water operations there. I trust her. They are in Akumal, which is just a little bit south of where you will be staying.

[Jackie]

I can confirm what TS&m said... We just dived with Natalie and co and could not have been more pleased.
We did not bring our gear as we were only planning a day or two of cenote diving.
The gear was top notch. My boyfriend loved the whole back plate and wings! I cannot say enough about the day we spent diving. All personalized to our needs and time frame and ability. Not to mention lunch and snacks.
unfortunately, my bf dropped his prescription mask and it shattered into bits so we only could go one day.

[slkay]

I have been to the BARCELO a couple times and did a quite bit of diving. We used Dive Aventuras - try this link

Dive Aventuras Mexico scuba diving vacation packages Puerto Aventuras

I am from Chicago and met them a few years ago at a dive show. They are about 5 minutes from the Barcelo and they arranged to have me and my son picked up at the Barcelo (included in the cost of the dive). We also used them for Cenote dives, highly recommend the Cenote dives. We did the Cenotes as our last dive of the trip so that our equipment was rinsed in fresh water(they recommended that).

The dives are about 5 to minutes max from their dive shop, their boats handle about 8-10 divers max and on all of our dives their were never more than 6 divers. They sent a DM down with us and our only bottom time restriction was to let them know when we were at 500psi, at that point we headed back to the surface.

If you have more questions PM me.

Scott

I can confirm what TS&m said... We just dived with Natalie and co and could not have been more pleased.
We did not bring our gear as we were only planning a day or two of cenote diving.
The gear was top notch. My boyfriend loved the whole back plate and wings! I cannot say enough about the day we spent diving. All personalized to our needs and time frame and ability. Not to mention lunch and snacks.
unfortunately, my bf dropped his prescription mask and it shattered into bits so we only could go one day.