Cozumel Trip report - the short 'n skinny

[dougvo]

Hey All-
Just returned Sunday from a week of diving in Cozumel over Thanksgiving week. I'm skipping added prose for now to get out the basics...

Getting There
Flew from San Francisco to Cancun via Mexico City and arrived late Friday night. Took a van ($9US/person) to Cancun and crashed in a drab hotel ($27) next to the bus station. Caught the bus to Playa Del Carmen and then the ferry ($9US/person) to Cozumel.

Sleeping
We stayed at Tamarindo B&B www.tamarindobb.com a few blocks from the main square. $25US/night for nice room with private shower, $37/night for air conditioned. I didn't mind the walk to the dive shop and peir each morning - 10 minutes.

Diving
We dove with Deep Blue and were extremely happy. There are a lot of dive ops there and they all seem to be keeping busy. I liked these guys because they gave me breaks for the amount of dives (16) and gave my girlfriend a few perks in free rental for the week. Boats no bigger than 8 people. 2 tank dive standard although we did both the morning (depart 8:30 or 9:00) and afternoon (depart 1:30) dives a couple of times. Yeah...watch that nitrogen

Marine Life was awesome, and despite the number of dive boats I was surprised at how infrequently I even noticed divers from other parties. If you're all drifting along at the same speed you shouldn't run into each other unless you all jumped in at the same spot, right? DMs were thorough and knowledgable. My hats off to their stealth spotting ability as I never would have seen the sea dragon or microscopic sea horse. I'd recommend them anytime

Check out a few pics at http://dougvo.home.comcast.net/Cozumel/index.html

The new guidebook is much more detailed. Lonely Planet guide just mentions "Palancar" reef, yet the new book distinguished the separate sites as the locals do - Palancar Bricks, Palancar Gardens, Palancar Horeshoe, etc..

That's it for now....I'm tired of typing. I'm off to Little Corn Island, Nicaragua for an extended x-mas holidy time. I'll let you know how that all turns out.

Happy diving...

 

[GotAir]

For the insite of Coz. I'm going there in late Jan on a group trip. I've been to Coz before but not as a diver. I cant wait!!!. I enjoyed your report it made me get a feeling of what its going to be like. Thanks

Mike

 

[Wristshot]

I dove with Deep Blue for a week in June 2003, and I liked the operation. They were real good. One guy in our group was disappointed that he didn't get a bigger discount for bringing a bunch of us, but I was very happy. Gabriel was a great DM. I can't wait to get back there for more diving.

Did you make it over to the Wreck (C-53)? It was pretty worthless for a few years, but it got taken over by a huge school of bait fish last spring and it was hopping when I was there in June.

I plan to get that new book. It looks real good. I am glad that they differentiate between the different sections of Palancar.


Wristshot

 

[dougvo]

Hi-
I didn't make it to the wreck, although a few guys I ended up diving with from time to time did the Devil's Throat (take a light, for cryin' out loud!) and the wreck. One said it was the best day of diving he's ever had. I did neither dive, but they sounded great. My deeper dive was at Maracaibo which brought me to 131 feet. The currents were no worse than any other dive when we did it. Saw a turtle but no sharks. The huge arche swim-through is neat, but I didn't count this as one of the better dives. More life to catch at shallower depths than to have gone deep breifly.

All-around great time.

--doug

 

[trt]

Me and some friends are not long back from Coz too. It was the 1st time we'd ever been, so beforehand I did a lot of research on what dive operator to pick. We picked Deep Blue and I'm really glad we did, they were really professional , safety conscious and very friendly etc. I think they're boats must have been the fastest on the island as we seemed to overtake all the others every morning. I was a bit nervous as I had never been drift diving before but Gabriel the DM really looked out for me so I felt much safer. In the end I really quite enjoyed getting carried along by the current, it was nice relaxing diving.

 

[MM2Carty]

maybe i overlooked it, but do you have any contact info for deep blue?
I will be diving in Cozumel on Dec 25th and I don't want to take the affiliated tour with our cruise line, Norwegain. I will also be diving solo.

 

[trt]

Deep Blue's website is www.deepbluecozumel.com and their email address is information@deepbluecozumel.com. Happy diving!

 

[brez]

My wife and I stayed in the palapa at Tamarindo in October 2003 and loved it. The family that runs the B&B was very friendly. The thatch palapa was pretty quaint. It was worth the quick walk downtown for us, but we generally like getting more of a local feel out of our trips.

I also highly recommend the little fish shack next door to this place. The tricky part was finding it open, but the fish was fresh from that morning.

 

[Christi]

WOW...you dug deep for that. this report/thread is over a year and a half old!

 

[dlndavid]

me too!