Six days of blissful diving.......

[bshort4]

Just returned at the end of last week after six days of great diving in Coz. Perfect weather...lots of sun....little wind.....and calm seas--mostly. Only one night of heavy rain but cleared out by morning for a great day. Mosquitoes? Yep lots of those--first night sitting on balcony I was attacked in flights--after that a little repellent and no more problems, the hotel was fogging the grounds when I arrived--nice try. Stayed at the Sunscape Sabor AL this time--don't even start on me....as a solo diver it was great to be close to the reefs, have a pier right in front for pick-up and to just eat, sleep and dive it was perfect for me. Currents? All over the place from none to doing a Cozumel fly by! Great diving with Dive with Cristina again with her big slow boat the Nena. Lots of room to spread out, great full lunch between dives, a head and just great people. Most we had on the boat were 11 people--a mix of snorkelers and divers. We never had more than 5 in a dive group plus the DM which was one day and only four the rest of the week. Dives averaged about 63 minutes--the shortest was 58 minutes when we went a little deeper up to 72 minutes on a shallower second dive. We saw a lot more nurse sharks this time (compared to two months ago) lots of turtles as usual and two of the largest eels I have ever seen. We saw many more lionfish this time also--during the week the DM killed at least twelve if not more. Favorite dive--Columbia Deep--88 feet and strong currents at shallower depth here the day we dived. Least favorite (but still a good dive) La Francesa-- we had dived a different part of the reef earlier but this part was pretty blah compared to others. Used Nitrox 36 for all our dives at $5 per fill which is cheap compared to others. Water temp was about 83 degrees F, used 3mm shortie, water clarity was excellent (80-100 ft) except on those dives with very fast current--lots of blowing sand but not to bad. General info--van to resort 181 pesos--taxi back to airport 350 pesos--if in a group it might be less expensive to walk across the street to Diego's Taco stand, have some lunch and catch a taxi and at 350 pesos for up to four people it could be a cheaper option. Batteries---had six 18650 light batteries, three GoPro batteries, and three batteries for my Olympus TG-3--all packed in my carry-on for the flight home--no problems. Hope to be back in Coz in three or four months--being retired does have it's advantages!

 

[Cozdreamer]

thanks for sharing! Wish I could go that often to the island.... continued safe travels and bubbles to you!

 

[buffdiver]

Great take on the advantage of a good AI for a solo diver. So no bums rush to finish a dive? What about other nitro mixes or is the 36 standard? How many boat dives do you,get per day as part of the package?

 

[bshort4]

Great take on the advantage of a good AI for a solo diver. So no bums rush to finish a dive? What about other nitro mixes or is the 36 standard? How many boat dives do you,get per day as part of the package?

buffdiver--no bum rush at all. Dive with Cristina really doesn't offer any packages (I didn't use the hotels dive op which is Dive House) and only does two dives each day. They start rather late compared to many other dive ops there. The first time I dived with them they picked me up each day at my hotel in town to go to the boat in Caleta and we departed at about 9:30 am and stopped at Sabor about 10 am to pick up other divers. The people at Sabor recommended the place to me so I tried the place on my last trip. We usually started diving at about 10:20 with a good hour and twenty minute interval between dives and then headed back and I was usually back at the hotel before 3 pm. They only offered Nitrox 36 for some reason--one day they couldn't get any Nitrox for some reason and after diving with Nitrox and now diving air I really noticed how much less my NoDeco time was on my computer. Nitrox was only an extra $5 a fill which was nice.