Cozumel - Iberostar - Dressel Divers

The property is fairly small from a 'resort' perspective, however the grounds are beautiful and well maintained. There are several restaurants on the property and we tried all of them. All of them were acceptable to good and we had no complaints. Frankly, we liked the buffet options more than the sit down restaurants.

We made no specific requests for our room because we had never been here before so we got assigned Room 1203. Which was absolutely perfect. That's the dive shop in the background. I was literally 20ft from the dive shop, 20ft from the beach burgers, 30ft from the beach bar, 50ft from the pool and 100ft from one of the buffet restaurants. It was absolutely perfect! The room was a queen bed and perfectly acceptable. Our neighbors had a leak one day and the maintenance folks had to come in and do some cleanup, which ended in them providing us a complimentary bottle of wine and an apology.

I personally do not like beaches so I did not use the sand area while I was there, however my wife enjoyed herself. The chairs are first come first serve and only a few of them have shade...so you'll need to get up early to throw a towel down in the morning. There is nothing worth diving or snorkeling off the beach, though they will let you try if you want.

The diving at the Iberostart was run by Dressel Divers, who did an excellent job of cat hurding what felt like at least 100 divers a day. At one point we had 4 boats on the dock and 1 circling. There is a whiteboard just outside the diveshop that lists the boat and the divers so you know who's going on which boat.

Because of the size of our group we had a dedicated boat for the entire week with the same divemaster(s) who did a great job. It's a standard dive boat with a covered area up front and an open area in the back and dunk tanks in the middle. The engine is VERY loud, which made the dive briefings difficult to hear if you were not arm distance from your divemaster.

The Iberostar is in the middle of the dive area so we had less than 30min to every dive site. It also means that you come back to the resort after every dive. Which is awesome, because you can use a real bathroom and grab a bite to eat and something to drink and then back on the boat. The dive sites get slammed every day with divers so it is not uncommon for your divemaster and captain to move dive sites at the last minute for safety. Palencar Caves is the best dive location in my opinion, however I enjoyed all of them.

I completed my 50th dive on this trip with the awesome guide Marta. She had thousands upon thousands of dives and a SAC rate that was smaller than a bird. She was doing 50min dives on an Aluminum 80 tank and surfacing with 1500psi still!

We will definitely be going back.