Diving with Aldora report from early June

[diversmith]

Howdy all

I'm going to post reports about our trip and will just post about the diving in this thread. I will post about the Occidental in a separate post to give some info about that part of the trip and our experience getting our oldest son an emergency appendectomy while in Cozumel!

We haven't been to Coz since almost 14 years ago. I posted a few questions while planning for our trip and had lots of great info offered up here, so thanks to everyone who posted!

We were in Coz starting on June 1 and stayed 18 nights at the Occidental where we had stayed during our first trip. I thought we had used Pro Dive (onsite) but once we got there my wife reminded me we had used Dive Palancar which was the former onsite operator. I guess things changed since our last trip! Dive Palancar was great for us back then and the boats weren't very full during the February we were there, and they were very flexible with booking a package and mixing one tank or 2 tank dives throughout the stay. They almost always came back to the docks at Occidental and Allegro for the SI's, so sometimes my wife didn't do the second tank or we went out for the first afternoon tank. Fast forward to this trip and I see the Pro Dive boats at the dock and my wife says my memory sucks, and then I realize that there was a change in dive ops, lol.

I wandered down to the dive shop and identified myself as a former instructor with decades of diving experience dating back to getting my basic open water in 1982 and my instructor cert in 1986, and I was looking to book a package. The guy working the counter had a bit of a 'tude and asked the last time I was diving. I replied it was Little Cayman in 2019 and I had done no diving since then (other than the pool with my 2 sons getting them ready for a Discover scuba experience for future travels) since our other trips were grenaded by Covid. He hastily replies I need to do a pool checkout dive, lol. I nicely replied that I have never been asked to do that anywhere I've been around the world either as a current or former instructor no matter the date of my last dive. He kind of got snotty so I left and then saw their boats coming back in and saw the cattle getting unloaded while we were chilling on the beach drinking some cool libations!! I tell my wife (who isn't diving this trip because we have our boys, 9 & 12 y/o with us and she doesn't feel comfortable having us both out in the water with no other friends or family there) I'm not dealing with the ******** at Pro Dive and that I'm calling Aldora because I remember seeing so many great reviews of them here on Scubaboard and I know they will pick-up at the Occidental dock. Well, glad I did because Aldora was wonderful! And I also noticed how smokey the Pro Dive boats exhaust was. I'm a fireman and have inhaled way too much diesel exhaust over the years, so having the clean running outboards on the Aldora boats was definitely a plus.

They have great staff, the boats are nice, they were always at the Occidental in a 15 minute window in the AM and the most we ever had on the boat was 7 peeps, usually 5-6. They also offered to do a "Discover Nitrox" course and let me dive steel 117s with nitrox for the whole trip. I had never decided to do nitrox because my air consumption has always been great and I had never wanted to give up using my trusty bulletproof Orca Edge computer. Well, I had bought my wife and I two new Oceanic Pro Plus 4 computers for Christmas 2019 in preparation of our trip we were planning to Tahiti for 2020...we all know what happened in 2020!! I am sold on nitrox and steel 117s...I had almost every dive go 80-90 minutes and was able to use no weight belt. And, the Pro Plus is easy to use, has a large screen and I love the dive log feature and the QD option we got.

That was the other big benefit to Aldora...everyone was using nitrox and steel 117s so we all could extend the dives and really maximize bottom time. The guides were all very flexible and didn't babysit which I absolutely love.

So, in a nutshell, Aldora will cost you more than an op like Pro Dive, but you get a lot more value out of that slightly higher price. And now that we have "modern" computers, we will definitely be getting nitrox certs. I'm sold on nitrox!

Safe diving and feel free to ask questions

 

[OregonDM]

You get what you pay for and Aldora is worth every penny IMO. Glad you had fun.

 

[Catito]

Howdy all

I'm going to post reports about our trip and will just post about the diving in this thread. I will post about the Occidental in a separate post to give some info about that part of the trip and our experience getting our oldest son an emergency appendectomy while in Cozumel!

We haven't been to Coz since almost 14 years ago. I posted a few questions while planning for our trip and had lots of great info offered up here, so thanks to everyone who posted!

