We just returned from our week at the Cozumel Palace, so I thought I would post our experiences with Aqua Safari. To begin, they are very communicative. I emailed to schedule dives before arriving as I did not want to take a chance that they were full when we arrived. They were very good about responding quickly to all of my inquiries. Once at the resort, they showed us the locker room area to store our gear, and explained when to arrive for dives, and what to expect.
The first day was a windy one, and the boat was moving around a lot at the dock. They were very good about helping everyone board safely. They would load your gear on the boat from the dock, but they do not help setup your gear for you. Once on board, they pointed out where they wanted you to sit, and you then had to setup your rig. For some reason they have my wife and I seated in the stern all week, which isn’t my favorite as it gets the most sun, and you can smell the diesel exhaust. I would spend a lot of the cruise up towards the front to get away from the diesel smell and carbon monoxide. Once underway I setup our gear, which was no rush as the boats are slow. Very slow. They have a large camera bin with freshwater, and two buckets of fresh water for masks. The boats are large and have a head onboard. We had wind most days, and we lost two days of diving to port closures. (Side note, this year it seems like there are more port closures than in past years. This was our third trip since September 2019, and we lost 2 days most weeks).
Once arriving at the dive site they gave thorough briefings each time, making sure everyone knew what to expect, and what they expected of us. We typically had a dive master leading the group, and another at the tail end to wrangle stragglers. We typically had 12 divers on the boat, and they usually broke us up into two groups.
The dive masters were all very good, but not as willing to point out wildlife as some other DMs we have been with. The exception is Mariano. We did a night dive with Mariano, and there were only 5 of us, and he found so many animals it was amazing. I think he found 5 octopus and so many splendid toadfish that I stopped counting. He even found a batfish, which I had never seen before. I have heard he is also very good on day dives, but we never had the chance to dive with him in the day. We had a smaller group for the night dive, and we were all experienced, so maybe that allowed him to do more hunting for critters, and not spend so much time trying to keep us safe.
During our day dives we had great luck finding Eagle Rays. I have never seen so many Eagle Rays in a week before. A few were actually less shy than usual, and I got some good photos and video of them, to include some frontal views which I have never been able to get before. On the flip side, we didn’t see one turtle the whole week. Not sure why, but hoping that is just an odd coincidence, and not a sign of something happening with the turtles.
We dove with AS because Cozumel Palace provides resort credit which you can use on diving, spa, food experiences, etc., so it was almost free to do the morning 2 tank dives. They charged $85 of resort credit for the 2 tank dives, and you had to pay 16% “tax” on that, making the cost about $14 per diver, per day. The afternoon dives and night dives are not included in the resort credit options, and those were $60 for one tank afternoon dive, and $50 for night dive.
I would dive with AS if I stayed at Cozumel Palace again, as the included dives are very inexpensive, but I definitely didn’t enjoy the experience as much as our usual small operator with valet service. It is definitely more relaxing to get on the boat and have our regular guys take care of everything. The smaller boats are so much faster also, which may be a factor for some. When we dove southern sites with our usual operator we would typically still be back at the dock around noon. With AS, when diving the southern sites we wouldn’t be back at the dock until 1:15 or 1:30. Not a big deal, but might be a decision factor for some. All in all, still a very enjoyable trip diving in Cozumel.
