Delta has jacked up prices for flights out of Minneapolis to the point that they are not competitive any more. If the cost between flying Delta and another airlines is only $100 to $150 I would choose Delta to get the frequent flier miles but Delta was over $300 more expensive than Continental, which is who we booked with. It is ridiculous how badly Delta is gouging MSP.

Another early flight for vacation. Not the bleary-eyed 5:30 am like our flight to Cozumel but a still an early 6:20 am. Normally I am the one that wants to be at the airport at least an hour and a half early but we were running late and got to the airport forty minutes before take off and I could have cared less, I felt no pressure. Very odd for me. I must have given all of my stress to Karen because she was anxious until we were seated on the plane.

We entered the Park and Fly lot following a Nissan Pathfinder with a large utility box on the back. He found a spot before we did and he hadn’t gotten out of his car until after Karen and I had boarded the shuttle and found a seat. The shuttle started to leave when he finally got out of his truck. The reason I am writing about this is because I don’t believe in racial profiling, it doesn’t work. Neither the shoe bomber or the underwear bomber were middle eastern.

Ok, that said, the person that got out of the truck had a beard and was wearing what I believe is called and arab thobe and had an Arab type skull cap. The only luggage he had was a very small garment bag. I was breathing a little easier when the van dropped him off at Humphrey before dropping us off at the main terminal.

The person spoke perfect English and if he had a collar shirt and blue jeans on I wouldn’t give him a second look but dressed the way he was and carrying a flimsy garment bag, taking a long time to get our of his car and having a large metal utility box mounted to the bumper hitch of his SUV screams I am a terrorist. Actually there weren’t any hijacking that day or explosions at the Park and Fly so he is most likely just your everyday airline passenger but I don’t understand why he would want to draw that kind of attention to himself.

Back to the trip. We connected in Houston and Arrived in Cancun at 2:20 pm. It took us very little time to clear customs and immigration. I had booked a shuttle through Luxury Vans so when we exited the airport into the roiling mass of salesmen trying to sell shuttle rides we walked past all of them and found the Luxury Van representative holding the sign with my name on it. I looked at him, he nodded to me and we followed him the van. Simple and easy.

It was about a half hour drive to Puerto Jaures. I had purchased our ferry tickets through the van company and they had also arranged for a taxi on Isla. It was lucky that we prepurchased tickets for the ferry because it was boarding when we arrived and we had to run to catch it. It was a short ferry ride to Isla and the taxi driver met us at the terminal, again holding a sign with my name, and drove us to Privilege Aluxes.

The front desk area at the Aluxes is small by five star Mexican resort standards. The unique architectural feature of the entrance is there is a glass section of floor  with running water beneath it.

Check in was quick. They gave us a glass of champagne and the bell hop showed us to our room. Our room was large and modern. There was a kitchen area with a stove top but the only refrigerator was a mini bar fridge that was sealed and I never broke the seal but I am sure that I would have been charged it I did. The living room area had a flat screen TV, leather couch and a coffee table. The bedroom had a king size bed, a flat screen TV and a wall unit to hang and store clothes. The bathroom was large with a glassed in toilet and shower area. The balcony was large and could be accessed via sliding glass doors from the living room or bedroom. The hot tub sat on one end of the balcony and the other end of the large balcony look barren because it only had two small wicker chairs and a small table. Despite all of the quirks listed below Karen and I liked the resort.

The grounds are beautiful and well kept. The beach area is nice. We had breakfast at the resort every morning. They had the usual assortment of fruit, cereal, pancakes, yogurt, and sausage and they had a chef that would prepare eggs or an omelet for you.

There were some aspects of the resort that were irritating or perplexing. We used a key card to enter our room but it never opened the first time. We had to insert the key card three times on average to open our door. Once we entered the room we had to insert our key card into a slot to turn on the electricity and air conditioning but again we had to insert the card two or three times before the electricity and air would activate.

