Part I: This tale is to remind me of my hard-learned lessons and maybe help someone else going to Cozumel for the first time. This ended up being long, so if it’s too long; didn’t read (TL;DR), you can just read the Lessons Learned bits (or not) – I appreciate any corrections or further lessons. I also added some feedback for Aldora Divers near the end.
For over 20 years my wife and I have spent the vast majority of our vacation time and money visiting her family in Hawaii. We get to do good diving there, but we’ve never been diving in the Caribbean, including Cozumel. It seems like every other diver in Texas has been there multiple times, especially with direct Southwest flights from every major Texas city to Cancun. The problem is that we’re both DMs for weekend classes here in Austin, and almost every weekend students ask us what Cozumel is like. We could only say we didn’t know.
I had the opportunity to take time off over my birthday weekend, so we finally got to go dive Cozumel. There weren’t any tropical storms, but a record cold front that brought snow to Houston in early November was blowing through Cozumel as an El Norte, closing the west side and potentially ruining dive plans.
We had a direct flight from Austin to Cancun (basically free with my points and Companion Pass for my wife, only about $65 each for taxes and fees), with free luggage for our dive gear. I used the online immigration/visa form without any problems at all. I filled them out online, printed them double-sided, and cut them in half for each of us. On the recommendation of posters in these forums, I also made color copies of our passports, at 125% to avoid any accusations of counterfeiting, and kept them tucked away in a big Ziploc. We didn’t need the copies, but they were a nice backup if something happened to our paperwork.
The Villa Aldora only took cash, USD from us, and the Aldora Divers shop had a discount for cash, so I took a lot of it. On the recommendation of others here, I waited until we were out of the Cancun airport to get pesos.
Lesson Learned: Take a lot of smaller bills, too, for tips and such. Most places take USD for payment and tips, so I want lots of $2, $5, and $10 bills instead of all $20s and larger.
The first morning we headed to the Austin airport for our 6 AM flight, like I normally do once or twice a month for work. I badly underestimated the pre-holiday crowds; there were ridiculously long lines for the airlines and security. The lady checking in our bags said it was 55 minutes to our flight, so we had less than an hour. They couldn’t guarantee our luggage would make it on the flight, due to the increased international security, and put LATE CHECK-IN tags on our bags. We got in the security lines, and it quickly became apparent that there was no way we were both making it through on time.
We went back to the Southwest desk, and they got us a later flight through Houston. It meant we’d be getting to Cancun 5 hours later (2:30 instead of 9:30). I didn’t get the chance to plug my phone in a wall socket, and the extra 5 hours had my phone at only 9% when we landed in Cancun.
Lesson Learned: I need to get an extra battery charger/pack to take in case my phone battery is dying. It’s amazing how dependent I’ve become on that silly thing.
Southwest couldn’t tell us if our luggage made it on our original flight, and they didn’t have luggage people in Cancun to grab our bags for us. We finally got there, tired and hungry, and great news, our luggage was all on a cart at the baggage claim entrance. Yay, we got our dive gear!
We made it through customs, with our passports and the online visa forms, and dragged our gear the seemingly long haul to the Terminal 4 transportation area, where the recommended ‘van guy’ was to pick us up for the trip to Playa del Carmen (PDC) for the ferry to Cozumel island. I had been communicating with him via email, but the $10/day international AT&T deal included voice and text but no data (at least no internet access off the Cancun or Cozumel towers). That meant not only was my phone dying, but I couldn’t check email to see if something changed with the van guy or look up information like the dive shop number and address.
Lesson Learned: Make sure I have all the phone numbers, addresses, etc. already in the phone in case I need to call or text or find something when no internet is available. I later got the van guy’s card and posted it here. For the next trip (already planned!), I used their handy online form. They sent a good summary and confirmation with all the info we’ll need plus some helpful hints – wish I’d done that last time.
We didn’t see a guy holding a yellow sign with my name on it at the taxi company pick-up area, after walking around there for minutes. Since I couldn’t contact him via email and stupidly didn’t get his number, we walked to the ‘family and friends’ pick-up area to see if he was there. That was a long bag-haul for nothing – don’t bother with that area. We had to talk our way back in and drag everything back to the company pick-up area. Finally, we saw our sign. It was the van guy’s brother, and he called a driver for us.
The driver was excellent: funny and helpful. I asked him to stop at a Banamex ATM to get a good exchange rate on pesos, but he said a nearby 7-11 had a good ATM. We stopped, and my wife was happy to see a Starbucks next to it. There was also a great little taqueria there, too.
