cozumel
Hello -
I have all of the photos that Isaac took on my laptop, so I am going to take advantage of the situation.
Here is Isaac swimming in the pool at Casa Marcos in San Miguel. 
And sucking down a coco frio.
We went dune buggying with a group and had a great time! We were amazed that they let us drive our own dune buggies. 
It is the opposite of an eco-tour and truly offended my granola sensibilities, but it reminded me of my childhood when we went 4×4′ing at Montana Creek.
The ruins that we saw were very intersting; this is El Castillo Real, a Mayan ruin on the Northwest coast of the island. 
And, we really enjoyed our lunch on the beach along with the hydroids, which did not sting. 
My mom; Aliza, a friend from Philadelphia (see dune buggy driver); and I went diving with Aldora Divers and thoroughly enjoyed the diving and the great service and helpful people.
There were ruins that we saw on Cozumel, San Gervasio and they were cool, 
but the iguanas were awesome.
At Chankanaab, a Disneyland-esque family spot that is only good for learning to overcome crowd-phobia, we saw a cool orange iguana! 
Another park that we visited, Punta Sur was interesting 
and we saw crocodiles. 
Our experience was slightly tainted when we learned that the park feeds the crocodiles chickens to keep them near the lookout, but that is the granola thing again.
Aldora set up a day tour of the Yucatan Peninsula for us and we had a great day on the Mayan Riviera. We took the ferry from Cozumel over to Playa del Carmen and met Joaquim who took us to Aktun Chen, a park where we toured a set of dry caves. 
We also got a tour of the snakes and the monkeys that they have rescued and now house. We then went to lunch at a local restaurant before we headed to Tulum.
We walked around the ruins 
and went swimming at the beach at Tulum 
with half of the population of Europe before we packed up and headed to Dos Ojos cenote. 
We went snorkeling through the caves with Joaquim as the guide and it was fantastic, we were completely enthralled!
I could go on and on, Cozumel was wonderful and we really enjoyed our trip, but I will stop for now. -m.
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wow. now THAT was a post…or maybe it’s a documentary! great photos, wonderful commentary…feel like I’VE been in cozumel the past 10 minutes. very cool. our upcoming trip to kauai may be our last hawaii foray for a year or two…we’ve been talking about a disneyland-mexico trip…maybe summer (or spring) of 2006…looks like a wonderful diversity of topography and activities, so we’ll definitely consider cozumel! thanks for a great post…jack
Looks and sounds like fun except for the snake part. So how was the diving what did you see how deep did you go?
The diving was awesome! Given the strong current, most of the diving is drift diving, where the boat drops you off and you drift with the current and then shoot up a marker for the boat to come pick you up a set amount of time before you ascend.
Our first dive was at Paradise Reef, an easy one on a beautfiul reef to get back into the swing of things. A few days later we did a two-tank morning dive where we started at Palancar Gardens and that was spectacular. We did a multi-level dive and went through a series of swim-throughs and saw some amazing sea life, including a shark resting under a small ledge and a brain coral the size of our rented vw bug. We did our surface interval at the beach club at Nachi-Cocom and then headed out in the boat not far off the beach to the San Francisco Wall where we saw a great spectrum of sea life there as well.
The water around Cozumel has been protected for the last 20+ years, so the corals are all alive and vibrant and the fish are plentiful.
In all cases we averaged 70 minutes down and the deepest that I went was 72 feet on San Francisco Wall.
Aldora was amazing; in every instance, they went above and beyond. Jon, thank you very much for the recommendation. Aldora was a huge part of the success of our trip. -m.
I’m so impressed that you got some photos up already. I will send some of mine when I actually have a chance to download them. Isaac got some great shots! would love to se the rest…
Sounds like a fanitastic trip. Do you think it would be an okay kid trip? I love taking the kids to Hawaii.
Yes, I do think that kids would enjoy Cozumel. There are a lot of activities, laid back atmosphere, and plenty of restaurants that can handle kids.
The long trip to and from Alaska would be the tough with kids, but just travel in the end.
Renting the house would be the key for me for kids, as it works when I travel with Isaac!