We were in Coz starting on June 1 and stayed 18 nights at the Occidental where we had stayed during our first trip. I thought we had used Pro Dive (onsite) but once we got there my wife reminded me we had used Dive Palancar which was the former onsite operator. I guess things changed since our last trip! Dive Palancar was great for us back then and the boats weren't very full during the February we were there, and they were very flexible with booking a package and mixing one tank or 2 tank dives throughout the stay. They almost always came back to the docks at Occidental and Allegro for the SI's, so sometimes my wife didn't do the second tank or we went out for the first afternoon tank. Fast forward to this trip and I see the Pro Dive boats at the dock and my wife says my memory sucks, and then I realize that there was a change in dive ops, lol.

I wandered down to the dive shop and identified myself as a former instructor with decades of diving experience dating back to getting my basic open water in 1982 and my instructor cert in 1986, and I was looking to book a package. The guy working the counter had a bit of a 'tude and asked the last time I was diving. I replied it was Little Cayman in 2019 and I had done no diving since then (other than the pool with my 2 sons getting them ready for a Discover scuba experience for future travels) since our other trips were grenaded by Covid. He hastily replies I need to do a pool checkout dive, lol. I nicely replied that I have never been asked to do that anywhere I've been around the world either as a current or former instructor no matter the date of my last dive. He kind of got snotty so I left and then saw their boats coming back in and saw the cattle getting unloaded while we were chilling on the beach drinking some cool libations!! I tell my wife (who isn't diving this trip because we have our boys, 9 & 12 y/o with us and she doesn't feel comfortable having us both out in the water with no other friends or family there) I'm not dealing with the ******** at Pro Dive and that I'm calling Aldora because I remember seeing so many great reviews of them here on Scubaboard and I know they will pick-up at the Occidental dock. Well, glad I did because Aldora was wonderful! And I also noticed how smokey the Pro Dive boats exhaust was. I'm a fireman and have inhaled way too much diesel exhaust over the years, so having the clean running outboards on the Aldora boats was definitely a plus.

They have great staff, the boats are nice, they were always at the Occidental in a 15 minute window in the AM and the most we ever had on the boat was 7 peeps, usually 5-6. They also offered to do a "Discover Nitrox" course and let me dive steel 117s with nitrox for the whole trip. I had never decided to do nitrox because my air consumption has always been great and I had never wanted to give up using my trusty bulletproof Orca Edge computer. Well, I had bought my wife and I two new Oceanic Pro Plus 4 computers for Christmas 2019 in preparation of our trip we were planning to Tahiti for 2020...we all know what happened in 2020!! I am sold on nitrox and steel 117s...I had almost every dive go 80-90 minutes and was able to use no weight belt. And, the Pro Plus is easy to use, has a large screen and I love the dive log feature and the QD option we got.

That was the other big benefit to Aldora...everyone was using nitrox and steel 117s so we all could extend the dives and really maximize bottom time. The guides were all very flexible and didn't babysit which I absolutely love.

So, in a nutshell, Aldora will cost you more than an op like Pro Dive, but you get a lot more value out of that slightly higher price. And now that we have "modern" computers, we will definitely be getting nitrox certs. I'm sold on nitrox!

Safe diving and feel free to ask questions

Yup. I used Aldora. Loved diving with them we had a max of 3 people plus the DM. Great dives to beautiful deep locations.

 

[Dan G]

We dive with Aldora and love it, as well. I might add that it is SOP to require some sort of refresher when someone has not been diving in 12 months. You had not been in about 4 years and despite the qualifications you told the shop, they have every right to require that you refresh your skills. Some ops might require that a diver hire a private DM in lieu of a pool session or skills update class. Either way, I think it is completely reasonable for a dive operator to be leery of anyone, regardless of previous experience, who has not been in the water in 4 years.

