After shopping online for prices for this years trip I called a local travel agency here in Morgantown WV and got a better price locally than I could find on the Internet. Our local travel agent booked our airfare and lodging through Apple Vacations. We booked the trip as airfare and lodging only. I wanted the freedom of being able to try out more than one dive operator and not be locked into one for a week of diving. 

On April 13, 2000 we drove to Baltimore and got a room at the Hampton Inn located very near Baltimore Washington International Airport. The hotel let us leave our car in their parking lot for the week that we would be away. We find this to be a good deal because it eliminates driving 3 1/2 hours on our day of air travel and the cost of the room is about what it would cost us to park the car in long term parking at the airport.

At 6:30AM on April 14 we checked in at Ryan International Airlines and boarded the 737 aircraft for a flight to Cancun. We had a two hour layover and at 11:15AM we landed at the Cozumel airport. It was raining quite hard when we left the airport for our trip to La Ceiba Beach Hotel but the rain stopped before we arrived at our hotel. It didn't rain the rest of the week. We had sunny skies and flat seas for most of our stay.

We had requested room 213 at the hotel. We stayed in that room during our 1999 trip to Cozumel and really liked the view from the balcony at that room. We checked into the hotel and were greeted with "Welcome Back" from the desk clerk who remembered us from last year. Room 213 was ready for us and we got settled in. It felt like coming home :)

A friend of mine, Ray Jones, from the Scuba-L listserve was spending the week on Cozumel also. We had arranged to meet after we got settled into our room and at 5:30pm we met in the lobby at Le Ceiba. It was really nice to meet Ray in person after talking with him on the listserve for nearly a year. After about an hour of getting acquainted Ray and I decided it was time to get wet and do a night dive at Le Ceiba beach on the airplane wreck. The airplane wreck is what is left of a small Cessna plane that was put in around 35 feet of water to make a movie years ago. Now it serves as a place called home for reef fish, crabs, lobsters, moray eels, shrimp, coral, and other aquatic life. I dove the airplane wreck every night during our stay and never tired of it. Another friend from Scuba-L, Mark Mischler was also there that week and I had the pleasure of meeting him in person and doing some dives with him also. So far, the Scuba-L people that I have met in person are really nice people and quite skilled at scuba diving :)

Ray's vacation package included diving with Dive Paradise so we decided to give them a try for our first day of boat diving. We were satisfied with them and used them as our dive operator for boat diving the rest of the week. There were never more than ten divers with two divemasters on any given day. The boats were quite spacious for the number of divers and I never felt crowded on the boats. Purified water was always available on the boats and between dives a snack consisting of a sandwich, fruit, cookies, and soda pop were served. Since I've only been to Cozumel twice and dove with two different operators, I am not the world's biggest authority on who the best dive operator is on the island. However, I would not hesitate to use Dive Paradise again. My wife, Lindemarie, went to Cozumel with a torn rotator cuff and she was not sure how difficult it would be getting back onto a dive boat. That is another reason we booked our diving day by day rather than pay in advance for 5 days of diving. Apple, the owner of Dive Paradise gave us a discounted rate for daily diving so that it cost us as much to go daily as it would have if we had booked the 5 days of diving in advance.

Some of the dive sites we visited were: Santa Rosa Wall, two different dives on Paso De Cedral, Punta Sur, Bolones (not a great dive, in my opinion,) Horseshoe Reef, two different dives on Tormentos, Columbia Pinnacles (where I saw my first eagle rays), two different dives on Palancar, and Le Ceiba Beach.

I found a web page that critiqued various restaurants on Cozumel. Click Here to visit the web site, but be sure and come back! John's guide was most helpful and thanks to his page we tried some restaurants we hadn't visited on our previous trip there. My favorite places to eat were Prima, La Chosa, El Capi Navegante, and La CoCay was certainly our best dining experience of the week. Our hotel was very close to Ernesto's Fajita Factory South so we had breakfast there a few times and lunch there a couple of times.

We rented a car for two days to explore the island a bit the last day of our diving and then all day the day before our return flight. We bartared for some souvenirs at shops that were the most isolated from San Miguel or other "attractions" and got some good deals. If you ever travel to Cozumel you really should take the time to explore the entire island, at least on the paved roads. The east coast is beautiful.