We unpacked and then headed for the beach. We didn’t feel like having a drink and it was a good thing we didn’t, it was impossible to waive down a waiter as we lounged under our palapa. We relaxed and read for a while and then went for a dip in the bath water warm North Beach waters only to find that it was not as warm as we remembered. What we discovered is that if you walk around the point to Ixchel the water is about six degrees warmer, that is where the bath-water warm water is. The only reason that I can think of for the difference in temperature is there must be a current on the west side of the island.

One of the really nice features of the Aluxes beach area is that it is roped off and the vendors do not come inside. I think the vendors have a right to earn a living and most of them are very polite and will leave you alone of you say no but it is nice to not have to say no gracias a dozen times a day.

We relaxed on the beach until dinner time. We hadn’t decided on where to eat  so we just walked down Hildago until we found a restaurant that looked good.  We had never eaten at the L’Argentina Grill on any of our past trips to Isla but it looked inviting when we strolled past. The special was seafood grill, iIt consisted of grilled shrimp, fish, squid and pickled octopus. We both liked it but I was still a little hungry when we finished, which was OK because we walked past Cool on the way back to the resort and stopped in for some ice cream. I remember the ice cream at Cool being much better the last time were were on Isla but that may have had something to do with the dead ringer for Selma Hayak.

Day 2

We had breakfast at Aluxes. I am not a breakfast person so I grabbed a box of Zuchaitas, they have Tony the Tiger on the box and taste suspiciously like frosted flakes. They had several juices available so I tried the cactus-celery juice. It wasn’t terrible but I could not finish it. Karen had an omelet and some fruit.

Carey Dive Center is our shop of choice. We dove with them when they were called Coral Divers. I dove with them when I was in Isla two years ago and Hurricane Ida skirted around Isla. I was able to get one dive in before the weather deteriorated but it was enough to know that I like the people at Carey.

We were glad that we chose Carey. Gilberto was a great dive master and the rest of the dive masters are pretty good too. Umberto is an excellent boat captain and Antonio is a lot of fun to around. Antonio is a deaf mute and his job is to operate that compressor and refill the tanks. A job that is well suited for someone that is deaf. You would understand if you have ever heard the compressors operating.

We had to asked the name of the first dive site several times and we are not sure exactly what it was called. It was something like Pierta La Traraita or Pietra La Tratoria. It was a good first dive. We saw several nurse sharks, large turtles, a tiny black and white drum fish, lobsters and a school of Atlantic spade fish. The spade fish look like a much larger version of angel fish that I use to have in my aquarium when I was a kid.

The second dive was Sleeping Shark Cave. This was made famous by Jacques Cousteau back in the 1960s. It was thought that sharks had to swim to breath, they cannot force water through their mouths to their gills like other fish. Cousteau found a cave (it’s more of a swim-through than a cave) where there was a steady current and so the sharks could sit on the ocean floor and the current could force water past their gills allowing the sharks to breath and also sleep. I remember seeing the Undersea world of Jacques Cousteau program about this when I was a kid. I couldn’t imagine that I would dive that very site years later.

Sleeping Shark did not have as much sea life as the first dive. We saw a large puffer, a large parrot fish another drum fish and a spotted eel but no sleeping sharks.

We had the good furtune of diving with Darrell and Shari and Ron. Ron is a property manager from Texas that has lived on Isla for a while. His company manages six houses on Isla and he also is a dive master that helps out Gilberto from time to time.

Darrell and Shari work at a non prophet in Idaho and they come to Mexico once a year to volunteer at a small village in the jungles of the Yucatan. They have been diving with Carey Dive Center since it opened and they seemed to be friends with Gilberto.  The have been doing resort dives for the last five years and both of them have more than sixty dives. With that many dives Gilberto finally put his foot down and made them get certified this year.

Shari’s seventy-four year old mother came with them this year and she actually did two resort dives and loved them. I can’t imagine starting to dive at seventy-four but I admire her for doing it.

Diving with Shari, Darrell and Ron worked to our advantage for lunch. Since Sleeping Shark Cave was not in the national underwater park Gilberto could spearfish. He got a snapper, hogfish and several lobster. Ron paid to have Minino’s restaurant grill the lobster and fish and I bought beer or more accurately I gave my pesos to Rudolpho to buy the beer because the convenience store charges locals less than they do tourists. The fish and lobster couldn’t be any fresher and they were great.

