RnR
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Joined: 12/22/2006
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Johnoly
quote:
ORIGINAL: RnR
Our trip to Cozumel this past March is perfect example of this - we didn't have a great time. It was just okay as we found things topside detracted from the diving, too many hassles, rude dive shop, long boat rides, mediocre food.
This sounds like ScubaCub complaining that the food sucked in Coz when he went down to the mall and had a hamburger.
This is the most reviewed location on D2D, with ump-teen thousands of great food choices. If you chose to not listen to all the Coz expert's (ie DocV, LarryL, D_aviddiver, Christi, etc) advice, then you didn't take advantage of a valuable resource on D2D.
I've never had a bad Coz trip, cause I don't use crappy operators, and cruddy food choices that others have told all of us to stay away from. I read all your California reports and watch all your videos, because I want to go and do the same trip you did. If something was wrong with a Cali-liveaboard boat, I know you would post it up and I would definitely make a note of it.
Yes, you are right. We stayed at ScubaClub and the food there was mediocre - breakfast fine, lunch okay, dinner ranged from good to downright inedible, especially one night. This was our first time going there and we expected much better quality than we got. We went there because of so many rave reviews here on this board and others. We loved the resort itself, the shore diving, the rooms, the staff at the restaurant. We didn't particularly like the DMs (two were downright rude) and didn't like the slow boats.
Our past trips to Cozumel, all before the hurricane, we stayed at different hotels and dove with PapaHogs. Always enjoyed the food downtown except the last trip when we found that many of the restaurants closed down when the cruise ships left. We ended up eating at the touristy places several nights and didn't particularly like it. (We live in ABQ and we can get great Mexican food any day of week here so we are a bit pickier than most people. We love the Mayan specialties in Coz but those places didn't have them, just the Americanized tacos, etc.) We thought this time, going to ScubaClub, would mean that we didn't have the food issues like last time. Wrong. We paid for the food there so we ate there, and really expected better. Food was very Americanized and not well done in my opinion. The BEST food all week was the Mexican night on the beach, but unfortunately that was our first night there. From there on it went downhill. Our day over at the ruins we didn't attend breakfast or lunch at ScubaClub, which is when you have to order your dinner. We were told the day before that it was no problem. But when we showed up for dinner, we were told since we didn't order that we didn't get anything. Well, we didn't accept that answer and after waiting for 20 minutes they decided to go ahead and give us food, food that we had already paid for! The food was horrible and I would bet they did that to us on purpose, which doesn't speak well of the place. I would give the food there at ScubaClub a C, and I think that is fair as the breakfast and lunches were okay though I find it silly that they charge you for a glass of iced tea.
As for the rude dive shop, I won't go into details but let's just say that it was our worst experience with ANy dive operation ever. Maybe it was the fact we arrived mid-week and they didn't like that. Maybe it was the fact that we asked too many questions or the fact we had booked a day of cenote diving over in the mainland. Regardless, it wasn't a pleasant experience. Ditto for our experience on the boats when one of the DMs asked me my name 3 times in one day, and asked me what my diving experience was 3 times. When I explained to him the second time that he had already asked me, he said he forgot and asked me again. But then when we were on the boat heading out to dive site and he asked me again, it really ticked me off. Then, our group of divers had a couple that apparently dive there a SCC often who were some of the worst divers I have ever seen. The wife pulled herself along underwater by grabbing the coral. The DM said nothing to her, NEVER. I was really upset about it and tried to say something to the DM, well that went in one ear and out the other. Also, on the dives Ron and I are pretty good at finding critters so we always signalled the DM to let him know if we found something. He didn't take that well at all, and actually seemed annoyed that I found a splendid toadfish before he did. Needless to say, I was not impressed with him. Another one of the DMs took Ron's Dslr rig and dropped it in the rinse tank on the boat then took someone's little camera and dropped it in the same one on top of Ron's dome lens, yep a big ding in it and it was brand new! We watched this happen so I do have my facts straight.
I won't even go into the slow boats and the fact they dropped us in on reefs that were already packed full of divers! When we came up to the surface, surrounded by boats and our boat was off in distance it would take 10-15 minutes to get their attention and get them over to pick us up. I would give the dive op at Scuba Club a C in my rating system, they didn't do anything unsafe but they certainly weren't great. I am sure we would have gotten much better service if we had been with a group, they really seemed to treat the groups differently.
We ended up only doing 4 days of boat diving with them, which turned out to be plenty for us. The shore diving was much more memorable and enjoyable.
The hotel itself I really liked, loved our room and also the layout was very funky which appeals to me as an artist. No phones or tvs, no problem. There was a pool and we saw others using it but we never do. I would give the hotel itself an A-. We loved the shore diving and Ron's best photos ALL came from the shore dives. We saw more interesting critters there, too. I would give the shore diving in front of Scuba Club a B+.
The hurricane damage on the major reefs was still very evident to us and a few dives seemed more like sand dunes than reefs. I would give the reef/boat dives at Cozumel a C. Lots of better diving in the Caribbean can be found.
As for the hassles I mentioned, they pertained to getting back and forth to PDC for our cenote dives and Chichen Itza trips. Both days the ferry schedule was wacked. We were told that the ferry runs every hour but it doesn't. Some days they skip hours and we got burned both ways. We ended up sitting in PDC after our cenote dives for 2 hours as we missed one ferry and then they didn't have one the next hour as the ferry was being used by the cruise ships in Coz.
For those reasons, I doubt we will go back to Cozumel. We've been there numerous times from 2000-2008, and we are now done with it. Our choice.
So....... you can see why I say our "OVERALL EXPERIENCE' there wasn't as great as we expected.
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robin
http://www.vimeo.com/user466791/videos
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When booking a dive trip - what are your priorities? - 
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