COZUMEL 2004
COZUMEL, MEXICO
Trip Report
June 20-28th, 2004
Click here, to view the Pictures from the Trip
It was the beginning of June and I was trying to talk my friend Lori into going on vacation. She had been working too many hours and needed some time away. I had been planning on going to Belize later in the year for my vacation. As it turned out, I succeeded in getting her to take some time off from work. There was one catch; she wanted me to come along. She really did not have to spend a lot of time trying to convince me. It was an easy sell. We went out to dinner that night and decided that we would try and go to Cozumel by the end of the month. The next morning we both searched for flights but we were not able to find any cheap ones. So Lori called her friend Al at Bay Adventures in Florida. Al was able to put together a very good package.
Two weeks later we left for Cozumel. We had a very nice time. Some of the highlights included a natural shark feeding, cenotes, numerous swim throughs, giant black groupers, barracudas, numerous octopuses, trumpet fishes, squid, bat rays, turtles, warm water (82-84 degrees), and a cross like sponge at the Punta Sur dive site. We met lots of nice people from all over the United States, including: Bill, Sara, Duane and Steve (among others).
Towards the end of Thursday's dive (on the 25th), at Cedar Pass the divemaster signaled for us to come over to him quickly. He had spotted a nurse shark fighting a grouper for quick snack. I raced over to try and get some pictures of the attack. I was able to get within about ten feet. I wanted to get closer, but I felt it was better to record the event, than to be PART of the event.
We stayed at the resort Hotel Cozumel. This is the second time at I stayed at this hotel, although last time
it was named Costa Club (See my 1999 trip report) . The hotel is a beautiful place to stay and just as nice looking as the first time. The one thing that has changed is the quality of the food at the various restaurants within the hotel. Now the food is very poor. Therefore, I will not stay at the hotel again.
Our diving package was scheduled through Dive Paradise. Apple the owner runs a very good dive operation. She upgraded one of our morning slow boats to a fast boat to Punta Sur as a favor to Lori. This was REALLY nice of her. We paid for 5 days of two-tank boat dives (slow boats) and 4 one-tank afternoon boat dives. We also rented tanks for a shore diving for $6.00 each. I was able to do 18 dives on Cozumel and then we went over to Akumal for two-tank Cenote diving (I did 20 dives in 6 days of diving). Cenote dives are cavern/cave dives within 200ft of any light source. We used Aguatech for our cenote diving. This is the second time I have used Aquatech. The first time I used them they did a GREAT job. This time they fell down a little in the quality of the service. The first time they spend about 45 minutes streamlining our gear and perfecting our buoyancy before the start of the dive. This time the divemaster (Tito) only spend a few minutes making sure we were not leaking air from out first stage. He did not have different combinations of weights for us to use to perfect our weighting. So we did the best we could, but our weighting was not correct. Therefore, both of us had trouble during the dive with our buoyancy. This time both of our dives were at the Dos Ojos cenote (last time Ponderosa and Taj Mahal). While the cenotes I did the first time were very beautiful, Dos Ojos was stunning. I would love to do Dos Ojos again, but next time without the gear issues.
If I had to rate both of my experiences to Cozumel, I would have to say my 1st time was slightly better, although I would rate the diving better this time.
Click here, to view the Pictures from the Trip
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