 

[diversmith]

We dive with Aldora and love it, as well. I might add that it is SOP to require some sort of refresher when someone has not been diving in 12 months. You had not been in about 4 years and despite the qualifications you told the shop, they have every right to require that you refresh your skills. Some ops might require that a diver hire a private DM in lieu of a pool session or skills update class. Either way, I think it is completely reasonable for a dive operator to be leery of anyone, regardless of previous experience, who has not been in the water in 4 years.

Dan,
Have you ever worked as a DM/instructor? When I was "still in the biz" I would have never asked an experienced current or former instructor to do a pool dive even after 4 years of no diving (insulting IMO). Do you honestly think that after certifying to that level and having experience all over the world and being an active diver throughout 40 years, someone is going to not be competent or not have an idea of how much weight they need?

The guy at Pro Dive could have just asked me to buddy up with and stick close to the DM on my first dive just so he could scope me out. Just because I hadn't ocean dived since Cayman in '19, doesn't mean I wasn't snorkeling in SoCal and had multiple pool dives introducing my boys to scuba over the past couple of summers. I told him all that info and discussed my lengthy experience (including Cozumel previously), and the fact that I'm a fireman and constantly use SCBA. He was a snotty robot. It's funny because Aldora never sweated me on doing a pool dive and every DM left me alone and we all survived.

Pro Dive is a cattleboat operation and from the looks of the majority of people we watched getting on & off their boats during our stay at the Occidental, they mostly deal with very inexperienced divers.

 

[backprop]

I had never decided to do nitrox because my air consumption has always been great

and the fact that I'm a fireman and constantly use SCBA

Do you know what the difference is?

 

[diversmith]

Do you know what the difference is?

OK backprop, I'll explain further since you didn't quote my full statement and you possibly can't grasp the concept of the similarities between SCUBA and SCBA.

My full statement about not using nitrox before was:
"I had never decided to do nitrox because my air consumption has always been great and I had never wanted to give up using my trusty bulletproof Orca Edge computer"

Can you grasp that I have always had great air consumption, often was diving on the deeper side, and used a great computer that had an incredible display with really cool tissue graph...but wasn't nitrox capable??? I didn't care about nitrox for a very long time...I did everything I was needing to do with air and still had plenty of dive time. Is that difficult to understand? But now I can see the many benefits when all divers on a small boat are good skill levels, and are diving with a shop that let's you get the most out of nitrox 117s and lets you have a lot of freedom.

Of course the difference is H2o isn't involved with using fire dept SCBA (except when it's coming out of fire hoses while on SCBA!) but use a little common sense when thinking about being masked up and breathing air in high stress, confined space, low light conditions while wearing a bunch of gear. Possible good practice for diving?

I was trying to paint a picture of my background and why I felt it was a waste of time to do a pool dive to satisfy the numbskull working the counter at Pro Dive. But feel free to continue on nitpicking!

 

[backprop]

I'm just saying, if I was running that dive op and asked, "When was the last time you went diving?" and got the following two answers:

Person A: I haven't been diving for four years.

Person B: I haven't been diving for four years, but I use firefighter SCBA and I also have been snorkeling in SoCal and have also been in a swimming pool, so...."

Then I definitely would give more scrutiny to person #2 who came up with all those bizarre non-sequiturs. Yeesh.

 

[tridacna]

I'm just saying, if I was running that dive op and asked, "When was the last time you went diving?" and got the following two answers:

Person A: I haven't been diving for four years.

Person B: I haven't been diving for four years, but I use firefighter SCBA and I also have been snorkeling in SoCal and have also been in a swimming pool, so...."

Then I definitely would give more scrutiny to person #2 who came up with all those bizarre non-sequiturs. Yeesh.

Check out dive for an instructor? After 4 years? Seriously? Sorry, I disagree with you. Pro Dive is a sorry mess of a cattle boat operation. I’m solidly with the OP here.

 

[backprop]

Check out dive for an instructor? After 4 years? Seriously? Sorry, I disagree with you. Pro Dive is a sorry mess of a cattle boat operation. I’m solidly with the OP here.

I personally would have also let it go at the instructor card.

I just found the post-trip rationale of having been snorkeling and using full face SCBA on the surface....unrelated at best.