Craig66
Contributor
For the 10th year in a row we opted to visit Cozumel but decided that as a family we have to expand our horizons and so we decided to combine 5 days in Coz with 4 days in Mexico City.
For those of you that love Cozumel I really think you will be blown away by Mexico City.
We flew Aeromexico out of JFK to Mexico City and from there went on to Cozumel again with Aeromexico. Aeromexico was an amazing airline with no baggage fees and real meals served on board - go figure!!!
Arriving in Mexico City was really easy and same basic rules as Cozumel but then arriving in Cozumel we were a local flight and so we just had to grab our bags and head to the transport.
This time we decided to do a VRBO instead of our usual Casa Mexicana. We stayed at a condo in the north side which is beautiful and the condo was great and clean but I do not think I would do that again. Living in someone else's apartment just felt a little weird and although it might just be my issues we did miss Casa Mexicana.
Cabs are still amazingly working on a 10:1 conversion rate and at a true 18:1 conversion rate, paying in anything other than Pesos is crazy.
Restaurants:
A couple of disappointments: La Hach has closed !!! Loved it and miss it. Money Bar which is always a good place to swim has however seen a downturn in the quality of their food and the fish tacos which used to be really good were now made with Mahi Mahi and were really average to bad.
Now for the good:
Kinta and Kondessa are both excellent and could hold their own in any city in the world. Truly amazing food at very reasonable prices. We actually did a progressive meal as there are things on both menus we liked and so we started at Kinta and ate a little and then walked around town and went to Kondess for our favorites there - one of which is the lion fish cakes. Had we had more night there we would have done them both separately.
Playa Palancar: Amazing food, amazing beach. HINT: Find out when the owner is going fishing. For $600 - 700 you get two grilled whole fish on a huge platter with a bunch of accompaniments. Was really fresh and amazing but was way too much food for the 4 of us but definitely wothwhile
Playa Azul: beautiful beach but the restaurant is really only adequate at best. Next to it is the restarant Bucannos which is very good but when we went there Bucannos must have been the base for a ships tour as it was totally overrun by Carnival people and so we ate and escaped back to Playa Azul. I am not Cruise phobic but this was ridiculous
There is a new restaurant that we tried that turned out to be really nice. Can't recall the name but it is opposite the Empanada restaurant and occupies the space where there used to be a surfshop. It was really very good.
Unfortunately with only 4 days in Coz we could not hit some of our usual spots
Diving: For the fourth year in a row we used Blue Project which was as always amazing and I was as usual very impressed by the predive, dive and post dive service. We had an amazing experience with Blanca and Paco.
When I look for a dive op I am looking for:
Ease of booking
Valet Diving with small fast boats
Safety and dependability
Great diving.
I certainly know better than to suggest on this board that Blue Project is the best (LOL) but after having dived with about 6 dive ops in the past Blanca has definitely been the best for me and I have stayed with her longer than any of the other dive ops.
On this occasion I was diving with my 16 year old ( who has dived 60 of her 130 dives in cozumel and 50 of them with Blanca !!!) and my 13 year old who has just started diving.
We dived together as a unit and Blanca had another DM for the other guests so that they got to maximize their dives and not be dependent on our profiles. Blanca had last year certified my eldest as AOW. She was amazingly patient with my youngest who had still not fully decided that diving was for her. Well after diving with Blanca she is now guns-ho to keep diving.
To set up the dives one email is all it takes and within hours I had a response from Paco. Our dives were setup . Just before I left I sent Paco an email confirming and again within a couple of hours he confirmed that he and Blanca would meet us in our apartment at 6pm on the day of our arrival. At exactly 6pm they arrived. We reviewed our requirements, dive experience and special requests even down to the fruit we wanted on the boat. They took our gear and we agreed to meet them at the Caletta the next day.
When we arrived they were waiting for us as promised and waved the cab in. The boat is a beautiful and is their new boat. It is wide and very comfortable. Blanca has a reputation of being a very safety conscience careful diver and indeed she was. She was great at finding creatures both big and small and as we moved slowly over the reefs I was amazed at what we saw. She was very attentive to my daughter. She has an amazing love not only for what she does but for the reefs and the ecosystem and that comes across in her diving. With my 13 year old safety is a priority and I was very happy with what I saw.
After each dive they dropped us off at a prearranged beach where my wife was waiting for us. As with all valet dive experiences each morning our gear was setup and ready to go.
I will be returning to Coz next year with my long time Dive buddies and will be diving with Paco and Blanca. After we returned home we got an email from PAco with a picture of me and my three girls that he had taken of us underwater - no added cost !!!!
After 5 days we headed to Mexico City with aeromexico out of Coz. In mexico city we used Uber which was amazing and besides the incredibly low cost (almost embarrassingly low at some times) the service was amazing. usually within 120 second of ordering the car the driver arrives and because you input your destination into the request you don't have to worry about communication issues as they know the area, street and even restaurant you are headed to.
The Peso exchange rate made traveling and dining and accommodations dirt cheap and the food was amazing. We ate in some of the nicest restaurants I have ever eaten at and also tired various street food locations. There is actually a very nice Saturday street food market in Polanco ( One of the upscale neighborhoods) where a lot of the residents of Polanco get a chance to sample street foods and it was amazing. Museums were great and cant wait to return. Definitely another nice component to our trip and another interesting side to Mexico.
