Cozumel

Last year my family and I stayed at the Iberostar. We had a good time and the food, in particular, was pretty good for an all-inclusive. My only negative for the Iberostar would be the lack of any decent shore diving. It sloped off very gradually so without kicking several hundred yards out there was no reef to explore.

This year we're planning a trip back but the Iberostar is going to run us about $700 more than the Hotel Cozumel, Grand Occidental or even the reef club (which I believe is right next door to the Iberostar). In any case, I've heard horror stories about food at some all-inclusives and I'm bringing some friends with me so I have to considerate to their needs.

If you have any thoughts to share I would appreciate them greatly.

Thanks,

Gary

Scuba Club Cozumel. Fantastic food. Great little house reef, especially if you like macro or night dives. All the house reefs in that part of the island are going to be in 30 feet of water, sand bottom, with a sponge reef out further in 40 to 50 feet of water. But some resorts, like SCC, have put in some structure and rubble that make the house reef worth exploring. I usually spend 3 or 4 hours in the water every afternoon when I'm there.

http://www.scubaclubcozumel.com/

Jim Lyle's many trip reports:

http://chemistry.csudh.edu/faculty/jim/Jim'sWeb_Page.htm

If you insist on all-inclusive, then Scuba Club Cozumel is the way to go. If you get sick of their food, it will only take you 5 minutes to walk to town where there are plenty of really good restaurants.

No shore diving is all that great in Cozumel, but at least you can do it as Scuba Club. There is a better dive site a short ways away. You can make it there if the current is mild. It's a junk pile (Pico's reef) in front of Hotel Barracuda.

I found the Reef Club food unacceptable, but I heard it's a little better since the rebuild. It can be long walk with camera and gear to their pier. Our group was treated like dirt because we didn't use their cattle boat operator, Sand Dollar Sports. They would lock their bathrooms so we couldn't use them. Nor would they let us use their rinse tanks.

Our dive shop used to use Hotel Cozumel a lot. We hated it. The food was horrendous and many people got violently sick, but none since the hurricane. You can easily shore dive, but not a good area. I've searched the area extensively and can't recommend it even as a time killer.

The only other shore dive I've done is at El Cid (formerly LaCeiba), but it may not be worth much since the hurricane.

If you don't choose SCC, I can recommend several great dive ops (some with 120cu.ft. tanks) and many great restaurants.

Calling Scuba Club an all inclusive is very deceptive. It does inlclude some (really bad, IMHO) food but no drinks. This is not a resort in any sense of the word but is more of a low end diving hotel. Not that there is anything wrong with that but based on the options you have given it doesn't appear to be what you are looking for.

If you want a nice AI resort, I highly recommend the Cozumel Palace. It's very nice and has a near perfect location.

If you want a dive hotel, I'd recommend Caribe Blu over Scuba Club any day. It not AI but there is a restaraunt on site for breakfast and lunch that is good and cheap. Personally I prefer to avoid AI on Cozumel because the local food is both fantastic and very affordable. You do yourself a real disservice by eating resort grub. Both CB & SCC used to have great shore diving pre-Wilma.

James

I'm kind of a Cozumel rookie (only been there 28 times in the past 20 years) but I'll add some food for thought here. I've stayed at Scuba Club about 6 or 7 times now.

I once believed that staying at any hotel that included meals was not a good idea because there are so many great restaurants downtown, so I would typically discourage people from staying at places like Scuba Club. Then I actually stayed there myself. The majority of the meals there are absolutely fantastic. I have had a couple not-so-great meals too. I think this is because they are not afraid to try new things. They have an excellent selection of Mexican, Mayan and American food. They have a lot of repeat customers so they attempt to keep things interesting. I'm not that crazy about their salads though. All the salad dressing tastes the same.

The beauty in the way they do things at SCC is that you can actually afford and have time to eat three meals a day, every day because they plan the meals around the diving. They do have an excellent selection too so you don't have to eat the same thing every day. I still stay downtown occasionally and am finding it harder and harder to find a good breakfast that doesn't cost at least $10 in a place that is open early enough so I can eat and catch the dive boats. Food in Cozumel used to be affordable, but its not anymore. By the time you get a sandwich and a coke for lunch, you've spent $15. The price of restaurants on Cozumel has gone up so much that I'm looking at spending at least $50 a day just for food...and I don't eat that much! If you compare the cost of diving, rooms and meals Scuba Club is a real bargain. I spend much less money on the "extras" when I stay there. I do still go into town to get "Bonnie's Special" at El Foco and don't feel like I'm paying twice for food because the package prices at SCC are very low for very high quality. So Scuba Club is perfect when it comes to the dining setup.

I'm not big on shore dives in Cozumel but I have found some pretty interesting critters off the short in front of SCC. Jim Lyle is the SCC shore diving guru and has taken pictures of things I didn't even know existed in Cozumel.

The rooms there are also very nice and comfortable. The Spanish style architecture is nice. I don't like staying in boring hotels with four square walls, especially with people above, below and next to me on both sides. I can do that anywhere. I love that they have 24-hour wireless. All the rooms have a small fridge so you can walk down to the supermarket and stock up on beer, wine, margaritas, and soft drinks if you want to keep things cheaper thank buying drinks in the restaurant. I may be wrong, but I think the reason SCC does not include drinks is because they don't want to charge people for something they may never use while others may totally abuse. Makes sense to me.

Scuba Club is also close enough to town to walk. I've stayed at Presidente and Fiesta Americana and had to cough up $8 for each taxi ride there and back every time I wanted to get away from the isolation of the resorts located way outside of town. Mingling with the local people of Cozumel is one of my favorite reasons for going there.

