ISLA COZUMEL
El mar y la playa
All classes offered by Cozumel Dive School follow PADI standards.
PADI (Professional Association of Diving Instructors®) is the world's largest and leading diver training organization with more than 6,600 dive centers and resorts and over 137,000 professional members worldwide. Issuing a million certifications each year in 186 countries and territories, PADI makes underwater exploration, travel, and adventure accessible to people around the world while maintaining the highest industry standards for dive training, safety, and customer service.
About Cozumel Island
Cozumel, spelled Cuzamil in the ancient Mayan language, means the Island of the Swallows, or Isla de Golondrinas in Spanish. It is the largest Mexican island in the Caribbean, located just off the eastern coast of Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula, around 45 minutes by ferry from Playa del Carmen. It is also the third biggest permanently inhabited Mexican island, with its main town in San Miguel de Cozumel and its eastern tip being the easternmost point of the country.
Cozumel has been long known to tourists thanks to beautiful reefs, a paradise for snorkeling and scuba-diving. The popularity came with Palancar Reef that was reportedly filmed in the 60’s by a famous French oceanographer Jacques Cousteau in his award-winning documentary The Silent World. While this is a widespread myth repeated over the years by many sources, Palancar Reef and Cozumel became a highly acclaimed tourist destination due to their appearance in a movie indeed: a Mexican production entitled Un mundo nuevo, directed by Rene Cadrona in 1957. However, Jacques Cousteau was definitely familiar with the reefs here, visiting Cozumel during many of his exploration trips.
Scuba diving remains one of Cozumel’s primary attractions, mainly because of healthy coral and the abundance of marine life. The reefs here are protected from the open ocean by the island natural geography and also by the law: since 1996 coral formations south from the International Pier all the way down to Punta Sur have been included in Cozumel Reefs National Marine Park, which definitely helped to stop overexploitation of the reef and favored many conservation projects organized by local environmental institutions. The reefs surrounding Cozumel are part of Mesoamerican Reef, the world’s second-largest barrier reef, and are known to seasoned divers as a coral paradise with over 40 different dive sites: from exciting drift dives, steep drop-offs, deep swim-through explorations to shallow and scenic dives on the reef top platforms.
Cozumel is a safe and serene island with most of the income generated by the tourism and hospitality sectors. There are over 300 restaurants on the island and just as many hotels, some of which run dive operations, have swimming pools, private docks, and multiple dining facilities. Everyone will find something they like: there are two hotel zones that concentrate on big all-inclusive resorts, there are posh and upscale restaurants for those who enjoy luxury. However, if you want to truly taste Mexican island culture infused with Mayan spirit or if you prefer to spend money on diving rather than on accommodation and fancy dining, you will find cozy small hotels, hostels, or Airbnb at decent prices and plenty of authentic local bars and food stands with delicious tacos, quesadillas and, of course, margaritas and cervezas.