After lunch we relaxed on the beach, read and had a cervesa. dive vacations are about decompressing in more ways than one.

We felt like Italian for dinner so we went to Mama Rosa’s. I pulled the restaurant up on Trip Advisor and it had several bad reviews but they were from early 2010. Everything recent was either four or five star. The food was excellent I had chicken breast and Karen had one of their pasta dishes.

Day 3

We started the day by diving Bridge Point. Darrell and Shari finished their open water certification. The dive had a lot of nice coral formations and swim throughs. Unfortunately for Karen she was behind Darrell in the swim through. He hadn’t done any cave diving so he hadn’t perfected the frog kick which is used to prevent kicking up sand.

The dive had a good amount of sea life, we saw a small yellow ray, many starfish, conch, file fish and lobster.

The second dive was Castle Point and it is located next to Bridge Point so the dive was similar to our first. It had nice coral formations and swim throughts. We saw trigger fish, starfish and a lone barracuda.

We really liked diving with Carey Dive Center with one exception and that exception was during our safety stops Rudolpho had the annoying habit of grabbing Karen by the top of her tank and holding on to her to keep her at 15 feet.  Karen admits that she will start the safety stop low, about 20 feet, and slowly creep up to 15 feet. She does this to keep from shooting to the surface during the safety stop. Still, grabbing her by the first stage is a little extreme.

Neither Karen or  I are are confrontative people so we never told Rudolfo to quit grabbing her during the safety stop. Instead, after a couple of days, I figured out the I could put my self between Rudolfo and Karen and this would keep him away.

Once back on shore Gilberto invited us to have lunch at the shop again, he speared a huge lobster, a couple of smaller ones and several fish. We declined, Gilberto is such a good host that he lets us “diver” guests get our fill first before the shop employees can eat. When we joined them on Sunday it felt like we were taking food out of the employee’s mouths so we opted to have Lunch at Minio’s instead. We ate at Minio’s when we were here in 2009 and like it. We both had fish tacos and they were excellent.

Gilberto told us he was going to do a  night dive Monday. The newly certified Darrell and  Shari were going to and so was Ron Herrman, who dove with us on Saturday. We met at the dive shop at 6:30 pm. We took the short boat ride out to Manchiones reef.  We arrived before sunset so we geared up and watched the sun slowly set over Cancun.

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Shari and Darrell were excited and a little anxious to do a night dive. I remember my first night dive, it was really surreal everything was pitch black except for the beams of our flashlights. It is a little disorientating at first but you get use to it so I understand why they were a little anxious.

Once the sun set we back rolled into the water. My dive computer told me that the water temp was the same as our dive earlier in the day but without the warm sunshine it felt Minnesota cold.

We saw all of the usual reef denizens but most of them were hiding in the crevices in the reef and seemed irritated that we were shinning our lights on them making them easier for the predators to see. Go figure! The video below is a compilation of the creatures that we saw during the night dive.

The first fish that we saw were blue tangs. Then we started seeing sleeping parrotfish, they looked dead, their color was all wrong and they were laying completely motionless with their eyes open.  They can cover themselves in mucus when they sleep and I did see that in Belize but I saw no mucus encased parrotfish on this dive.

We saw mating sea urchins with billows of eggs or sperm rising from them. We saw lobsters poking out of the reefs to check us out and then ducking for cover again.

I had never seen a sea cucumber at night before. During the day they are about a foot long maybe a little longer and if you pick one up they feel semi rigid. At night they stretch out to over five feet long.

We saw turtles everywhere. Darrel was counting them and there were over a dozen. We were warned not to shine our flashlights directly in their eyes because it temporarily blinds them. In the video above you can see that someone accidentally blinded a turtle and he slowly swam into a small coral head.

At the end of the dive Gilberto rounded us up and indicated that we should turn our flashlights off. Karen and I knew why but I don’t think Darrell and Shari knew why. Once we turned our lights out we waved our hands and we saw what looked like sparks eminating from our finger tips, it was bioluminesence. It was a nice finish to our hour long dive.