The dive shop and their boats are also top notch. Some big, some small, some open, some enclosed...whatever you want. Scuba Club is the only resort in Cozumel that has their own on-site dive shop that is owned and operated by the resort. Everyone else uses dive operators that are owned and operated by other companies and they cannot control the quality of the service. Note that not all dive operators are bad, many are very good. I've dived with many times with Aqua Safari, some with Dive House, and once with Deep Exposure and all were excellent. My experiences with Dive Paradangerous and Black Shark I would just as soon forget.

Scuba Club is a dedicated dive resort so typically there are not a lot of vacationing families there that are not divers. This also means no screaming kids running around and peeing in the swimming pool. Sorry moms and dads, but that really is what I want to get away from when I'm on vacation!

Cozumel Palace is also very nice, but it doesn't have much Cozumel personality and is loaded with kids. Might be a good choice if you're planning to bring your family. Its kind of reminds me of the Cancun resorts which I personally don't find all that appealing. The cost is almost twice that of Scuba Club for rooms, meals and diving. About $1100 vs $543 for 5 nights, meals and 4 days of diving. The dive shop there, Aqua Safari is also excellent.

It is for these reasons I chose Scuba Club to conduct my digital uw photo workshops twice a year (next one coming up in August). Its just the best place to stay and dive with in Cozumel (IMHO)!

Bonnie

P.S. Scuba Club is one of my many clients in Cozumel, so I am a bit biased, but I still feel its important to communicate my honest opinion about my experiences there so others can make informed decisions on who they decide to dive and sleep with.

Calling Scuba Club an all inclusive is very deceptive. It does inlclude some (really bad, IMHO) food but no drinks.

boy, I'd want to know what you had that you didn't like, or what kind of food you do like. I put on weight there.

Breakfast is simple, some fruit and a buffet. For lunch, there is a standard special, usually something mexican, or you can order off a menu that has a bunch of basic american stuff and a bunch of great mexican stuff. We always see a lot of folks sticking with the american stuff, not wanting to try something new, and they're missing out. Ice cream for dessert, great stuff made with real ingredients and sugar, it melts fast. Dinner is a choice of 2 items (and they do have a vegetarian option now), plus some kind of dessert. I can remember Armando, the photo pro at la ceiba/island photo-video, saying to me, if you are staying at SCC the food's so good why eat in town?

But the food just doesn't work for some people.

I gotta emphasize something bonnie said but put it two different ways:

with all inclusive food, you never miss a meal. They hold lunch if the morning boat is back at 2pm, they hold dinner until the night boats are back.

and, with all inclusive food, you never miss a dive. You don't waste any time hunting for food or waiting on poor service. I get 5+ hours in the water there when I go (I dive with Jim and keep up by wearing doubles). We do spend a lot of time out in front in the shallows, and love it.

One last tip: take your wheeled dive gear bag to the big market to make it easy to get your drinks back to the club.

boy, I'd want to know what you had that you didn't like, or what kind of food you do like. I put on weight there.

Lunch the first day was a buffet. I didn't want that much so I just asked for chips and guac, which was ok but I had to pay for it, seems only the buffet was "included". Dinner that night was boiled chicken with canned cream of something soup on top.

I spent the rest of the week eating in town.

A lot of people really like SCC. It is what it is, for my $$ I much prefer Caribe Blu, but I like that it is much more laid back and has real beds. Eating and diving is never an issue there and the breakfast and lunch very reasonable never more than a few bucks for breakfast and <$10 for luch including a couple of cervesas. Rooms cleaner and bigger.

Downside to Caribe Blu is that it adds an extra 5 minutes or so to the hike to town from SCC.

As for the Palace, it's apples and oranges. As I said I don't like AI in Cozumel but when we bring the kid my wife insists. I've never stayed at the Presidente but the Palace is much nicer than any of the other AI's I've seen there. Location is directly across from Chedraui. I prefer Caribe Blu but the original author was asking about AI resorts, and it's a stretch to call either CB or SCC a resort or AI.

James

Another source you might find of interest is http://www.undercurrent.org. <_<

Jim Lyle got back on the 28th from another trip there, published his report today:

http://diver.net/bbs/posts002/70452.shtml

Lunch the first day was a buffet. I didn't want that much so I just asked for chips and guac, which was ok but I had to pay for it, seems only the buffet was "included". Dinner that night was boiled chicken with canned cream of something soup on top.

James

I don't want to start a flame war, but would like to set the record straight on the food at SCC.

You have a great selection at breakfast. Lunch is either the "diver's special" or order off the menu; includes the salad bar and ice-cream for dessert. You are not charged for ordering off the menu at lunch instead of the "diver's special." There are three choices of entree for dinner with soup/salad and dessert.

I've been going to SCC, once or twice a year, for seventeen years and I like good food. Different people like different things; my brother-in-law is a picky eater (doesn't like anything green) and has always been happy with his choices. If you have special needs, the kitchen will go out of their way to provide vegetarian alternatives.

The food is great at Scuba Club Cozumel and is one of the reasons we keep going back.

http://diver.net/bbs/posts002/70452.shtml

Great trip report Jim, as usual!

I'm still trying to drop the five pounds I picked up last time I was there and your trip reports always make me hungry!!

Great shots too, especially the highhat and the blue tang being cleaned by the French angelfish. I've never seen either and have yet to find that Nimble stray crab under the pier.

You are not charged for ordering off the menu at lunch instead of the "diver's special."

We've been through this before over on the evil empire. I don't know what to tell you, as I was most certainly charged for ordering chips and guac. Maybe the guy was new, maybe they just didn't like me, but I was definatly charged.