It’s been a personal goal to dive more this year, after diving in the Philippines, Indonesia, and Egypt in 2019. My dive buddy, Gabe, and I have been spoiled by warm oceans and bountiful marine life in places like Komodo National Park, so expectations were high.

Stringent travel restrictions and mandatory quarantines due to COVID-19 made it very difficult to find a place to scuba dive that would be comparable to Komodo. We noticed Cancun, Mexico planned to open its doors for tourism in June and decided to keep a close watch on travel to Cozumel.

Unlike other countries, Mexico didn’t require a 14-day quarantine or a COVID-19 test prior to arrival, so entering the country was a breeze — just fill out a health questionnaire and you are good to go.

Arriving in Mexico felt safer than staying in Los Angeles. The airport had a thermal camera pointed at tourists to track fever, everyone wore masks, and your temperature is checked almost 10 times a day wherever you go.

Our resort in Cozumel, Casa Del Mar, sanitized our bags upon arrival and just like the local bus and restaurants, checked our temperature, and required we sanitize our hands.

We chose to dive with a local operator after a friendly chat with their owner, on WhatsApp. He arranged eight dives for us, offering the best price by far on the island, and even gave us a ride into town one day to show us his favorite seafood restaurant. Most dive shops offer boat pick-ups at resort docks, but we decided on the short walk to the boat instead.

The great thing about Cozumel is that most dive sites are within a 25-minute boat ride. We were lucky to have the boat to ourselves for half the dive trips which was an added bonus! The boat captain was incredibly friendly and took requests for surface intervals — like posting up at a private beach to relax.

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It’s the low season in Cozumel between May and December, but poor weather is something we rarely experienced during our August 2020 visit. I don’t recommend relying on weather apps when planning your trips — it’ll say thunderstorms every day but might only rain for 30 minutes on just one side of the island. Instead, I advise leaving an extra day in your trip itinerary as a buffer in case one of the dive days gets rained out.

We had a chance to dive with four different divemasters throughout our trip — each guide was uber professional, had the eyes of a hawk for spotting sea creatures in every crevice, and were great Spanish teachers during our surface intervals.

The boat crew reminded me of my time on a liveaboard — full-service attention from rented equipment set-up, gearing up pre-dive, offering to lift all the gear from the water post-dive (we politely declined), and feeding us with endless snacks and fresh fruit during surface intervals. As a bonus, we enjoyed chocolate cake during the surface interval on our last dive of the trip.

On our first day, we visited Santa Rosa Wall, Yucab, Cedral, and the San Francisco Wall — drift dives boasting at least 100 feet of visibility! All of our dives had a bottom depth around 60-70ft. From the surface, we could see a nurse shark swimming close to the ocean floor at Santa Rosa Wall. As we drifted, we saw stingrays, countless lobsters hiding in crevices, jellyfish, barracudas, a giant loggerhead turtle, king crab, running shrimp, spectacular dogfish, and more! Our favorite was Yucab for all of its swim-throughs.

On day two, we started in the calm waters of Palancar Garden, towered by coral formations made of countless swim-throughs and without any current. This site had less marine life than the others, but we still saw a juvenile eagle ray, trumpet fish, black grouper, king crab, among other marine life.

We finished the day at Dalila Reef — an undersea highway of sorts! There was a significant current so we didn’t have to kick much for this dive. We saw a gigantic lobster “walking down main street” and trotting all around the reef. Our most notable finds were a bigger eagle ray zooming by, black durgon, a large turtle, and a grouper.

Day three was the absolute best day of diving thanks to the twilight and night dives. I HIGHLY recommend these dives, even if they are the only ones you have time for.

We descended into our twilight dive at Paso del Cedral and didn’t need flashlights just yet. We saw a giant green moray eel swim by, three nurse sharks, peacock flounder, stingrays, giant trevally, splendid toadfish, and more. Fun fact: the splendid toadfish is only found in Cozumel!

We visited Yucab for the night dive and had about 20 minutes of light until it became pitch black. Once the darkness set in, it felt like a scavenger hunt searching for as many creatures as possible! We were swarmed by a massive school of tuna and also saw sleeping hawksbill turtles under coral, a flipper lobster, octopus, squid, crab, and a white sea snake slithering by. The squid glows purple when shining your light.

Our guide Rafa then signaled all of us to turn off our flashlights and move our arms to activate the fluorescent algae. Little sparks of blue light flickered as I frantically waved my hands in the darkness.

The night dive was exhilarating and by far the second-best dive of my life, after Komodo National Park in Indonesia.

On day three, we revisited two of our favorite sites, Paso del Cedral and Yucab. The second time around was even better when we saw a giant green moray eel swim by, three nurse sharks, peacock flounder, stingrays, giant trevally, splendid toadfish, and more. Fun fact: the splendid toadfish is only found in Cozumel!

Cozumel diving exceeded our expectations and at times felt comparable to my experience diving in Komodo National Park in Indonesia. The bottom line is, if you have the ability to travel, don’t pass up this golden opportunity to book a dive trip to Cozumel! There’s no better time to avoid large crowds, practice safe social distancing in public, save on expenses, and experience Mexico like a true local.