It was a good night dive and Darrell and Shari really enjoyed their first night dive. Once we got back to shore we did our usual post dive duties. We hauled our gear to the second floor of the dive shop, rinsed it in their fresh water tank and hung it to dry. Gilberto let us sleep in the next day. He told us that we could do an afternoon dive so we didn’t have to be at the shop until 12:30 pm.

It was about ten minutes to 10:00 pm by the time we made it back to the resort. We hadn’t had dinner, we were still in our swimsuits and we hadn’t rinsed the salt water off of us.  We looked pretty rough. I thought maybe we could grab dinner at the beach bar at the Aluxes. We were told that the dress was beach casual, what ever that is. Our dress was so far below beach casual that I wasn’t sure that we would even get in.  The guard let us in because we had an Aluxes wrist band on. Once in, I asked one of the waiters if they were still serving food, he said the kitchen was open until 10:00 pm. I said great, can you seat us. He said they are not serving food anymore. I didn’t want to get in an argument about the restaurant being open for ten more minutes so went back to our room and showered and went out for dinner.

We decided to have pizza and salad at our favorite pizza restaurant in town, Rohlandi’s. The food tasted really good after our long day of diving. We had just eaten at the Rohlandi’s in Cozumel four months earlier and the Isla Rohlandi’s is definitely much better. We passed Cool on the way back to the room so we stopped for a dish of ice cream. Vanilla for me and chocolate for Karen.

Day 4

Gilberto planned an afternoon dive for us sine we had gotten back so late so we didn’t have to be back at the shop until 12:30 pm. Gilberto planned a wreck dive to Chairdel for us. RudoRudolfo our dive master.  We got to the wreck site and there appeared to be no current. We started the dive and at 70 feet we ran into a murky brown layer of water. We were less than fifteen feet away from the wreck and could not see it. Not the best conditions to do a wreck dive so Rudolfo called the dive off and we surfaced.

We went back to Pietra La Traviada (or what ever it is called). We started the dive with a really nice encounter with three very large turtles. Smaller turtles are a little apprehensive when divers are around, They will let you approach them but they won’t let you get too close. The turtles we saw were huge and they weren’t the least bit concerned about us.

You can see from the video below that Rudolfo swam up to one of the turtles and started rubbing the bottom of its shell.  Luckily for me the turtle did a 180 and swam right at me. I was able to swim with it and pet its shell. The turtle dropped out of the frame for a second when I was waving Karen over to join me. We were able to swim with the turtle, me petting one side of the shell while Karen was petted the other. It was an incredible experience.

The rest of the dive was really good. We saw several nurse sharks tucked under ledges. We saw a school of spade fish, a school of grunts, jacks and we also saw a large eel.

The second dive was the same place, Pietra La Traviada. This was a really strange dive. I didn’t know what happened but early in the dive I saw Rudolfo and Darrell buddy breathing. Since Darryl had just finished his open water certification, I though Gilberto may have told Rudolfo to test Darrell.  A little later in the dive I saw Rodolfo and Shari buddy breathing.This was a little strange. Rudolfo ended the dove after just thirty minutes. We found out why at lunch.

The dive was good, we saw some more nurse sharks, another large green eel, a brown spotted eel and we had a file fish follow us for a while which is really weird, fish usually don’t want anything to do with divers.

Once we got back we ask Darrel and Shari to have lunch with us. We went to Minio’s again. They also had eaten here before and liked it. There were two gentlemen that play a wooden xylophone and Darrell immediately tipped them 20 pesos and they began playing.

Darrell and Shari had snow crab. The shared some with Karen and she loved it. Karen had shrimp tacos and I had chicken tacos.During lunch we asked them why they were buddy breathing with Rudolfo. We were suprised to find out that he ran our of air! I don’t know what happened for sure but most likely he grabbed a tank that was almost empty for the second dive.[break][break]

Between lunch and dinner we read under the palapas at Aluxes and waded in the warm waters of North Beach.We went to Lanchero’s for dinner. Darrell and Shari recommended it and the Map Chick map has it listed as one of the better seafood restaurants. The food was not bad here but this was our least favorite meal on the island. Karen had grilled fish, it was a little bland. I ordered the shrimp skewers. Fresh shrimp cooked on a grill. How can I go wrong? The shrimp was as bland as Karen’s fish. Neither meal was bad but not as good as Minio’s.[break][break]

We walked past Gelateria Monte Bianco on the way home. We stopped in for a couple of dishes of gelato. The gelato was excellent, much better than Cool. I had vanilla with chocolate drizzled over the top of it and Karen had hazel nut.[break][break]

Day 5

You cannot go to Isla in the summertime without doing a whale shark swim. Whale shark season is May through September, they gather off Contoy Island to feed on the plankton blooms. I cannot describe how amazing it is to be in the water with these gentle giants of the sea. They are 30 to 40 feet in length or longer with a large mouth to seine food from the water. It is a once in a lifetime experience, well twice form us. We swam with the whale sharks back in 2008 too.

When we booked our trip through Carey Dive Center Gilberto told us to meet at Minio’s at 7:30 am. Gilberto also told is to bring our wetsuits so we wouldn’t have to wear life jackets when swimming with the whale sharks. It is much easier to swim in a wetsuit  than a life jacket and you have to swim hard to keep up with the whale sharks.

Diving with the whale sharks is controlled by the government. You have to wear a life jacket or a wetsuit. The price is controlled, it is suppose to be $120 per person but Gilberto only charged us $85 per person. I would guess we got a package discount. When you dive with the whale sharks the rules state that only a guide and two swimmers are allowed per whale shark but if the government boat is not there those rules get bent a little bit.

We grabbed a quick breakfast at Aluxes before going to Minio’s. When we arrived at Minio’s they divided the people into groups. We ended up going with a group of divers that had also booked with Carey. They were a family, brothers, sisters and in-laws. Really  nice people.

I am not sure if it was the luck of the draw that we got the boat that we ended up in or if you book through Carey you automatically get Elmer’s boat. It was the fastest boat in the whale shark fleet. Elmer’s boat is a catamaran with twin 115 horsepower engines on the back. Since the boat was a catamaran it had a lot of  room and it was a comfortable ride even with  nine of us on board.

We were the first boat from Isla to arrive at the site. Isla Holbox has whale shark tours too, since Holbox is closer they were three or four boats already there.All of us started scanning the water looking for the dorsal and tail fins of the whale shark. This is nature so there is no guarantee that the whale sharks were going to show. After only five minutes we saw a whale shark and got ready for the swim.

Karen and I were first up. We sat on the edge of the boat with our guide as they tried to position the boat so we could jump in next to the whale shark. Once we hit the water I was kicking like crazy trying to keep up with the big fish while I was snapping pictures.  What I didn’t know is that there was another whale shark that was closer and Karen and the guide started chasing that one.  I finally gave up  and when I looked up Karen and the guide were about twenty yards away.

As the boat motored over to picked us up I paddled over to join Karen and the guide. Once we were picked up everyone started looking for another whale shark while the next group propped themselves on the edge of the boat ready to go.Each group got to swim with the whale sharks three times. As you can see from the picture below some of the groups had more the two people. We found out that if the government boat wasn’t on site the tour boats would put three or four people in the water at a time. I felt a little sorry for the whale sharks with that many people around it was hard for them to eat.

Once we all got a chance to swim with the whale sharks Elmer sped back to the port entrance near North Beach on Isla. We stopped and had lunch. They fed us chicken sandwiches and shrimp ceviche which was excellent. After we ate we went snorkeling. The snorkeling was good, we had good visibility, and we saw a lot of fish. We didn’t see anything out of the ordinary, we saw parrot fish, angel fish, star fish, and many sea cucumbers.

Elmer had us back on shore at 2:30 pm. Besides being a boat captain he also owned a souvenir shop in town and he sells long sleeve shirts that says “I swam with the shale sharks”. Karen and I found the shop later that evening and Karen bought one of the t-shirts.