For those of you that love Cozumel I really think you will be blown away by Mexico City.
We flew Aeromexico out of JFK to Mexico City and from there went on to Cozumel again with Aeromexico. Aeromexico was an amazing airline with no baggage fees and real meals served on board - go figure!!!
Arriving in Mexico City was really easy and same basic rules as Cozumel but then arriving in Cozumel we were a local flight and so we just had to grab our bags and head to the transport.
This time we decided to do a VRBO instead of our usual Casa Mexicana. We stayed at a condo in the north side which is beautiful and the condo was great and clean but I do not think I would do that again. Living in someone else's apartment just felt a little weird and although it might just be my issues we did miss Casa Mexicana.
Cabs are still amazingly working on a 10:1 conversion rate and at a true 18:1 conversion rate, paying in anything other than Pesos is crazy.
Restaurants:
A couple of disappointments: La Hach has closed !!! Loved it and miss it. Money Bar which is always a good place to swim has however seen a downturn in the quality of their food and the fish tacos which used to be really good were now made with Mahi Mahi and were really average to bad.
Now for the good:
Kinta and Kondessa are both excellent and could hold their own in any city in the world. Truly amazing food at very reasonable prices. We actually did a progressive meal as there are things on both menus we liked and so we started at Kinta and ate a little and then walked around town and went to Kondess for our favorites there - one of which is the lion fish cakes. Had we had more night there we would have done them both separately.
Playa Palancar: Amazing food, amazing beach. HINT: Find out when the owner is going fishing. For $600 - 700 you get two grilled whole fish on a huge platter with a bunch of accompaniments. Was really fresh and amazing but was way too much food for the 4 of us but definitely wothwhile
Playa Azul: beautiful beach but the restaurant is really only adequate at best. Next to it is the restarant Bucannos which is very good but when we went there Bucannos must have been the base for a ships tour as it was totally overrun by Carnival people and so we ate and escaped back to Playa Azul. I am not Cruise phobic but this was ridiculous
There is a new restaurant that we tried that turned out to be really nice. Can't recall the name but it is opposite the Empanada restaurant and occupies the space where there used to be a surfshop. It was really very good.
Unfortunately with only 4 days in Coz we could not hit some of our usual spots
Diving: For the fourth year in a row we used Blue Project which was as always amazing and I was as usual very impressed by the predive, dive and post dive service. We had an amazing experience with Blanca and Paco.
When I look for a dive op I am looking for:
Ease of booking
Valet Diving with small fast boats
Safety and dependability
Great diving.
I certainly know better than to suggest on this board that Blue Project is the best (LOL) but after having dived with about 6 dive ops in the past Blanca has definitely been the best for me and I have stayed with her longer than any of the other dive ops.
On this occasion I was diving with my 16 year old ( who has dived 60 of her 130 dives in cozumel and 50 of them with Blanca !!!) and my 13 year old who has just started diving.
We dived together as a unit and Blanca had another DM for the other guests so that they got to maximize their dives and not be dependent on our profiles. Blanca had last year certified my eldest as AOW. She was amazingly patient with my youngest who had still not fully decided that diving was for her. Well after diving with Blanca she is now guns-ho to keep diving.
To set up the dives one email is all it takes and within hours I had a response from Paco. Our dives were setup . Just before I left I sent Paco an email confirming and again within a couple of hours he confirmed that he and Blanca would meet us in our apartment at 6pm on the day of our arrival. At exactly 6pm they arrived. We reviewed our requirements, dive experience and special requests even down to the fruit we wanted on the boat. They took our gear and we agreed to meet them at the Caletta the next day.
When we arrived they were waiting for us as promised and waved the cab in. The boat is a beautiful and is their new boat. It is wide and very comfortable. Blanca has a reputation of being a very safety conscience careful diver and indeed she was. She was great at finding creatures both big and small and as we moved slowly over the reefs I was amazed at what we saw. She was very attentive to my daughter. She has an amazing love not only for what she does but for the reefs and the ecosystem and that comes across in her diving. With my 13 year old safety is a priority and I was very happy with what I saw.
After each dive they dropped us off at a prearranged beach where my wife was waiting for us. As with all valet dive experiences each morning our gear was setup and ready to go.
I will be returning to Coz next year with my long time Dive buddies and will be diving with Paco and Blanca. After we returned home we got an email from PAco with a picture of me and my three girls that he had taken of us underwater - no added cost !!!!
After 5 days we headed to Mexico City with aeromexico out of Coz. In mexico city we used Uber which was amazing and besides the incredibly low cost (almost embarrassingly low at some times) the service was amazing. usually within 120 second of ordering the car the driver arrives and because you input your destination into the request you don't have to worry about communication issues as they know the area, street and even restaurant you are headed to.
The Peso exchange rate made traveling and dining and accommodations dirt cheap and the food was amazing. We ate in some of the nicest restaurants I have ever eaten at and also tired various street food locations. There is actually a very nice Saturday street food market in Polanco ( One of the upscale neighborhoods) where a lot of the residents of Polanco get a chance to sample street foods and it was amazing. Museums were great and cant wait to return. Definitely another nice component to our trip and another interesting side to Mexico.
Last edited:
