Dive West Trip to
Cozumel, Mexico
Aug 1-4, 2003

The trip was a long weekend, leaving on Friday, returning on Monday, staying at the Fiesta Americana, with unlimited shore diving and two, 2-tank boat dives with their on site operation, the Dive House.

The accomodations are pretty decent, rooms are light andand airy, every one with an ocean view, there's a fridge and the air conditioner can really chill the room down. There's hair dryers and an electronic safe, the maids are coming through twice a day. The only really odd thing is that the commode has a wall about 6 inches in front of it -- that's fine but makes for some interesting contortions gaining access.

The pool area is very nice and there seem to be quite a few people just there for the resort and not diving. But then there are some things that are just peculiar. There's a swim up bar in the pool, but it closes at 5pm. There's a walk up bar on the patio that opens at 5, but it has no bar stools. I'm thinking there are just a few tweaks they could do to this setup and double their income from divers.

Food over at the seaside restaurant is pretty decent, but a little pricey and they are only open for breakfast and lunch. There's an inside restaurant -- but don't even consider it. You'll do better staying in the room and consuming the stuff out of the mini-bar.

Of course this didn't phase us, half the reason to come to Cozumel is the restaurants. This time we only made it to two.

Friday night was La Choza. We were a little disappointed this time as the fish selection was limited to mahi-mahi for the fillet and small barracuda on the steaks that the waiter recommended against. The main reason we went was I'd been dreaming about the giant wahoo steak I'd gotten the year before, or the snapper fillets from several other trips. Alas, we had to make do with mahi-mahi. It was a pleasant dinner with Steve, and we talked about little things like him firing Auntie Anna May and his search for a rustic musical instrument he called a weedle.

Saturday, most of the party was doing the night dive, so we decided to do a date night and go to the Sonora Grill. We got the table in the cross breeze in the corner looking down over Avienda Benito Juarez Y Avienda 15 Norte. We sat there with giant schooners of margarita's and watched life go by as it does in San Miguel. We saw a wedding party come by in a white glittering pumpkin shaped coach pulled by an ancient Toyota pickup, with the guests trailing behind on scooters. We noted that the store across the street billed itself as "Instrumento Musica Traditionales de Mexico" and figured if there was anyplace Steve could find a weedle this had to be it.

We ordered the mixed seafood grill for 2, for 330 pesos. It had lobster tail, shrimp, conch, mahi mahi, octopus, vegetables, baked potato and garlic butter. It was fantastic! Fantastic enough that we did it again the next night. When we walked up on Sunday, Vincent, who had been our waiter the previous night, met us at the bottom of the stairs and said, "Sorry, we are not open." I guess I looked like I was about to cry as he started laughing and ushered on in to our favorite table. We introduced us to Tonio, one of the owners who was tending bar and they both took very good care of us through the evening.

That was pretty much the vacation. We ate, we slept, we dove. (Sounds like it should have a snappy Latin translation, huh?) It was just what we were looking for. The icing on the cake was upon our return to Dallas, we found our weather had been more than 10 degrees cooler. Imagine that, going to Mexico to avoid the heat....

Deanne did get a few cool pictures. The hawksbill turtle at the top of the page came up after most of the group had already entered a swim through at Palancar Bricks. The cleaner shrimp in the anemone could be shot since we had so little current on Tormentos. The picture of the spotted filefish from Delilah shows two stages of the transition from brown with white spots to the rust orange. The big eyed jacks on Columbia Reef were on a mission, but I was just wondering how much they would taste like tuna. And the little blue eyed hermit crab looks like he'w wearing his shell like a sombrero.

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