Any diving experience with Blue Ocean Safari?

[Sailfish]

We dove Mahahual on our last trip in 05 and booked the private resort through Island Marketing. Everything went smooth as silk very organized. I think Middleager wrote a very tolieable review considing the situation with the tanks I don’t belive an experienced operation would let that happen once let alone twice in one day.

 

We dive all over the Caribbean and Mexico; you are right this issue with low tanks does not happen often but it does happen, even with larger, well run dive operations. The issue comes down to personnel and divers who recap the used tanks. No excusing this sort of thing, mind you. I for one would be quite angry if I ended up with the low tank. Not sure why they didn't have extra tanks. I am guessing that the marker cap on the used tank was re-fastened - it was thought to be a full tank when it wasn't. I have watched several idiots - okay they were newbies - after taking apart their equipment replace the "full" marker cap on the top of the used tank only to be "advised" by me and the others, that if it's a used tank, don't put that plastic cap ( the marker) back on!!

[cruzegirl]

Dive Review

Date-----------12/15/06

Port of Call--Costa Maya

Dive Shop----Blue Ocean Safari

2 tank dive

Originally our group was going to dive with Dreamtime. But Carnival is now contracted with Dreamtime for their dive excursions. It would be double -almost triple the cost versus on our own or the company we booked with on all our dive excursions. When it seemed we wouldn’t be diving in Costa Maya, I started looking for dive shops and found B.O.S. I contacted Phil & Julie who own the shop and started getting info. They take good care of you there.

They are a young, up/coming dive shop. They have a small shop adjacent a small hotel on Mahahual. They are a PADI approved dive shop and give dive lessons as well. We got them set up with the booking agency we use and we got our dives set up. If you consider using this dive shop, please realize they are a new dive shop just getting going. They have new equipment but not the biggest shop or biggest boat. But they care and they take care of you. Sometimes communication is limited due to the location on the island. Be patient. If your in a hurry, need a huge boat, then this isn’t the shop for you.

We had 11 divers this trip. They had 2 medium size boat for us. They had canopies which was helpful as on our day of diving, we started with pouring rain. The canopy helped somewhat.

Our dive masters were Rodrigo for our boat and Douglas for the other boat. They also had a captain of the boat. Douglas by the way started Dreamtime and is now helping Blue Ocean Safari get going. This island is virtually untouched thus far. You see jungle, single level homes/buildings. And the reefs are very innocent.

Our 1st dive site was Maya Palms. The plan was to do the deep dive first and then do the shallow dives on the next one. Once again it’s a back roll entry. It’s not a drift dive but when you dive, the boat follows. So it’s there when you come up. The deepest depth on this dive was 103 ft. for me with an average depth of 52. This dive lasted 42 minutes. Parts of the dive were very pretty and other parts (due to a storm the night before) were like the Sahara desert under water. Still lot’s to see. Sponges, coral, parrotfish, French angelfish and a huge lobster. We had some crevice swim throughs too…. They also had a videographer on the boat too…. That was cool… Looking forward to my DVD to watch. It’s the same routine coming back to the boat. Hand off the weight belt and the BC.

For our surface interval they take us back to the little island. It’s lovely there. After our 20 minute rain, it then turned out hot, sunny & beautiful. However, lunch is on your own. No food provided. Though there is a little hut there with meals. I got a Cheese Quesadilla for $5 which seems like a lot until you see the size of it. It was huge.

For our 2nd dive we went to Flamingo. Same entry, a back roll. Our deepest depth was 76 ft. with an average depth of 60 ft. This dive was for 42 minutes. We saw a Stingray and some of the same fish. Again, it was awesome. Good dives, good people.

I enjoyed this dive company. Please note, it’s a bit of a ride to the dive shop area. They don’t yet have official transportation so usually it’s a cab ride there. However, as our group was large, one of the guys doing transportation at the port got us a van. It was $5 per person. You can’t walk it, it’s too far….

I think I covered everything. Any questions, feel free to ask….