We decided to go to our favorite restaurant on Isla, Olivia. From their website I learned that Olivia is owned by a group of Israelis living on Isla. They missed the Meditreanean food from their home land so they decided to they decided to open a restaurant  sharing the food they loved with the people and tourists on Isla.

Is you enter Olivia the hostess stand is straight ahead and the kitchen is to the right. Seating is directly ahead in an open courtyard with trees and plants surrounding the tables. The ambiance is wonderful. I had chicken and olives and Karen had had a chicken pastry. My meal was good but we had just eaten at a Greek restaurant in Minneapolis called the Gardens of Silinaca where I had the same meal and the Minneapolis version was better. Karen loved her chicken pastry. We had excellent spanakopita for desert.

Day 6

It is rainy season in Mexico and we had a few sprinkles from time to time earlier in the week but the rainy season came in full force and it rained most of Thursday and Friday. I should not complain, there was a tropical depression over the Yucatan the week before we arrived and according to several posts I read a post on Trip Advisor it rained almost the entire week and the Island lost power several times.

Darrell and Shari were done diving so we had a new dive partners. We dove with a couple from Colorado and a couple of guys vacationing on Isla. One of the guys owned a condo on Isla and was here with his family. His friend was from the US but was currently living in Costa Rica.

It is strange how you can look at someone and make snap judgements about them. One of the guys had long black hair and the other had short brown hair. They were both about five feet ten inches tall and easily over two hundred pounds. They both looked like the kind of guy you didn’t want to cross. I thought they could be hit men for the mob. I could imagine them standing over a gave with a still moving victim at the bottom talking about the excellent wine they had for dinner while they calmly buried alive their poor victim.

We were talking about them at dinner that evening and Karen’s initial take on them was they were trouble, she didn’t buy into my hit man scenario. Luckily we were wrong, they had great stories and were a lot of fun to dive with. One of the guys was a Nashville talent agent for country and Christian singers. The other guy had been in the construction business in Costa Rica but wasn’t forthcoming about what he was doing now, part of the reason that I was suspicious of him.

It was drizzling when we got in the boat and it continued drizzling for most of the day. This didn’t effect us much, it just made us put on our wetsuits for the ride to the dive site. We had both Gilberto and Rudolfo with us as dive masters. They split us into two groups the two guys went with Gilberto and Karen and I and the other couple went with Rudolfo.

The C55 is an old Mexican navy boat that was intentionally sunk in 2000. It was later broken apart by hurricane Wilma. It sits in 70 to 80 feet of water. We were lucky there was no current during our dive. We were able to free descend rather than having to go hand over hand down the mooring rope. As we descended the water temperature took a sharp decline from 84 to 77 degrees.

We were greeted at the stern of the wreck by a large crab. It didn’t take Rudolfo long to find a cleaner shrimp that he set in our hands but it kept jumping out trying to get to the safety of the ocean floor. We encountered a large amount of sealife as we swam; gray angels, file fish, barracuda and much more. Karen found a large green eel wedged in part of the wreck.

There are large schools of eagle rays and sharks that frequent the wreck but we saw neither.It’s OK though, we saw enough other sealife. Gilberto told us there would be a swim through, not very long through part of the ship. To be honest I wanted to do the swim through. I have no problems scuba diving in open water but because of several equipment failures I have problems being in closed in places while I am underwater. I refused to do Devil’s Throat when we were in Cozumel last April. You enter Devil’s Throat through a cave at 70 feet. Devil’s Throat is roughly a three foot wide tunnel through the coral and you exit at 130 feet.

We checked out the bow section of the wreck and then made our way the stern section where the swim through was located. Rudolfo entered the swim through first. It it a partially collapsed passageway through the ship that leads to the rear deck of the boat. It appeared to be a tight fit to get through the passageway and I bumped my tank once. Not that daring of a swim through but still a cool experience.

For our safety stop all six of us divers clung to the mooring line bobbing in the water for three minutes. Rudolfo snapped a picture of is during the safety stop, we were all crammed together on the mooring line bobbin in ocean. Unfortunately we were bobbing and Rudolfo was bobbing so the picture was blurry.

