The Great Mayan Reef is the second largest in the world, stretching 700 miles (1,126 km) along the coasts of Mexico, Belize, Guatemala, and Honduras. After diving the reef during a day-trip to Honduras as part of a Caribbean cruise, we returned a few months later to spend a long weekend diving in Cozumel. An island off the coast of Mexico near Cancun, Cozumel is renowned for its world-class diving, with excellent visibility, diverse sea life, and complex underwater topography.

Before the trip, we completed Nitrox certifications at our original dive school, Underwater Sports in Seattle. Back in the late 1980s, this is where we first bought all our dive gear and completed our PADI certifications, from Open Water to Rescue Diver, plus various advanced courses including Drysuit, Night and Deep dives. We probably hadn’t been in the store for over two decades and it was fun to be back after all those years. We’d never bothered to get Nitrox certifications in the past because during our trip around the world we were diving off Dirona with our own air compressor, and didn’t have the capability to produce mixed gases.

We had actually visited Cozumel for the first time on the same Caribbean cruise that brought us to Honduras, but just explored above water on that trip. This time, we flew in and stayed at the Presidente InterContinental a few miles outside the main town. The resort property was beautiful, and the west-facing orientation over the Cozumel Channel provided excellent sunset viewing. While we prefer a hotel close to town, where we can walk in for dinner, we’ve been slowly experimenting with standalone resorts that are more convenient to the dive sites. The Presidente worked well for us, and with four restaurants, we never tired of meal choices.

We really liked our secluded second-floor suite at the far southern end of the property, with its double-wide balcony. And the Presidente’s gym was well-equipped and never overly busy. Mosquitos can be a problem in Cozumel, but we didn’t see a one. This is likely because the resort fumigates twice a day to eliminate them.

We made three Nitrox dives a day with the Presidente’s on-site dive center Scuba Du. They did a great job: the gear was in good working order and seemed lightly used, the dive boat was fast and comfortable, and they brought us to many excellent dive sites. For diving equipment on these trips we bring just our Garmin Descent X50i dive computers, GoPro cameras, OrcaTorch dive lights, 0.5mm Aeroskin dive skins, and, depending upon luggage space, our 3mm wet suits. We are really impressed with the air-integrated Garmin Descent X50i dive computers. The functionality is broad, the UI intuitive and best of all, we can read each other’s air, an valuable safety feature.

The underwater animal life in Cozumel is extensive. We saw a wide variety of fish and creatures including sharks, rays, lobsters, giant snails, and, among our favorite animals, turtles.

Currents in Cozumel can be strong, and this produces some diverse and colorful invertebrate life as well, much we’d not seen before.

Perhaps our favorite aspect of diving in Cozumel, however, was the complicated underwater topography with countless caves, windows, and swim-throughs, and several walls. Every dive site brought different features and experiences. We absolutely loved it.

Our routes around Cozumel are shown on the interactive map below. Click here for a full-page map.