Our return home began at 6:30AM with a flight from Cozumel to Cancun. After a 4 hour layover (Thank You Apple Vacations) that gave me time to finish reading a book, a really long book, we boarded a flight to Baltimore Washington International Airport.

We have been to Cozumel for our spring vacation for two years in a row. We're going back next year for another visit.

I've broken the topside pictures into pages for quick loading.  The pictures below are Copyright 2000 by Daniel L. Crawford.  All pictures were taken with a Sony Mavica FD83 digital camera set to standard 640X480 mode. These are not high resolution pictures.

Cozumel 2000 Underwater pictures.
The view from our balcony.
Ray Jones during a surface interval.
Views along the windy east coast.
Of course a drive along the east coast gets one thirsty. Fortunately there are a couple of pit stops.
Ah, here are the stupid tourist pictures

We decided on Cozumel as our destination for our annual Spring Break diving trip in August of 1998.  I researched prices, hotels, dive shops, etc. on the Internet and we finally decided on an 8 day 7 night package with  Tropical Tours , a travel agency based in Houston Texas.  I couldn't find a better price anywhere on a travel package.  Our trip with them included round trip airfare from Baltimore, Maryland, airport transfers, 7 nights lodging at La Cieba Hotel, breakfast daily,  6 days of two tank boat dives with Del Mar Aquatics, unlimited tanks for shore diving, a rental car for one day, one free dinner, and two tee shirts.  I decided on this package, including the diving for several reasons.  It was our first trip to Cozumel and I didn't want to have to look for dive operators after I got there.  Although Lindemarie is an experienced diver I didn't really want to get her into any "challenging" dives.  The package was a good value.

We got to the airport on time and our flight with Continental Airlines left on time at 6:15AM bound for Houston, Texas.  Our layover in Houston was only 45 minutes and as it turned out it took us nearly all of that time to walk to the gate for our flight out of Houston to Cozumel.  I was not impressed with Houston's airport.  There are no people movers to get from point A to point B and it seems that we walked through the entire airport to get to the gate for our flight to Cozumel.

Our flight left on time out of Houston and we arrived on Cozumel on time at 11:15AM.  After getting the green light at customs we walked into the lobby to see about our transfer to our hotel.  There was a man in the lobby holding a  Tropical Tours sign and since we had booked our trip with that travel agency we walked over to the man.  Carlos welcomed us and gave us our transfer voucher for a cab ride to the La Cieba Hotel and five minutes later we were on our way.

A short time later we arrived at La Cieba Hotel and went to the registration desk.  The lady at the counter asked us if we had a room preference and I asked for second floor with an unobstructed ocean view.  The palm trees by the hotel are taller than the second floor balconies but two rooms on the end by Del Mar Aquatics don't have trees in the way.  We were given room 213, the room on the end of that wing, overlooking the dive shop.  It was really fun having a room with a view of the dive shop because we could sit on the balcony and watch divers attempting to assemble gear for shore dives.  The room itself was as nice as we expected it to be.  The air conditioning worked just fine, the floors were all tile, the king size bed was comfortable, there was plenty of closet space, and the refrigerator worked.

After checking in at the dive shop and signing the obligatory waivers we geared up for an afternoon shore dive on the La Cieba beach.  We were told where to find the airplane and headed in that general direction.  Maybe it was a complete airplane at one time but there's not much left of it.  A sergeant major defended his territory by one end of the plane and if this fish had been bigger I'd have been in real trouble  ;)   There are some coral heads in the area that are okay but for a day dive this site is not all that exciting.  It was a good place for a warm up dive and making sure we were properly weighted for the boat dives ahead of us.  It's also a great spot for night diving in calm water.  The dive is shallow and long bottom times are possible.  The aquatic life there at night is great.  Octopus, squid, free swimming spotted morays, fire worms, sea cucumbers, spiny urchins, sea eggs, sleeping parrot fish, puffer fish, and squirrel fish are plentiful.

We had dinner our first night at Ernesto's Fajita Factory located just a short walk from our hotel.  Their jumbo margarita complimented the fajitas and other fare they offered.  We had dinner there for a total of three nights and always tried something different.  We were never disappointed in the food or the service. Thanks to Jeff Kell for suggesting Ernesto's to us.

