Dive Review of Dive Palancar/Occidental Grand in
Cozumel and the Mexican Yucatan

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Dive Palancar/Occidental Grand, Nov, 2013, by Bill Fletcher, QC, CA ( 2 reports with 1 Helpful vote). Report 7382.
No photos available at this time
Ratings and Overall Comments 1 (worst) - 5 (best):
Accommodations		Food
Service and Attitude		Environmental Sensitivity
Dive Operation		Shore Diving	N/A
Snorkeling	N/A
Overall Rating
Value for $$
Beginners
Advanced
Comments	The Occidental Grand is an all-inclusive resort. The facilities, rooms, pool, beach were excellent and in very good shape. Staff was very friendly and eager to please. The food was completely acceptable, more Mexican than American, which was fine for us. We are not fans of buffet dinners (nothing wrong with the food, we just like sit-down service) and we ate 4 of 7 dinners at the 2 service restaurants that offer about 150 places per evening. You have to reserve places in advance and they have a limited number of seats on the half hour from 6:00 thru 8:00 or 8:30 - so if we were late in reserving, we got later seating. Again, that's fine -- the buffet dinner alternative was always there with good quality dinners. We did 20 boat dives over 6 days including 3 night dives. Shore diving was available but we did not do any. The hotel is right at Santa Rosa Wall, 10 minutes from Delilah and El Cedral, 15 minutes from Palancar and we really appreciated the short boat trips, having stayed up in St Miguel on previous vacations. Being down south, we were also able to dive Punta Sur as part of the everyday diving which we hadn't been able to do before. My 14 year old niece is a new diver and the crew/divemasters took great care of her on the boat and underwater. The diving was standard Cozumel -- great drift dives, lots of small fish and turtles. Policy is for dive masters to start the ascent at 40 or 45 minutes. Knowing this in advance, we came prepared to shift to an alternate dive company but in fact shortish dives were not a serious aggravation. we were out with between 50 and 60 minutes of dive time on our computers and were typically riding the deco line on the second dive anyway. We never came back with less than 1000 psi Dive Palancar runs 4 regular dives per day from the Occidental Grand plus 3 night dives per week. Morning dives are deep then shallow as are the afternoon dives with boats often coming back to the dock between dives. We found this really convenient. We like to do 3-4 dives a day and were able to do 2 morning dives and come back at 3:00PM to do the second (shallow) afternoon dive. There is more life on the shallow dives & leaving the dock at 3:30, you catch the reef just waking up for the evening/night shift. We bought blocks of dives which cost $35 each if bought in quantities of less-than-10. If you buy 10 dives or more, you pay $31 each and can share the dives within the group - so our group of 4 bought at least 12 dives per day and paid the low rate. Divemasters were all competent and a couple were incredible at finding the local attractions . The dive shop staff will, if asked, take full care of your equipment - so it was valet service on and off the boat. They rinsed all the equipment (in soap !) after every dive, stored it overnight and had it at the appropriate boat whenever we went out. I don't know how they kept track of all our wetsuits, vests, jackets and booties, but there were no mix-ups. The day we left, everything had been rinsed and aired and was dry and ready to pack. There was no official charge for the service and we left a substantial tip for the pleasant hard-working crew. All in all, a very satisfactory dive vacation.
Websites	Dive Palancar Occidental Grand
Reporter and Travel
Dive Experience	251-500 dives
Where else diving	Caymans - Curacao - Bonaire - Roatan - Saba - Egypt - Philippines- Australia - St Lawrence River/Great Lakes
Closest Airport		Getting There
Dive Conditions
Weather	sunny, rainy, cloudy	Seas	calm, currents
Water Temp	82-82°F / 28-28°C	Wetsuit Thickness	3
Water Visibility	75-100 Ft/ 23-30 M
Dive Policy
Dive own profile	?
Enforced diving restrictions	Dive Master set depth & time limits at briefing. Typically 80 foot first dive, 60 foot second and times 40 to 45 minutes to start of ascent.
Liveaboard?	no	Nitrox Available?	yes
What I Saw
Sharks	Lots	Mantas	None
Dolphins	None	Whale Sharks	None
Turtles	> 2	Whales	None
Ratings 1(worst) - 5 (best):
Corals		Tropical Fish
Small Critters		Large Fish
Large Pelagics
Underwater Photography 1 (worst) - 5 (best):
Subject Matter		Boat Facilities
Overall rating for UWP's		Shore Facilities
UW Photo Comments	Camera buckets on boats. Some boats have a dry table.Crew helps into and out of the water. No onshore support facilities for charging, editing etc.

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Dive Review of Dive Palancar/Occidental Grand in Cozumel and the Mexican Yucatan

Dive Palancar/Occidental Grand, Nov, 2013,

Ratings and Overall Comments 1 (worst) - 5 (best):

Overall Rating

Reporter and Travel

Dive Conditions

Dive Policy

What I Saw

Ratings 1(worst) - 5 (best):

Underwater Photography 1 (worst) - 5 (best):

Dive Review of Dive Palancar/Occidental Grand in
Cozumel and the Mexican Yucatan