It was still overcast and drizzling when we surfaced so we were all chilled during our forty-five minute surface interval.We did No Name for the second dive. It was a short boat ride away. No Name is a shallow dive only about forty feet. As I sat on the edge of the boat I did my usual predive ritual. I tapped the inflator on my BC and heard air rush into my BC. I stuck my regulator into my mouth and sucked air in several times. IWe had to wait a minute because someone was having gear problems, I decided to test my regulator one more time and I had no air. Someone forgot to turn it on and if I would have rolled into the ocean seconds sooner I wouldn’t have had air.

We back-rolled into 84 degree water and we hit the cold current again.Once on the bottom we saw huge schools of fish, literally the largest  we have seen since we have started diving. There were huge schools of jacks and grunts. We saw two large green eels  in the open just sitting and watching us swim by, if they could see that far. Eels are know for being extremely near sighted.

Rudolfo brought us through a short swim through. I was the last one through and when I approached the exit Rudolfo was sitting at the exit. At first I was not sure what he was doing but as I approached Rudolfo he pointed to the ceiling. I rolled on my side and and looked up. About a foot above my head there was a medium sized brown spotted eel tucked into a crevasse. He didn’t seem to concerned about all of the divers.

C55 and No Name were two of the best dives that we have ever done. The sea life was incredible, especially considering we were just of Cancun.I am going back to Mexico in November and I am seriously considering staying in and diving off of Cancun based on the two dives we did today.

Once we got back we discussed where we should have dinner. Even though we had already eaten at Minio’s twice, the snow crab that Darrell and Shari had look delicious so we went to Minio’s again. The snow crab was great and it was only $125 pesos. Karen ordered hers boiled. I had mine boiled in garlic and butter. Karen’s crab was good but mine was better.After dinner we walked back to the Gelateria Monte Bianco for a little gelato. I had my usual vanilla and chocolate and Karen had hazel nut.

This was the first time Karen had experienced a full day of rain in Mexico. Luckily, since we are divers it didn’t effect us much, it just reduced the amount of sunlight during our dives so the colors weren’t as brilliant as they would have been.

Day 7

This was our last day diving for this vacation. We dove with the couple from Colorado again. Gilberto’s business was really hopping this year. The last two times we were in Isla when we dived it was just us and the dive master and occasionally one other couple. This year we have had at least one other couple and sometimes more people  on every trip. Gilberto is doing something right or the economy is picking up.

Gilberto’s first boat was full boat so he arranged to have his other boat to take us out. Our dive master was little Bento. I thought he was the boat captain’s son and Karen thought he was Gilberto’s son. We are not sure who he is related to for sure but he is definitely related to someone at the shop.

We dove Dormitorio on the first dive. The dive site is on the windward side of the island and it is relatively shallow, less than thirty-five feet. It was raining again and a little choppy so the visibility was only about fifty feet. Dormitorio had a really nice swim through at the beginning of the dive. It wasn’t that long but once you enter you swim down and then up to exit.

There are a lot of puffers on the windward side of the island also many rays. They were not to concerned with divers, we got fairly close and they never moved. We also saw large schools of grunts.

Since the first dive was so shallow the surface time was minimal, just the short time it took us to motor from one location to the next. Which was good because it was raining again so it was hard for us to warm up.The second dive was Media Luna. It was a nice dive to end the week. It was shallow but it had a lot of sea life. Like the first dive there were large schools of grunts and several large rays. I saw a small yellow ray the I reached out and almost touched and it would not move. Unfortunately we saw a lot of lion fish, the bane of the Caribbean.

The woman that we dove with told us on the ride back that a year and a half ago she was so afraid of the water that she wouldn’t even go in a pool. She took swim classes somewhere in Florida for people with a fear of water and now she can dive. Amazing!

This was our last dive so we settled up at the shop, packed up our gear and Gilberto gave us two free Carey Dive Center t-shirt. We hauled our gear back to the room. I filled the hot tub and we soaked our gear. It was much easier when we rented and the shop took care of the gear but on the other hand I would rather dive with my gear than rental equipment.