Since breakfast was included in our travel package we found ourself at the breakfast buffet at 7AM on Monday morning.  Omelettes made to order, toast, sausage, bacon, home fries, cold cereals, coffee, fresh fruit, and various fruit juices were available.  We had breakfast there every day except for one morning when we tried Ernesto's for breakfast.  The La Cieba breakfast buffet was good, plentiful, and a convenient place for us to start the day.

  Del Mar Aquatics has four small boats, Splash one through four, and one big boat, Big Splash.  We were on the smaller boats every day except for our last day. Our first boat dives were aboard the Splash II.  There were 6 other divers, a dive master, Anthony, a captain and one mate.  The boat was uncrowded, there was plenty of shade on all of the smaller boats, and lots of bottled water and soda pop in the cooler.  Bob Ling (aka Reef Feesh) had informed me before our trip that thimble jellies were in season on Cozumel at this time of year.  He was right.  They looked like oil slicks on the surface.  Linde and I were wearing polartek full body suits and polartek hoods so the jellies were of no concern to us.  Even divers who were in just swim suits and tee shirts didn't seem to be bothered by them.

Our first dive was at Palancar Caves.  After an okay dive briefing by Anthony the DM (dive master) we entered the water and started to descend immediately to get below the thimble jellies.  I really enjoy a free fall descent in clear water and this dive let me start off with a slow motion "skydive" to eighty feet.  Palancar Caves had some fun swim through's, and a pretty healthy reef system considering the amount of abuse it must suffer from inexperienced divers with poor buoyancy control.  The visibility was well over a hundred feet and the thirty minute dive seemed like it was over in just a couple of minutes.  After a 5 minute safety stop at 15 ft. (we hung while the other divers were getting back onto the boat) we got back onto the boat for a surface interval and to move to the next dive site.

After a surface interval of 55 minutes we entered the water at Tormetos Reef.  The marine life on this dive to 55 feet was incredible.  The groupers that Cozumel are famous for were plentiful and friendly.  We also saw two sea turtles on this dive, feasting on the thimble jellies above us.  Linde and I stayed within sight of Anthony the DM but kept away from the four inexperienced divers who were on this dive.  The current was running faster than the first dive and it was wonderful just maintaining neutral buoyancy and going for the ride.

I'm not going to describe every dive we did during the week in this report.  It's getting long enough already!  Suffice it to say  that the walls, the reefs, the marine life, the visibility and the ease of diving on Cozumel make it the diving mecca that it is.  We will surely return there for another vacation, probably next year.

We decided to go into San Miguel for dinner on Monday evening. I'd heard a lot about Carlos and Charlies so we took a cab into town. There were four cruise ships docked and San Miguel had a definate carnival atmosphere about it. We went to Carlos and Charlies, waited for a table for twenty minutes, and left without getting seated. In my younger days it probably would have been a fun place but the noise level and atmosphere in there, along with just standing there waiting, prompted us to leave. We walked a few blocks up and down the main drag looking in shops and people watching. We ended up going back to Ernesto's Fajita Factory, the one back near La Cieba.

On Wednesday after diving we decided to spend the entire afternoon in San Miguel and really explore town. It was much quieter there early in the afternoon. We walked back a few blocks from the main drag and browsed the shops in that area. A friend (the Feesh) from the Scuba-L listserv had asked me to pass on a message to two different dive shop owners. I located the shops and left written messages for the owners, since neither of them were in. We had a late lunch at a small sidewalk cafe whose name escapes me now. I think San Miguel would be a lot more fun if there weren't so many cruise ship people there all the time. Except for Saturday, the day before we left, there were always at least 3 cruise ships in port.
Our trip included a rental car for one day and after the morning dives on Saturday we picked up a new Jeep Wrangler to use for the day. We explored the all of the coastal road around the island and then explored all of San Miguel back away from the main drag. The small beaches on the windward side of the island are beautiful and some of the views are fantastic. For a picture ofLinde on an eastern beach click here. We took a good supply of cold water with us in the jeep but when we got done driving around I was really ready for a big tall ice cold bottle of Dos Equis. All in all our trip to Cozumel was probably our best dive vacation ever although it's hard to compare to our Bonaire trips because they were so different. We are planning to return to Cozumel next year for our annual spring break dive trip. Check back here once in awhile for more pictures at the bottom of the page and soon I'll have a link to a Real Media (G2) underwater video from Coz.

Images from the trip
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