Cozumel Snorkel Center — Local services in San Miguel de Cozumel

We booked a tour for Colombia, Palancar and El Cielo reefs.

Good points: The sea is beautiful, never saw any cristal clear water like that, and for sure you need to be guided to do an activity like this one in these waters.

Bad points: We would like to say couple of things about the whole tour and organization. First of all they made us the favor to keep our luggages in the office, wich was very kind of them, but once we did that, we got rushed into the meeting point planned at 10am to then stand there for half an hour waiting around under the sun.

Once we were all on the boat, they really highlighted the fact that we have a time schedule to respect, to be fast in getting changed and that they will set a timer on each location counting from the first person setting foot into the water. Understandable to respect their timing, but a bit too much pressure in our opinion... If you need to rush so much I would advise to make longer tours or get less people into each group. (By the way is was 30min shorter than what they told on the paper).

The tour is divided in three different spots to dive in: first for fishes, second for turtles and third for sea stars, all of them magnificent but we literally stayed in the second one for 7 minutes, not seeing a single turtle, of course.

Beside this, around you, there is your guide, screaming at you every 2 minutes to make sure the group stays together, which is understandable for safety reasons, as there’s a lot of boats and other guides/groups around, but it would be also nice to be able to swim and snorkle around without getting hit by other people from your own tour group :)

At the end of visiting each 3 spots, they made a stop on a final spot, for us to enjoy some Chevice and Margarita in the water (immersed until your waste), which is a fun way to end the tour, but really, why taking the time out of the snorkle, for standing in the water (in our case under the rain) for more than an hour (?).

We would reconsider the general length and organization of the tour: we felt rushed and pressured during the whole thing.

The mark go fully to the beauty of the waters surrounding us, and for the good looking guide, which we wish we remembered the name, who served all of us some tequila and a good party time on the way back to...

Didn't see any turtles at end of October but some starfish, stingrays, and fish. It was a rainy morning so the waters were not as clear as usual. We only had a few hours in port so we made the best of it.

FYI -- don't put on sunscreen on the boat, even if reef-safe. I had spent a lot of research and money on expensive reef-safe sunscreen, thinking I was being careful and responsible, only to get yelled at and scolded by our snorkel guide when I tried to put some on my daughter's shoulders. I ended up wiping it off with a towel.

My children complained they kept getting pulled over to pose for photos during their time in water, so that the guide could try to sell me these 'priceless' photos of our excursion at the end, which was to be additional cost plus tips. If you don't want photos, maybe tell the guide you're not interested upfront. Being newbies, we didn't realize this until the end.

Another thing to note -- there is no changing area so you'd better be wearing your swimsuit already when you arrive for the tour. You basically walk from the meeting point directly to the small pier where multiple boats are waiting to load all the groups for each time. I was not willing to do a quick change on the boat in front of everyone during the 30-minute (estimated time) ride out to area, and so I forfeited my snorkel and watched my kids. No rinse off area either so we headed all the way back to ship to change.

For these inconveniences I deduct one star.

Another FYI - we got a mask and breathing tube, around-waist life jacket, but no fins, for our four-hour trip. Just in case others need this...

We were in Cozumel as a cruise ship stop in early January. We knew ahead of time the weather might be iffy and were in contact with CSC. They told us they were watching the weather, too, and would have a definite answer the day prior.

When we were contacted, they acknowledged it would be a windy day but had alternate snorkeling sites that would be "great". We agreed to go ahead.

We were NOT given fins to snorkel and that should have been our first warning. The sea was rough, and our first snorkel was against the current (my husband and I have snorkeled a lot). It was exhausting (I often felt like I was going nowhere), and I felt really bad for the first-timers, the older clients and the disabled girl that was in our group. There was one CSC dude in the water with us, and the water was so choppy, it was difficult to see who was in the water and where. We were grateful nothing bad happened. The second stop was with the current and so much easier - I don't know why that didn't do this on the first one. At the 3rd stop, only a few people got in the water - most everyone was tired and not interested.

In short, if you are supposed to snorkel in Cozumel - no matter who you book with - and the weather is "iffy" but they can offer you a "great" alternative - CANCEL. It's...