Travel to Yucatan, MX

The entire family stayed at Hotel Xcaret Mexico. I would NOT recommend this hotel if you intend to go scuba diving for most of your stay. It is an all inclusive resort and thus expensive and going "offsite" can be a bit of a pain. They do not make it easy for third parties (other than Taxi) to come onsite and I've been told by at least one dive operator they are not allowed to pickup clients at the hotel. Which means you'll need to take a taxi to the dive shop or another pickup location. Not cheap. I was able to coordinate with a dive buddy to have him pick me up via his rental car, but even that was a bit of a song and dance. I had to talk to two concierges and one security guard and even then they checked multiple times before allowing him in via the various security gates. Plan accordingly.

Otherwise, it is a beautiful hotel and the family loved it.

Akumal Dive Center was super easy to work with, though a bit unorganized . I contacted them via WhatsApp and reserved a spot on the morning 2 dives (9am and 11am). I requested Nitrox and my buddy requested doubles (he was trying to practice skills). When we arrived we did the normal paperwork and got shown our tanks...not nitrox and not doubles. They eventually scrounged up some doubles for him and we headed out to the boat.

The boat...ahh the boat...like nothing I've ever dove from. Click on the image to the left...it's the boat on the left. You will enter the boat from a janky ladder (I ended up getting hurt at the end of the 2nd dive as I was getting into the boat due to my inexperience with this setup) and exit the boat for your dive with a backroll. There is no platform for entering/exit.

The dives were excellent and our divemaster and captain were great. No complaints. Not as nice as the reefs in Cozumel but we saw turtles, eels, lion fish, barracudas and an assortment of other fish.

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