scubatree
Contributor
This is a belated Cozumel trip report for May 7th thru May 16th of this year. This marks our 30th year of traveling to Cozumel, our first trip being in September of 1981. Our first trip, we were young and newly certified open water divers from West Texas. We were such experienced divers, that we had a total of 3 open water dives at Possum Kingdom Lake in Texas before our first ocean trip.
Dive number 4 in my old NASDS log book shows an 80 max. dive at Palancar Reef for a total dive time of 35 minutes. The old log book says it all .Beautiful, could see bottom from boat! I was Coz addicted. I never wanted to dive a Texas lake again beer cans, batteries, fishing lures, no visibility, etc.
We stayed at the old Cozumel Caribe Hotel (aka the Bates Hotel now). Back then it was a showplace. Our 2 tank dives took all day. No computers, just tables. We did a deep dive and went to San Francisco Beach and ate what was caught while we were diving. After lunch and our surface interval we did our shallow dive. It took all day for 2 dives. We did 6 dives total on that trip and had the time of our life. Back then we were young and fit, there were no cruise ships, only divers and fishermen. We ate at Morgans, Pepes, Casa Dennis, and partied at the old upstairs Carlos and Charlies and the old Scaromuchs disco ( I may have misspelled that). Back then there were very few air conditioned businesses and they actually shut down in the afternoon for siesta.
I have seen the island transform from a sleepy diving and fishing destination with no cruise ships to a major cruise destination. I have also observed the standard of living for the local people to improve greatly over the years. I hear a lot of complaints about the changes to the island and I dont like all of them either, but we cant stop progress. I also remember when flying was fun!
We actually dove with Tom Hartdegen as our dive guide, founder of Dive Paradise, dive number 13 and 14 in my log book. It was September 16, 1984 our second trip to Cozumel. Tom told us how he had come down from Louisiana on a dive trip and fell in love with the island. He moved down and started his dive operation, which is in operation today. There is a photo of him on Dive Paradises facebook page we posted of him from that day. Great memories!!
Fast forward 30 years later. Our last trip in May 2011 we stayed at our home away from home, Hotel Cozumel and Resort. We had a 2 purpose mission on this trip. We were going to dive and also compete in the 40th annual Rodeo de Lanchas Mexicanos or the annual 2 day deep sea fishing tournament. We had scouted it out for the last 2 years figuring out how it works and what was required to enter.
We dont dive as hard as we used to as we are now older and have been there and done that. We have dived with Dive Paradise, Aqua Safari, Dive Palancar, etc. We now book private dives, just the spouse and I, or our small group that is with us. We normally use Freddie Contreras with Mestizos Divers or Hector Aguilar of Aguilar Divers.
We have never had a bad dive operation in 30 years of diving Cozumel. We have never been shaken down by the police, cheated at the gas station, ripped of by the taxi drivers, overly harassed by the time share salesmen, etc. We have always found the Cozumel people to be friendly, happy, and I am proud to have made many local friends over the years that we try to see on each trip when we return .
This time we booked with Manuel Rejon Patron, Cozumel Scuba Diving | United Divers | Diving in Cozumel, Mexico | Mexico Scuba Diving. Manuel has 2 boats, a diving boat and a fishing boat. We hired him for diving and also for the fishing tournament.
We dived with Manuel at Columbia Shallows and did 75 minutes taking photos. My spouse and I like to think we are underwater photographers, and Columbia Shallows always allows us a lot of time and opportunities to practice the art. Manuel proved to be the ultimate dive guide, he kept a watch full eye on us and let us do our own thing after he determined we knew what we were doing.
His boat, the Alma Rosa is an older, slower, boat and we loved it. It was very roomy and we are old enough that we are not in a race to get to the reefs anyhow. We now just like slow, relaxing, dives with plenty of sealife to photograph. United Divers delivered on all counts.
We also fished the tournament on Manuels fishing boat the Don Juan. We actually hooked, and lost a 250 300 pound Blue Marlin on Saturday morning of the tournament according to the boat Captain. It tossed the hook on its 5th jump!! A 225 pound Blue Marlin won the tournament so if we could have landed that sucker, I would have a new Ford Lobo pickup!!
