This is a report of a trip taken in July 1998 to Cozumel, Mexico. Cozumel is an island beside the Yucatan Penninsula, near Cancun. It's supposed to be one of the top diving locations in the world, and the diving was pretty terrific. We had a great time.

We got a charter flight out of Denver for just $310. That was way better than anything we could find out of Salt Lake, so we took the time to drive over to Denver and saved ourselves over $300 each. It was a direct flight, almost 3 1/2 hours. When you get to Cozumel the warm, humid air hits you. We took a cab to our hotel, the Villa Blanca.

One of the reasons that we chose Villa Blanca is because it's right across the street from Papa Hogs, our dive shop. They have ordinary rooms and nicer rooms. Our reservations were for ordinary rooms, but we upgraded when we saw them. The nicer ones looked newer and brighter, and somewhat larger. We didn't really have any complaints with the hotel, except that they were a little slow to resupply the water bottles in our rooms when they got low.

If you look at this picture from the Villa Blanca web page, right on the beach you'll see a two-story building, and to the right is a small yellow building. That yellow one is Papa Hogs. Actually the office is across the street, along with a little restaurant. But the equipment rental is in the yellow building and the dock is on the right edge of the picture.

So, the day we got there we did a shore dive to check out our gear, adjust weights and just get wet. Everyone was pretty excited. There's a pretty good current right there in front of the shop, and you have to be careful you don't end up walking back a mile. But there's also a small reef and some interesting things to see just a little ways out.

All our dives with Papa Hogs were great. We dove with them the whole week, and it was really convenient being right across the street. Manuel was our dive master and he was really good. They have small, fast boats, and it was fun flying by everyone else who was going out in the big, slow ones each morning. For our surface interval between dives we stopped at a beach where there is a little grill where you can buy breakfast or snacks. We had a bunch of great dives, including Palancar Gardens, Paradise Reef, Santa Rosa, Cedral, Columbia Reef, Yucab Reef, Punta Sur and Tormentos Reef. Margaret was great and always came out to the dock we we got back in to check on us and see how our dive went.

And when we weren't diving there were other things to do also. We spent most of our evenings in town, wandering around the shops. Some of our guys got really good at bartering for imitation Oakley sunglasses, blankets, or whatever else they needed.

There are loads of interesting little restaurants in Cozumel. That's one of the fun things about diving there. To save money we went to a grocery store the first day and bought stuff for breakfast and lunch. Then for dinner we could afford to eat out. The only real disappointment was Carlos and Charlie's, which everyone "loves" as a great party place. Maybe it's because no one in our group drinks... or at least... didn't on this trip. Why didn't we like it? No air conditioning, too hot, too noisy, food was ok but nothing spectacular, and ummmm, did I mention it was very hot in there?

One day we went down to Chankanaab, which is a state park with a really nice beach. We went diving there also. They have equipment rentals right there. There is a cave down on the south end that has thousands of tiny fish who hang out at the entrance. They look so awesome when you swim up to them. Then inside there are huge tarpin lurking around. It's a cool dive. The park costs $7 per person, but it's worth it.

Another cool activity was riding around the island in our cool VW Bug. We rented a Volkswagon and a Jeep. The VWs are kind of old, but as long as you get one that runs, it's fun to cruise around the island. It was like $20/day. The Villa Blanca is like 2 miles south of town, so you really need transportation unless you want to ride taxis all the time. The east side of the island has some nice beaches, although the day we were there the surf was too high to swim. We stopped at a nice little restaurant called Coconuts and ate dinner. They have a cool view and good food, but you have to eat fast because they also have millions of flies. (yum)

A week was just about the right amount of time there. We did loads of diving and saw enough to be happy, but still had more for another visit some day. And we could recommend Cozumel to anyone who might be considering a trip!!

There are lots of web pages about Cozumel on the web, but one of our favorites is Scuba Jim's Page because he has some good info.

Here's Cancun OnLine which is another good one -- except that they don't list Papa Hogs on their dive shop list. But there are over 100 dive shops on the island, so I guess thats some kind of excuse (a lame one, but...).

This Travel Notes page is a pretty good too.