Scuba Diving in Cozume Mexico - overview

This post and then next few lower down in this blog are of my scuba diving trip in March 2011 to Cozumel Mexico. It is a beautiful island with a large reef just off the coast of the Yucatan peninsula.  I got my open water PADI scuba certification this fall in Massachusetts and had been thinking about a trip to the south this spring after we arrived in Southern Pines NC for the spring.  During our first breakfast in Aspen Snowmass this winter I met a Mexican couple who had built a dive hotel in Cozumel.  It seemed that fate was directing me so I contacted the Blue Angel Resort and made a reservation.  It turned out that the couple I had met in Aspen lived across the street from the hotel they had built and once owned and I met them again.

If you wondered what happened to the Maya, they are alive and well in Cozumel. 

My hotel and dive service, Blue Angel Resort, overlooks the Villa Blanca dive site near the town of San Miguel.  Each dive site listed usually has two portions, one is a wall that goes into the deep blue at over 1,000 feet and the other is closer to the shore with a bottom at 60 - 40 ft.  The wall portion has deep canyons going up the face and swim thoughts or small caves open at both ends.  It is like flying through a beautiful garden.  I did over 20 dives during my two week stay.

Scuba Diving in Cozume Mexico

I spent two weeks diving at the Blue Angel Resort and obtained my Open Water Advanced certification from PADI.  The views were fantastic and the staff very professional, especially my instructor Mathew Atkins.

Blue Angel pool and one of the dive boats

Carnival on Cozumel

Me on a deep dive

Blue Angel Restaurant

Transparent Shrimp on Coral

Diving Progress

I have done about 16 dives to this point in a week and a half. During this trip I have taken the PADI avvanced open water course from the Blue Angel resident instructor, Mathew. This course has included lessons on buoyancy (some very useful stuff), deep diving to 100 feet, fish identification, underwater navigation and tonight night diving. In addition I have done a number of boat dives. These dives include two tanks. In the first dive we usually go deeper than the second. The deeper you go the less time you have on the dive and the more nitrogen accumulates in your blood. The second dive after a wait on the boat to partually degas, have a fruit lunch and rest, is at a shallower depth to give one more dive time and continue the degassing process.

I use a dive computer that is like a fat wristwatch that monitors your time and depth to ensure you don't stay down too long. It also monitors your ascent rate to ensure you don't go up too fast. The dives we do don't require a decompression step but we always hold at 15 ft. For 3 minutes as a safety factor.

I have seen many very beautiful and colorful fish as well as some really big spiny lobsters. Many of the reefs raise like pillars out of the ocean floor with numerous caves, arches, short swim-throughs and large crevasses one can swim up along the reef wall. This is especially true at the ledge which descends over 1,000 ft. Into a dark blue abyss. It is at times like flying through a forest or being in the movie Avitar.

More from Cozumel - Underwater Navigation Class

This morning I studied for my course and this afternoon I did the underwater navigation segment. I learned that I do 28 kicks in 100 feet, to navigate by bottom features and to measure distance by walking along the bottom on my hands and counting the hand strides ( also 28 per 100 feet). Tomorrow I do a deep water dive and follow that with a fish identification dive. More studying.

March 2nd scuba diving in Cozumel

More from my Scuba vacation in Cozumel at the Blue Angel Resort
Today I did two dives in the morning one at Las Palmas ref and a second at Paradise reef. It is amazing how many very colorful fish are here. We saw one large shark and a Morey eel. Many of the fish were unfamiliar to me. I am getting more confident. The bottom was sandy at about 40 feet with corals rising about 20 feet from the sea floor. Our dive master took us through tight channels between close reefs with fish on either side. We also went under arches of coral and short tunnels. There were four of us on these dives, a photographer from Quebec and a mother an college age daughter. Dominique made me a friend on Facebook so that we can see the video of the dive he uploaded.

I didn't have any lessons today but will have two tomorrow. One is on underwater navigation and the other is a night dive. I am getting tired of studying but am learning a number of new techniques.