Well the dust has settled a bit so I have a few minutes to share some of the
highlights of my annual five day Cozumel teip wioth my buddy Hank.

All my concerns about a 30 minute connection were a non-issue since our
Houston arriving (from Newark) and departing flights were two gates apart at
Terminal C and our flight arrived on time at Houston.  We were "greenlighted"
at Immigration and arrived at our hotel, The Coral Princess by 12:30, half an
hour after touchdown.

The Coral Princess was very nice.  Outside of the necessity of a 30 Peso cab
ride into town, we definitely preferred it to our prior stays at the Costa
Club.  The rooms were nicer with a fridge and wall safe.  We had a beautiful
ocean view.  AC and beds were comfy cozy.  The room did not offer a lot of
storage for gear, but foprtunately our operator, Living Underwater, tended to
most of our gear.  The cost of the taxis were abrogated by the fact that the
hotel offers a very nice and included continental breakfast (fruit or juice,
pastries , toast and coffee).

As previously noted we dived with Horacio (formerly of Aldora) and his new
one boat operation (Aldora's former sunk, rescued and restored boat).  His
dives depart from the Pro-Dive pier or he will pick you up at one of the
southern hotels.  The Coral Princess has no boat dock.  He employs two full
time DMs, Gabriel and Pierre.  He is using low pressure steel 120's which get
average fills of 2400PSI for 36% EANX and 27-2800PSI for air.  With just
about every dive, my endurance gave out before my air (tired and cold).  BTW,
these tanks are outfitted with Yoke fittings and don't require a DIN change
to your reg. (ala Aldora).  We principally dived with Gabriel and found him
to be a delight.  Two of our four dive days it was just Hank and I, one day
five divers and one day six divers for the first tank only.  We really
enjoyed diving with Gabriel.  We had a sense that he was along more as a
guide than a DM.  He evaluated us on our first dive and after that it was
"what sites should we dive today and lets go."

Hank's wrist mount air only Sherwood computer crapped out on day
one...through no one's fault.  Horacio, after checking it out, loaned Hank a
brand new Oceanic equivalent and insisted that Hank keep this computer as a
freebie...this was a first for me.  I am sure he (Horacio) gets these
computers at a steep discount, but still, I don't know how long he can stay
in business giving out free computers as gifts.  Horacio is a victim of his
own popularity and definitely needs another boat and some more personnel.  On
two of our dive days he had to charter a second boat and split up his
customers by ability.

We dived on all our favorite sites with the highlight being Barracuda and San
Juan on Saturday...What a perfect day...sea was flat, current no more than
2.5K +/- and visibility was easily 100 feet.  Very few pelagics this time of
year.  We saw lots of turtles only two sharks and of course the usual MRF
(thanks Mr. Hopf for supplying the definition).

I was pretty nervous about using my new Canon S300 and left it in the room
for the first two dives.  On day two, I worked up the courage to take it and
it was really a delight to use and considering what a bad photographer I am,
I got very gratifying results (please check out the link to the Ofoto Site
pasted below and let me know what you think).  I realized that leaving it on
full-auto, that the flash was not firing on most shots, so day three I
switched to manual, with flash "always on" and the resuts were much improved.
 I'm especially proud of the Juvenile Spotted Drum.  Check out the
monochromatic vs the full color shots.  If your interested, I am the shorter
better looking guy in the boat photo.

http://www.ofoto.com/PhotoView.jsp?UV=933210217922_21602874403&US=0&
collid=12774674403&photoid=83347674403

I got my usual touch of Montezuma again this year on day three.  Fortunately,
unlike last year, I managed to finish the dive, hand up my gear and then
frantically pulled off my wetsuit for blessed relief.  Last year, let me put
it like this, our visibility declined significantly on the safety stop!

Restaurants were great, twice at la Choza, had my favorite whole grilled red
snapper,  The French Quarter and Prima.

It seems like the new concrete straw markets attached to the cruise ship
docks are keeping the croozers out of town.  The docks were filled (Have you
noticed how ugly these new ships are...the QEII and ships of that vintage
were really beautiful with graceful lines.  These new cruise ships are built
with no sense of the aesthetic...they are floating boxes designed to hold as
many sweating, panting, gambling, shopping and food engorging cash spewing
tourists as possible), but it seemed that relatively few of the Pods made it
into San Miguel.

Wish you all well...next stop Turks and Caicos in August
Mark