We spent a total of 10 days on this trip. We dived, fished, drank a lot of beer, ate some really great food, visited many good friends, and had the time of our life. We plan to be back down for my husbands birthday, the 15th of September. He enjoys it because he says they always have a fireworks display and a parade for his birthday!! See you then!!
Dive number 4 in my old NASDS log book shows an 80 max. dive at Palancar Reef for a total dive time of 35 minutes. The old log book says it all .Beautiful, could see bottom from boat! I was Coz addicted. I never wanted to dive a Texas lake again beer cans, batteries, fishing lures, no visibility, etc.
We stayed at the old Cozumel Caribe Hotel (aka the Bates Hotel now). Back then it was a showplace. Our 2 tank dives took all day. No computers, just tables. We did a deep dive and went to San Francisco Beach and ate what was caught while we were diving. After lunch and our surface interval we did our shallow dive. It took all day for 2 dives. We did 6 dives total on that trip and had the time of our life. Back then we were young and fit, there were no cruise ships, only divers and fishermen. We ate at Morgans, Pepes, Casa Dennis, and partied at the old upstairs Carlos and Charlies and the old Scaromuchs disco ( I may have misspelled that). Back then there were very few air conditioned businesses and they actually shut down in the afternoon for siesta.
I have seen the island transform from a sleepy diving and fishing destination with no cruise ships to a major cruise destination. I have also observed the standard of living for the local people to improve greatly over the years. I hear a lot of complaints about the changes to the island and I dont like all of them either, but we cant stop progress. I also remember when flying was fun!
We actually dove with Tom Hartdegen as our dive guide, founder of Dive Paradise, dive number 13 and 14 in my log book. It was September 16, 1984 our second trip to Cozumel. Tom told us how he had come down from Louisiana on a dive trip and fell in love with the island. He moved down and started his dive operation, which is in operation today. There is a photo of him on Dive Paradises facebook page we posted of him from that day. Great memories!!
Fast forward 30 years later. Our last trip in May 2011 we stayed at our home away from home, Hotel Cozumel and Resort. We had a 2 purpose mission on this trip. We were going to dive and also compete in the 40th annual Rodeo de Lanchas Mexicanos or the annual 2 day deep sea fishing tournament. We had scouted it out for the last 2 years figuring out how it works and what was required to enter.
We dont dive as hard as we used to as we are now older and have been there and done that. We have dived with Dive Paradise, Aqua Safari, Dive Palancar, etc. We now book private dives, just the spouse and I, or our small group that is with us. We normally use Freddie Contreras with Mestizos Divers or Hector Aguilar of Aguilar Divers.
We have never had a bad dive operation in 30 years of diving Cozumel. We have never been shaken down by the police, cheated at the gas station, ripped of by the taxi drivers, overly harassed by the time share salesmen, etc. We have always found the Cozumel people to be friendly, happy, and I am proud to have made many local friends over the years that we try to see on each trip when we return .
This time we booked with Manuel Rejon Patron, Cozumel Scuba Diving | United Divers | Diving in Cozumel, Mexico | Mexico Scuba Diving. Manuel has 2 boats, a diving boat and a fishing boat. We hired him for diving and also for the fishing tournament.
We dived with Manuel at Columbia Shallows and did 75 minutes taking photos. My spouse and I like to think we are underwater photographers, and Columbia Shallows always allows us a lot of time and opportunities to practice the art. Manuel proved to be the ultimate dive guide, he kept a watch full eye on us and let us do our own thing after he determined we knew what we were doing.
His boat, the Alma Rosa is an older, slower, boat and we loved it. It was very roomy and we are old enough that we are not in a race to get to the reefs anyhow. We now just like slow, relaxing, dives with plenty of sealife to photograph. United Divers delivered on all counts.
We also fished the tournament on Manuels fishing boat the Don Juan. We actually hooked, and lost a 250 300 pound Blue Marlin on Saturday morning of the tournament according to the boat Captain. It tossed the hook on its 5th jump!! A 225 pound Blue Marlin won the tournament so if we could have landed that sucker, I would have a new Ford Lobo pickup!!
We spent a total of 10 days on this trip. We dived, fished, drank a lot of beer, ate some really great food, visited many good friends, and had the time of our life. We plan to be back down for my husbands birthday, the 15th of September. He enjoys it because he says they always have a fireworks display and a parade for his birthday!! See you then!!
