RalphJr
Registered
My wife and I just returned from a 7 day stay at the Scuba Club Cozumel May 26 through June 3. The diving was great with 14 boat dives, average vis 120', water temp 83F. The best deep dive was Palancar Caves with .5 knot current and the biggest Sting Ray I have ever seen. Best shallow dive was Paradise Reef which we did both day and night dives on. The reefs as a whole are in much better condition since our last visit in May of 2007 after Wilma's scouring. The aquatic populations have recovered nicely with large populations noted on most species (not a scientific study just my observation) including soft corals. As to be expected a couple of the dives were flybys with the current at 3+ knots but most of them were down in the 0 to 1 knot range. I even had to swim on one of the dives. We saw lots of turtles, several Nurse Sharks, Splendid Toad Fish, Spiny Lobsters, Slipper Lobsters, Barracuda, Octopi, huge Groupers (one 150+ pounds), a Seahorse or two and all of the usual tropical reef fishes. The boats are in excellent repair with easy egress and ingress. Chocky was our divemaster for all of our dives and we were grouped with 2 or 4 other advanced divers with good buoyancy skills. Most of our dives were 50 minutes or more of bottom time with one on Paradise an hour and 9 minutes. Divers with less skill were grouped with another divemaster or sent on a different boat. Sorry I left my cameras at home for this trip and I really enjoyed my dives - you will just have to go to see it yourselves.
The Club was only at about 35% occupancy because of the perceived flu threat. The cruise ships had not stopped there in thirty days. One ship stopped the second day we were there but only about half of the people got off. It was a little better by the time we left with two ships tied up as we left. It was very sad to go into town and see all of the shops closed and the streets nearly empty of tourists. 99% of the people on Cozumel depend on tourists for their income. We wanted to take all of the vendors that were open to lunch. We bought some stuff that we normally would not. By the way the only place I saw someone that looked sick was in the San Francisco Airport on the way home to Fresno.
Once again SCC gets highest marks for friendly attentive service, squeaky clean rooms; in fact the entire resort is squeaky clean. The meals are to look forward to. It was a real battle not to come home pounds heavier. The setup is so diver friendly I have yet to find another resort that makes diving so relaxed. Well maybe the Mike Ball Liveaboard in Australia but thats not really the same.
There is no doubt that we will be returning to SCC in the future.
The Club was only at about 35% occupancy because of the perceived flu threat. The cruise ships had not stopped there in thirty days. One ship stopped the second day we were there but only about half of the people got off. It was a little better by the time we left with two ships tied up as we left. It was very sad to go into town and see all of the shops closed and the streets nearly empty of tourists. 99% of the people on Cozumel depend on tourists for their income. We wanted to take all of the vendors that were open to lunch. We bought some stuff that we normally would not. By the way the only place I saw someone that looked sick was in the San Francisco Airport on the way home to Fresno.
Once again SCC gets highest marks for friendly attentive service, squeaky clean rooms; in fact the entire resort is squeaky clean. The meals are to look forward to. It was a real battle not to come home pounds heavier. The setup is so diver friendly I have yet to find another resort that makes diving so relaxed. Well maybe the Mike Ball Liveaboard in Australia but thats not really the same.
There is no doubt that we will be returning to SCC in the future.
