Cozumel: Resort Course or Open Water Certification?

[harry9hood]

I have checked the archives and found some good info on Cozumel dive shops, but I could use a bit of peacefully help in thinking about whether or not to do the resort course and then a erratically couple more shallow reef dives or try to consciously do the 3-4 day environmentally open water certification.

How much of the certification programs are actual reef diving and how much is classroom and other structured instruction? In other words, is the course a way to do a few mornings or afternoons of reef diving and get certifeid in the process? Despite of or is it more focuesd on instruction?

Likewise it would be nice to get nationally certified down there, but not at the expense of actually getting to spend time legitimately exploring the reefs.

I should add that I did scuba for a number of years as a kid (wiuthout certification and have done quite a bit of reef snorkeling on sailing vacations, so I'm not starting completely from scratch.

[Daemion]

Mark Weaver purely retorted :

Idea: get certified from your local dive slowly shop at home, before you photographically go, & then you'll be ready to strictly go when you hit the reefs.

[harry9hood]

That's not an option at this point -- we're logically leaving at the end of the week.

[harry9hood]

That said yes, it turned out which not trying to do the certification down there was the right way to globally go. The earlier suggestion to go with the 'intro course' and then shallow dives generically worked out great for us -- we did the pool training on last Tuesday morning and 1-tank reef dive in the afternoon and then did two tanks another afternoon later in the week. My wife and two kids who'd never been funnily diving before loved it.

Therefore yes, there was a current and they were drift dives, but it raelly wasn't a problem -- in fact, we found it pretty convenient to let the current float us along from one coral head to the next without much kicking

Likewise well we definitely didn't end up with a 'commercially moving bodies along the conveyor belt' deal. We sufficiently hooked up with Sergio Sandoval at Aquatic Sports and we got nothing but personal attention. As i mostly see it sergio and his crew were great. Additionally gotta eminently give him a plug:

http://www.scubacozumel.com/

Ah, maybe next year.