Not the Morningstar

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: : : Staying at the Presidente in Jan. Has anyone stayed here? This is our first visit to Cozumel and would like to have names of great restaurants, tours and fun things you've done.We don't dive but would like to snorkel. : : Shelly, : : read my "just got back" post. If you look under restaurants on this site you will see some good ones. La mission is greta too. La Choza has the =best fajitas. The Capi Navegente? is nice too. The restaurant at Sol Cabanas del caribe hotel is one of the best I ate at. Go on the morning star to snorkel. Includes lunch etc and is from 10-5. The fury and most others go to Dzul Ha etc which you could snorkel yourself from shore. Have fun but don't expect too much. : ****************************** : I would recommend that you NOT take the Morningstar. That's the tour I took on my first trip and we snorkeled at Columbia Shallows, then got on the boat for a break and then snorkeled Palancar Gardens. While in the water, the guides sat on life preservers and blew a whistle if we wandered too far.Lunch was a nice buffet. On the boat it was music, music, music, and drink, drink, drink. We had a great time. We had nothing but good things to say about the trip. : My second trip to Cozumel, Becky had told me about the Arrecifes tour...same price. So I booked the Arrecifes tour for the snorkeling and the Morningstar for the partying...I was with my 21 year old son. : The Arrecifes tour took us to The Sky...where Eduardo gave us the grand tour. He teased a moray eel out of it's hiding place so we could see it. He found some lobsters for us to look at. He pointed out starfish (which was easy cuz there were many.) He took pictures of some of the people in the water as they snorkeled. He showed us what we would have missed with an untrained eye...like that spotted yellow ray that I swam past because it was so well camouflaged. : Back on the boat an on to Columbia Shallows. There he gave us a real show. He "walked" on the bottom in 25' of water. He dove into and through the coral heads...disappearing for periods of time. : Then we swam over to Palancar Gardens (because they are side by side) and he showed some of the guys how to dive down deeper than they had been able to. : Back on the boat we went into shore for a lunch buffet that was very tasty. : One more reef on our way back to our "home" pier. We went to Dzul Ha. I agree that Dzul Ha can be snorkeled successfully from shore. But I had spent a week at Fiesta Americana and didn't know about Dzul Ha. This second trip I only snorkeled Dzul Ha from the Arrecifes. So it was great fun. There was lots and lots of fish life. Eduardo had some dinner rolls and therefore we were swarmed by fish looking for a handout. It was great to swim in the midst of a huge school of tropical fish. It was unlike anything I had done previously. : Back on the boat and home. Now while we were on the boat, we were offered beer, pop and water. But it wasn't pushed like on the Morningstar. : When my son and I took the Morningstar tour it was very much like the other time. The guys got into the water and snorkeled some with us this time, but it was nowhere near the service that we got from Eduardo. : In addition, it was April (Easter) for the first trip and August for the second. In April there were many more on the boat and the partying was fun. In August there were few on the boat and the partying ended up being pretty lame. I asked one of the guys if they could play the song I had heard so much on my previous trip. It was the song that reminded me of the Gilligan Tour (Morningstar)because that is where I first heard it. He said, "No." and laughed. No explanation, no nothing. Now maybe he really couldn't, but an explanation would have made it feel less like a slap in the face when he said no. I'm not unreasonable, I just wanted to hear the song that reminded me so much of their boat and tour. : So look at the Morningstar/Gilligan Tour as a party with snorkeling in-between...the Fury is pretty much like that too. Look at the Arrecifes as a snorkeling tour with drinks available. With that in mind, you can choose the one that meets your needs. Same price. Morningstar two reefs and Arrecifes four reefs. : I don't remember the URL for the Gilligan Tour, but I'm pretty sure that the parent company is SeaSport. For the Arrecifes it is Kuzamil Snorkeling Center and can be reached by going to www.cozumel.to and clicking on snorkeling. : By the way, whichever tour you take...if you take any, I would still snorkel Dzul Ha from shore. The second beach club from town is owned by Angelo and Stefano. They are a couple of really nice Italian guys who will give you good service, sell you great drinks and tasty food, but will not charge you just to sit there...like some of the other beach clubs. There are bathrooms, lockers, and a dive shop with rentals for diving and snorkeling. You can even catch a glass bottomed boat from there. Good place!

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