Casa del Mar

While shore diving is never as awesome compared to the boat dives in Cozumel, this shore dive kept us entertained every afternoon. They have this weird concrete pods with holes in them to create artificial structure for animals, as well as other structures put there to entice reef life to show up. There is a small wall at about 30 feet, which has lots of small caverns and crevices for lobsters, crabs, eels, etc. If you like looking for micro life, this is a great dive. the days we dove in June, there was very little current. We were shallow enough that my youngest son snorkeled above us and free dove down to us many times. We had 75-90 minute dives here (as long as our tanks lasted) since it was so shallow. The entry stairs are very slippery and we had to be really careful going up and down not to fall. They told us we could giant stride off the pier, but it seemed like a really long way down to giant stride. For $10 per tank, you can't go wrong here, especially if you like the little critters.

We took our first shore dive of our vacation at Casa del Mar as a check-out dive before doing some boat diving. Rather disappointing - very small coral heads. Current was moderate and made us work. Boat traffic was bad - difficult to get down deep enough to be safe while within the "safe" buoys, so had to keep a watch-out constantly. Fish were decent, but unremarkable - one trumpet, two very pretty flounder and a couple of nice angels. Entry and exit were decent - clean non-sandy place to get set up and take down equipment. Surf was moderate to get in and out - made it some work. Wouldn't recommend for beginner, and not enough of interest for intermediate or advanced except as a check dive.

My husband and I had just spent a week on Isla Mujeres (where we did one two-tank dive), then spent two weeks on the Star Clipper, doing dives about every other day, then spent a few days in Playa Del Carmen, where we did a two-tank ceynote dive. Unfortunately, my husband picked up an ear infection from the bacteria in the ceynote and I had some swelling in my ears, so we weren't able to dive for a week. The day the doctor told us we could dive again, we decided to do an easy shore dive just to make sure there were no problems clearing our ears. The entry would have been very easy if the surf hadn't been up that day. There are steps leading down to the water. However, we had to time our entrance to we could get out far enough that a wave wouldn't bash us against the wall. We snorkeled out past the roped area, then dropped down and went straight out. There was no current to speak of, which was surprising. Saw several lobster, a moray eel, a various fish. Not a lot of coral. It was mostly mounds of coral with lots of sand in between. I wouldn't recommend this for beginners since there is often a current, plus there is a lot of boat traffic. Not a terribly interesting dive, but was perfect for our purpose of checking to make sure our ears were OK before going out on a boat.