As a small preface, this was my first dive trip, and first time diving outside of Southern California. As such, I don't have any other resorts or destinations to compare it to. Also, at the time of the trip, I was just shy of 50 dives, so there is still lots of things I haven't seen or dove. Overall though, I had a very good time and am very happy with the trip.
Travel:
This was really easy and simple to get too. We flew directly into Cozumel with a single connecting stop. After landing and going through customs, a quick taxi put us at the resort. Scuba Club Cozumel is also an easy, 10 minute walk to the downtown area if you want to buy any food or drinks.
Accommodations:
As this was my first trip, I wasn't too involved in the planning. I was told this is a resort "for divers" and that it wasn't anything fancy. I was pleasantly surprised to find it nicer than expected. I shared a room with three beds. The room was clean, large enough for three people and their gear to not feel cluttered, and the ac worked well. No tv, but we didn't spend much time in the room. There was wifi, but it was intermittent and sometimes hard to use, probably because of limited bandwidth being shared with the other guests. Wifi access at the bar was much, much better than from our room. We also had a small patio that we kept rash guards, board shorts, etc to let dry (or get rained on).
Food:
Breakfast, lunch and dinner were included in our package. Breakfast was pretty standard each day with a few varying options. Eggs (including some Mexican style variations), french toast, and pancakes in addition to fruit and yogurt. At breakfast, the dinner options were posted so, as you check in for breakfast, you can pick what you wanted for dinner.
Lunch was pretty standard as well, simply pick something from the menu.
For dinner, there were three options to pick from each night. I think the dinners may rotate out on a weekly basis, but I'm not positive as I wasn't here quite a week. The options seemed to usually include a seafood dish, a Mexican style dish and one additional.
Overall, the food was good. I didn't dislike any of the meals I had, but it's definitely not a 5 star restaurant experience.
Staff:
Super friendly, nice and polite. The dive master we had was very knowledgeable about each location we dived. I did have one case where my tank strap wasn't tight enough so it came loose in a dive. Lesson learned.
Dive Operation:
The resort has two sets of lockers to stow gear between dives, both just a short walk from your room and the dock where the boats pick you up. You'll need to bring your own lock though, as locks aren't provided. Also, you sign up for the morning dives the night before, so after dinner we would walk over to put ourselves in the list for the following morning.
After breakfast, walk down to your locker, grab your gear and then put it on the boat. From Scuba Club Cozumel, it was generally about an hour to an hour and a half to the dive destinations.
After two morning dives, we would head back for lunch and do a quick rinse on our gear.
Marine life/diving:
We had 4 days of 2 morning dives, and an evening dive. Our package included a night dive, which we traded for a dive on the wreck (C-53 is the name of the ship). I don't have much experience with wrecks, but this was really fun. Large ship with lots of rooms to swim through. The two other divers I was traveling with both said this was the best wreck they've done.
Some of the reefs we dove included, Palancar Gardens, Palancar Horseshoe, and the Santa Rosa wall. Pretty sure we also dove Paradise Reef as well. One of the Palancar dives was probably my favorite, drifting through the giant coral formations was really cool. Unfortunately, I don't recall exactly which Palancar it was. The other, more open dives, were very neat as well, almost like flying over a desert with small outcroppings of coral and life which you could duck behind to get out of the current to take pictures. I felt like there was a lot of variety between each dive, especially when adding in the wreck dive.
For life, I saw just about everything I wanted to see. During the boat dives we saw a few eagle rays, several turtles, quite a few eels, and lots of different types of fish (sorry, don't have better ids). Also managed to spot a mantis shrimp as well as a larger sea horse.
For the shore diving, I had plenty of fun swimming around practicing my macro. Lots of smaller fish, shrimp, and small rays. The one night dive was the most fun for me, highlights included an octopus (a favorite of mine) and peacock flounder. We only did the one night dive, but from what other guest said, there are plenty of octopus and eels around for the shore diving.
For visibility, what a change from California. It was rainy for part of the trip, but we still got a few days of 150+ ft viz. And the water temperatures were in the 80's, so we dove with a rash guard and board shorts and stayed comfortable.
Final thoughts:
For the money, I'm very happy with the trip. I'll definitely return, there's plenty of pictures I wasn't able to get (turtle, rays, better mantis shrimp, etc). And the warm water, drift diving with great vis was a fun change from SoCal.
