Rick asked me where I wanted to go diving for my sixtieth birthday. Our first ever dive was on the Great Barrier Reef where we did an introductory dive. Most people consider the Great Barrier Reef the ultimate diving location, and that’s where we decided we needed to get certified. But since we’d been there already, I decided to look for the second-best place to dive, and the search brought me to Cozumel. Scuba diving in Cozumel is awesome!
When I plan dive trips, the first thing I do is look for reputable dive shops. For this trip, I looked at shops on Google Maps and then read some of the reviews for the highest-rated shops. If the reviews were good, I kept reading more reviews for that shop. Then I looked at the shop’s website and its multi-day dive packages. I landed on Scuba Mau as the dive shop to go with, and I’m so happy I chose them.
Where to Stay While Scuba Diving in Cozumel
We stayed at Cozumel Palace Resort. When we’re diving, it’s nice to have everything prepared and cooked for us. Conveniently, when we booked the dive with Scuba Mau, he (Mau) asked where we were staying. I told him and he said, “Great, we can pick you up at their dock.” This was fantastic news since we had planned to walk the mile to the shop to dive each day. We are walkers anyway and normally log five miles per day at least. But it’s not the greatest to walk in your dive gear.
We loved coming back to the resort every day to shower and go find a late lunch at the buffet/grill where the chefs prepare grilled veggies and meat to your heart’s desire to complement every possible prepared food already awaiting us. The selection of sushi was unmatched.
Who You Choose to Dive With Matters
We saw a lot of people getting on a large boat to go out with the dive place at the resort, but it didn’t look like they were getting much personal attention. Whereas, with Scuba Mau, there were two to three dive masters/guides with us each day who were incredibly knowledgeable and had all of our gear ready to go.
On the second day, the port was closed by the authorities due to extreme weather. I got a text in the morning from Mau who said the port had been closed so we couldn’t dive today. About ten minutes later, I got another text that said, “The port has reopened, we’ll be there at 8:45.” We hustled into our gear and made our way down to the dock. We saw the crowd of people boarding the large boat again and the waves were immense.
The boat was rocking around and people were struggling to stand up to get their gear ready. Scuba Mau arrived in their low-profile boat, and we heard one of the big boat’s divers say, “I’m glad we’re in this boat instead of that one.” But the joke was on him because about fifteen minutes later, we passed them on the way to the dive spot because their boat wasn’t handling the wakes nearly as well as ours.
Equipment Maintenance and Problem Prevention
On each of the dive days, when we were about 30 minutes from our first dive spot, the staff opened the valves on the tanks. We learned later that they do this for any excess pressure to be released. This ensures that if your hoses burst, they burst on the boat instead of underwater. This happened to one of the divers on our boat on the fourth day of diving. He’d brought his own equipment, and one of his hoses burst while we were still en route to the dive spot. Scuba Mau staff quickly replaced his hose so he could go ahead and dive.
Our first dive spot was Palancar Gardens. The area we went to was filled with wondrous tall reefs and caves. It was beautiful to swim through the caves with the light shining down from above like spotlights shining into a dark theater, full of colorful fish, plans, and coral.
Paso del Cedral had several fun creatures for us to see. Jesus (our guide) was good luck! Here are a few of the videos we took.
Some creatures can camouflage themselves, making it difficult to recognize that they’re even there. This is why having a guide like Jesus is so helpful. Below is one of the flounders Jesus helped us see.
Conclusion
Scuba diving in Cozumel is a must-do for divers. They have some of the best reefs in the world, lots of caves to explore, and drifting is the closest you can get to flying. Each day we dived in two places, an hour at each place and snacks at a beach nearby for about 45 minutes between dives. This is a lot longer than what we’ve been accustomed to. But you need that time to experience the drift, flying over the reefs.
For more on diving, check out our posts on other dives.
It was a good time with you guys
I hope see you guys again!!
Greetings from cozumel here JESUS DM