Lesson Learned: I forgot that Mexico uses the $ sign for pesos, too. I took out ‘$200’ which was only 200 pesos, not $200 USD worth of pesos. I had to then make a 2nd transaction and pay the fee twice. Hopefully USAA reimburses that, but probably not.
For over 20 years my wife and I have spent the vast majority of our vacation time and money visiting her family in Hawaii. We get to do good diving there, but we’ve never been diving in the Caribbean, including Cozumel. It seems like every other diver in Texas has been there multiple times, especially with direct Southwest flights from every major Texas city to Cancun. The problem is that we’re both DMs for weekend classes here in Austin, and almost every weekend students ask us what Cozumel is like. We could only say we didn’t know.
I had the opportunity to take time off over my birthday weekend, so we finally got to go dive Cozumel. There weren’t any tropical storms, but a record cold front that brought snow to Houston in early November was blowing through Cozumel as an El Norte, closing the west side and potentially ruining dive plans.
We had a direct flight from Austin to Cancun (basically free with my points and Companion Pass for my wife, only about $65 each for taxes and fees), with free luggage for our dive gear. I used the online immigration/visa form without any problems at all. I filled them out online, printed them double-sided, and cut them in half for each of us. On the recommendation of posters in these forums, I also made color copies of our passports, at 125% to avoid any accusations of counterfeiting, and kept them tucked away in a big Ziploc. We didn’t need the copies, but they were a nice backup if something happened to our paperwork.
The Villa Aldora only took cash, USD from us, and the Aldora Divers shop had a discount for cash, so I took a lot of it. On the recommendation of others here, I waited until we were out of the Cancun airport to get pesos.
Lesson Learned: Take a lot of smaller bills, too, for tips and such. Most places take USD for payment and tips, so I want lots of $2, $5, and $10 bills instead of all $20s and larger.
The first morning we headed to the Austin airport for our 6 AM flight, like I normally do once or twice a month for work. I badly underestimated the pre-holiday crowds; there were ridiculously long lines for the airlines and security. The lady checking in our bags said it was 55 minutes to our flight, so we had less than an hour. They couldn’t guarantee our luggage would make it on the flight, due to the increased international security, and put LATE CHECK-IN tags on our bags. We got in the security lines, and it quickly became apparent that there was no way we were both making it through on time.
We went back to the Southwest desk, and they got us a later flight through Houston. It meant we’d be getting to Cancun 5 hours later (2:30 instead of 9:30). I didn’t get the chance to plug my phone in a wall socket, and the extra 5 hours had my phone at only 9% when we landed in Cancun.
Lesson Learned: I need to get an extra battery charger/pack to take in case my phone battery is dying. It’s amazing how dependent I’ve become on that silly thing.
Southwest couldn’t tell us if our luggage made it on our original flight, and they didn’t have luggage people in Cancun to grab our bags for us. We finally got there, tired and hungry, and great news, our luggage was all on a cart at the baggage claim entrance. Yay, we got our dive gear!
We made it through customs, with our passports and the online visa forms, and dragged our gear the seemingly long haul to the Terminal 4 transportation area, where the recommended ‘van guy’ was to pick us up for the trip to Playa del Carmen (PDC) for the ferry to Cozumel island. I had been communicating with him via email, but the $10/day international AT&T deal included voice and text but no data (at least no internet access off the Cancun or Cozumel towers). That meant not only was my phone dying, but I couldn’t check email to see if something changed with the van guy or look up information like the dive shop number and address.
Lesson Learned: Make sure I have all the phone numbers, addresses, etc. already in the phone in case I need to call or text or find something when no internet is available. I later got the van guy’s card and posted it here. For the next trip (already planned!), I used their handy online form. They sent a good summary and confirmation with all the info we’ll need plus some helpful hints – wish I’d done that last time.
We didn’t see a guy holding a yellow sign with my name on it at the taxi company pick-up area, after walking around there for minutes. Since I couldn’t contact him via email and stupidly didn’t get his number, we walked to the ‘family and friends’ pick-up area to see if he was there. That was a long bag-haul for nothing – don’t bother with that area. We had to talk our way back in and drag everything back to the company pick-up area. Finally, we saw our sign. It was the van guy’s brother, and he called a driver for us.
The driver was excellent: funny and helpful. I asked him to stop at a Banamex ATM to get a good exchange rate on pesos, but he said a nearby 7-11 had a good ATM. We stopped, and my wife was happy to see a Starbucks next to it. There was also a great little taqueria there, too.
Lesson Learned: I forgot that Mexico uses the $ sign for pesos, too. I took out ‘$200’ which was only 200 pesos, not $200 USD worth of pesos. I had to then make a 2nd transaction and pay the fee twice. Hopefully USAA reimburses that, but probably not.
