Scuba Diving

This review was written by Wendy.

I spent 7 nights at the Iberostar Cozumel with my brother in the beginning of September, sandwiching luckily between Gustav and Ike. This is a perfectly nice hotel on a mediocre beach but nearest the best scuba diving reef I’ve seen. Skip to the end if you’re easily bored; stay with me if you want all the details. I have stayed at the Barcelo Beach and Dreams Tulum resorts in the Mayan Riviera and at the Barcelo Palace in Punta Cana for all-inclusive reference.

We booked through our local travel agent Anna at OK Travel, GoGoTours was the group. Flew American Airlines right into Coz, laying over in Miami. The second leg into Coz is on a little turboprop, but it was very smooth. Nice to land right in Coz and not have to deal with the Cancun madness and ferryboat ride. No problems with the flights or airport, van from Olympus Tours was there to bring us to the hotel. It’s about 20 m south of the airport, quite a ways from town. Check in was a breeze and our room was ready. We were in 8114, nearest the beach and the pool on the South side. It was quiet and clean, small as others have noted but perfectly acceptable. The closet does not give you a lot of room to spread out clothing, but how much stuff do you need? It’s not a fancy place. The minibar was full and the safe worked fine. Each room has a nice balcony and hammock out in front. We did find some tiny ants in the bathroom, but they didn’t seem to bite and were nothing more than a minor annoyance (and my Deet skin spray did not deter them at all).

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Hello to Edgar (an old friend), and new friends Steffi, Rosa, Mikey, Toro, Fernando, Tavo, Buddy, Jenny, Dawn, Jon, Tasha, Craig, Jochen, Daniel, Sandy, Jim, Marta, Flavia, Jimena, and the others!

It was our sincere pleasure to meet each of you during our trip to the Mayan Riveria, Mexico in September 2006. When you visit the site, please add a comment to let us know you were here! To add your comment, click the title of this article (or click here) then scroll down to the bottom of the page. You’ll see the comment form; fill it out and click “Add my comment”.

The pictures are up! We’re still arranging them, but you can see the pictures (more than 20 pages of them!) if you click here.

Be sure to read all the articles in this series as they’re published… Click the title of this article (or click here) and you’ll see the series selector below the article text. Select the article you’d like to read from there!

More to follow!

CONGRATULATIONS to Doug & Kelly as they finally finished their PADI certification! Soon, we’ll be able to dive with them!

We’re back!

We were in Puerto Rico to celebrate the wedding of our friends Doug & Kelly and to have a dive vacation for ourselves.

The pictures are being uploaded to the server as we speak and we will work to caption them and write our articles as soon as possible. If you want to get a jump on viewing the pictures, go here.

From the users of www.scubadiving.com

#10: You rely on the silt trail you always stir up to find the anchor line.

#9: You never use fins because it makes it more difficult to walk on the bottom.

#8: The only place you can hover is at the surface.

#7: Your nickname is “Yo-Yo”.

#6: Six Flags models its next roller coaster on your dive profile.

#5: On ascents, your entire body clears the surface of the water.

#4: You use 500 psi for breathing and 2,500 psi for your BC.

#3: You made one dive, but your dive computer has logged it as three.

#2: Small boats of tourists appear in the area to watch you “breach”.

#1: You think that being neutral in the water means that you don’t fight with your dive buddy.