Once the gear was taken care of we went back to Minio’s one last time for lunch. I had fish tacos and Karen was feeling adventurous so she ordered the seafood kabob. It had fish, shrimp, octopus and squid.  She wasn’t that adventurous, I had to try the octopus before she would. It was grilled so it was ok. Octopus is a little rubbery so it is not the best texture wise. Karen tried it but it was’t for her. All she had was one bite.

It stopped raining so we enjoyed our last day on the beach. Had a couple of cervesas, read and swam in the warm North Beach water.Our original plan for dinner was to go back to Olivia but we opted for something more casual. We went to Rohlandi’s and had peperoni pizza and a salad. We had to have gelato on our last night so we went back to Gelateria Monte Bionca again.

Day 8

Our flight was at 12:10 pm which gave us enough time to have breakfast and finish packing. Our taxi driver picked us up at 9:00 am and had us at the ferry terminal shortly after. The shuttle driver was a few minutes late once we got to the Puerto Jaurez side.

Then it’s about a twenty minute drive to the airport. Once there, we discovered that the line for the Continental ticket counter extended half way across the terminal. It took us forty-five minutes to to get to the ticked counter and that was only because it was getting close to boarding time so an airline employee had us jump ahead. It was good that the line was short going through security. We didn’t have enough time to grab lunch so I bought a soda, water, cookies for me and nuts for Karen at one of the airport stores. It ran $11. Not bad, the family in front of me dropped $55 for snacks. That is worse than airports in the US.

We were delayed 15 minutes leaving Cancun, so once we cleared customs in Atlanta and took the tram from the international terminal to our departure terminal our plane had left. We arrived at the gate to be informed that the plane was gone. I was a little pissed so I asked the gate agent what now? I wasn’t an ass but I am sure that she could I was mad. She asked for our tickets and printed new ones and handed them to me without saying a word. I thought she owed me an explanation so rather than look at the tickets I asked her what they were for. She said the 7:10 flight and they were first class. I was dumbfounded and so was Karen so we uttered a thanks and left. We discussed it later and wished the agent had been a little more positive about putting us in first class, we would have liked to give her a proper thank you.

The late flight gave us a chance to have dinner at TGI Fridays. It is funny how perspective changes things, when we came back from Belize we ate the same restaurant and it tasted like the best food we ever had, because the food in Belize was so bad. I expected the same this time and the food was just so-so. Probably because the food was so good in Isla.

Our flight got us home late but we didn’t have to work the next day so it didn’t really matter. It was almost worth getting home late to fly first class.

Important things to know

We have talked to several experienced divers that have dived Isla and other locations in the Caribbean and we all agree, for the total dive experience Isla is hard to beat. By total dive experience I mean food, cost, things to do when not diving and the diving.

We were in Cozumel in March so it is easy to compare Isla and Cozumel. The food in Cozumel was definitely more expensive than Isla. Lunch will cost 120 to 150 pesos plus beer and tip. Lunch on Isla will cost 80 to 90 pesos plus beer and tip. Dinner is proportionally less expensive on Isla also. Generally speaking comparable lodging will be less on Isla.

If you go to Isla from May to September you can take a day off diving and swim with whale sharks. There are not many places in the world where you can do that! The main difference between the two island and this is important, Isla does not have cruise ships dumping off thousands of people on the island almost every day.

Comparing the diving between Isla and Cozumel is like comparing apples and naranjas. Cozumel is all drift diving. The deeper you go the more beautiful coral and sponges you will see but the amount of sea life is minimal. All of the dives on Cozumel are drift dives, it’s nice to do a dive without current so you can stop and look at the sea life.

There is some drift diving on Isla but most of the diving has minimal current. What I like about Isla is the amount of sea life. We saw much more sea life diving Isla than Cozumel.

There are many people that are rabid Cozumel fans and will disagree with what I have written. I know because I ran into some of them on Scubaboard.com. They will never admit that Isla can be as good as Cozumel but I have run into many people that agree with me that Isla is the best all around dive trip.