Cozumel, Palancar Diving, November 2009

Went to Occidental Grand Cozumel for week on November 7, 2009.
Both my spouse and I dive and used the on site dive shop Dive Palancar. Dive operation well organized with 4 regular dives each day plus night dives as requested. Dives are 9AM deep dive 80ft.; 10:30AM shallow dive 60 ft. 2PM Deep dive 80 ft. and 3:30 shallow dive 60 ft. Dive boats are normally punctual and have the tanks on board or go to the sister resort the Allegro next door to drop offf empty and pick up full tanks.
A one tank dive costs $32 USD,but you can get a package of 10 tanks for $290 USD, the package can be shared. In addition Nitrox is $6 per tank and there is a $2 per day charge for using the marine park.
The dive boats were very full for the morning dives, with some boats carrying up to 18 divers. Briefings were haphazardly done as the instructors seem to think evryone had been there before. Dives were conducted in groups of 6-8 with everyone going down and returning together, irregardless of how much air you had left.

The deeper dives were along very picturesque walls, with lots of swim throughs, fizzures in the walls and interesting structures. Occassional turtles, nurse sharks and small fish seen. The higlight of these dives was the topography. All the dive sites where within 20 minutes of the dock and most within 5 minutes.
The shallow dives were on top of the reef and revealled a tremendous amount of marine life, queen angel fish, turtles, small rays, scrawl fish, green moray, etc etc. Great visbility which kept improving daily as tropical storm IDA had passed by on the first day of our visit. Visibilty ranged from 40 - 85 ft.

In short; great visibility, lots of marine life and well organized dive operation, we will be back.