We were able to make suggestions on where we wanted to go and they would pick the best spot. They all went above and beyond to make sure our dives went smooth and everyone was happy. Freddie was the captain, Lorena and Fernando were our dive masters and Omar was our deck hand and gear handler. I can't say enough about the awesome crew we had! Since we had 11 in our party we were able to keep the same crew each day for the week. We stayed at the Sunscape Sabor and used Dive House as our dive headquarters. We went with other diving enthusiasts from our local dive shop. My husband and I just came back from diving in Cozumel. I will be checking on that with the proper authorities in the near future. We have no idea if the rest of the tag money ever made it to the Marine Park. At DH we were issued one tag and told to put it on our BCD. When we dove in November we were given a new tag every day as this would show the dive op was actually paying the monies collected for the Marine Park. In Coz it is required to pay a Marine Park fee on a daily basis which supports the Marine Park. I will close this lengthy review with a very disturbing fact. As a dive professional myself I found these requirements to be more for the convenience of the staff than a safety issue for the divers. David, however, made it mandatory that these divers, and their buddy, come up after 30 minutes regardless of their remaining air or their maximum depth, which was 50'. Certainly nowhere near pushing any limits. While I would have discouraged divers from doing five days of 2 tank dives on the tables, these divers only did one or two dives total. I saw no reason for this to be an issue as it has been done safely for the decades before computers came on the scene. Another issue we had was 1 or 2 of our divers chose to dive without a computer. Unfortunately for us the amount and variety of wildlife in no way compared to what we saw at Paradise. We were taken about 350 yards off shore, right in front of DH's pier, which I am sure was convenient and economical for them. We did two night dives with DH and neither time would they go to Paradise. One of many reviews one can find from the past few months. After researching Trip Advisor I found a night dive report from Jextolling the virtues of night diving at Paradise reef. I found it hard to believe that any pier could be built, from scratch, in only seven months. David told me that there was no more boat diving at Paradise because there had been a pier built that precluded boat diving. On our first night dive I requested that we go to Paradise Reef as we had dove there in November and it was a great dive with a great deal of wildlife. There was very little, if any, information on the actual dive site we were diving that day. Many of us wore wetsuits and the heat would become almost unbearable. While I do appreciate, and share his concerns, he would give this talk after we were kitted up and sitting in the hot sun. David would go through the same 10-15 minute "safety talk" every day. I see no reason Dive House couldn't do the same. We dove with a different operator in November 2015 and when they had a boat go down they had a rental boat on site within 20 minutes. When we asked to be switched to one of the smaller boats we were told they had one boat in for repairs and we could not switch. The boat we were assigned to is commonly referred to as a cattle boat, 22-27 divers plus crew, the exact type of craft we go out of our way to avoid. We just returned from Coz on Saturday, and while we had a great time with a great group of friends, Dive House did not meet the majority of my expectations. He also tends to blame individual divers, in advance of any issues, for any problems that occur while diving. With that in mind I need to let people know that David, the head DM, is overbearing, treats experienced divers as if they were children and on at least two occasions flat out lied to me about dive sites. Omar, the deck hand was one of the best I have ever had on a dive boat and both captains we had were excellent. I want to start off by saying that Dive Masters Antonio and Fernando were fantastic and a pleasure to dive with.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |