Get in
By plane
Cozumel has an international airport (Airport Code: CZM) which receives direct flights from Atlanta, Charlotte, Denver, Halifax, Houston, Miami, and Toronto as well regional flights from Mexico City.
Alternatively, you can fly into Cancun (Airport Code: CUN) which generally has more flights, take a bus or van down to Playa del Carmen and take the Ferry across. A shared van from Cancun airport to Playa Del Carmen will cost around $150 pesos per person one-way, where a bus will be less than $100 pesos per person one-way.
By boat
Get around
Walk, rent a car, or take a taxi; there are buses, but they are designed for locals who already know the routes. The docks are saturated by pushy agencies trying to lure you into car rentals and activities. The younger travelers or anyone who has free time may want to take them up on their offer. Always check first so you are not getting scammed but it is usually just a timeshare offer. You pay about $20 for a jeep rental or a moped for the entire day and you get free breakfast at a five star resort. A regular day car rental is around $55, and scooters half that. Alternatively, taxis are always available and will take you to the west-shore beaches for $20 onwards, depending on distance and number of people. Taxis cost between $20 and $30 pesos for intra-town destinations. Like the rest of Cozumel, they accept US Dollars at an exchange rate of $10 MXN to $1 USD.
See
Most visitors travel to Cozumel to see what is underwater. Snorkeling options are fairly limited due to boat traffic, but scuba divers can explore beautiful reefs via boat or shore dives for a relatively small equipment rental fee. Great rental for a day is an open VW Beetle or a scooter. It fits the ambiance perfectly. They are cheap to rent and to run.
A great day can be enjoyed by a cruise ship family with a beetle & the beautiful beaches. The main town and dive operations are on the west side of the island, but if you rent a Beetle or Scooter the east side of the island is the place to go. The east side of the island is mostly undeveloped, but there are beautiful beaches, big waves, and rocky outcrops over the ocean. If the waves are sufficient, and you look close you can also find a few small blow holes. You will also find a restaurant on the beach every half hour or so.
Cozumel also offers several Mayan ruins. The most extensive ruins are those at San Gervasio, an inland site several miles north of the Carretera Transversal. Another site is located near the village of El Cedral, inland from the Carretera Costera Sur. In the Parque Punta Sur, at the southern tip of the island, there is the Templo El Caracol, believed to have been used as a lighthouse by the Mayans.
Do
:*Aldora Divers — training, certification and fast 6 person boats with high capacity steel tanks and long surface intervals, usually at Palancar Beach Club. Rental equipment. Night Dives. Nitrox available. Villa Aldora room and suite rentals.
:*Aqua Safari — training, certification and two types of daily dive trips (fast or slow boat). Good company but they tend to pack more people on a dive trip (up to 16 on a slow boat).
:*Blue XT~Sea Diving — training, certification, equipment rental, and nitrox are available from this dive op. Personalized service, max 6 divers per fast boat. They'll keep and clean your dive gear (except wetsuit) if you wish and have it on the boat the next morning. Night and Afternoon dives based on demand, and hotel packages with decent savings are offered.
:*Deep Blue — training, certification, nitrox, technical and known for fast boats. At most 8 divers with 2 divemaster or as few as 4 divers with 1 dive master. Rental equipment. Night Dives. Hotel and dive package is available through numerous hotels. Dive shop is located in town across the street from La Choza. Divers are usually called the day before diving to arrange dive location and possible divemaster.
:*Dive Paradise — training, certification and two types of daily dive trips (fast or slow boat). Night dives. Numerous dive / hotel packages. Several dive shops. Rental equipment. In Cozumel since 1984.
:*Living Underwater — small, personalized service offering steel 120s (super-long dives). Best for advanced divers.
Buy
Silver is cheaper here than in the U.S. but be sure to look for the .925 stamp as some places do sell fake silver jewelry.
Eat
Local restaurants, most fairly good and fairly similar to each other, are plentiful in and around the city's "downtown" main square.
Drink
Cozumel, being in Mexico, is rife with alcohol. Prices seldom vary, though there is a varied dropoff the farther you get from the center of the city.
Don Julio Tequila runs $45-50 at the tourist shops, but if you have time find a local grocery and get it at half price. Kahlua runs $10.
Sleep
Get out
Cozumel (Mayan: Island of the Swallows) is an island in the Caribbean Sea off the eastern coast of Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula, opposite Playa del Carmen. It is one of the eight municipalities (municipios) of the state of Quintana Roo. Cozumel is a popular tourist destination renowned for its scuba diving. The main town on the island is San Miguel de Cozumel.
The island is about 48 km (30 miles) north-south and 16 km (10 miles) east-west, and is the largest Atlantic island of Mexico. It is about 20 km (12 miles) from the mainland, and some 60 km (36 miles) south of Cancún. The vast majority of the population of Cozumel lives in the town of San Miguel (pop. 71,401 in 2005), which is on the western shore. The rest of the island is low, flat, and densely vegetated.
History
The Maya are believed to have first settled Cozumel by the early part of the 1st millennium AD, and older Preclassic Olmec artifacts have been found on the island as well. The island was sacred to Ix Chel, the Maya Moon Goddess, and the temples here were a place of pilgrimage, especially by women desiring fertility. There are a number of ruins on the island, most from the Post-Classic period. The largest Maya ruins on the island were bulldozed to make way for an airplane runway during World War II. The ruins of San Gervasio are located approximately at the center of the island and are the largest remaining ruins.
The first Spanish visitor was Juan de Grijalva in 1518 , and in the following year Hernán Cortés came with a fleet and destroyed many Maya temples. Some 40,000 Maya lived on the island then, but smallpox devastated them and by 1570 only 30 were left alive. In the ensuing years Cozumel was nearly deserted, used as a hideout by pirates from time to time. In 1848 , the Caste War of Yucatán resulted in resettlement by refugees escaping the tumult. A plaque at the Museo Cozumel states Abraham Lincoln as U.S. president was close to purchasing the island of Cozumel as a place to send the freed slaves. The continued war in the Yucatan forced him to change his mind.
Festival of El Cedral in Cozumel
To this day a historic festival is held in the small town of El Cedral, in the south of Cozumel Island at the end of April. This annual event is said to have been started over 150 years ago by Casimiro Cárdenas.
Cárdenas was one of a group that fled to the island from the village of Saban, on the mainland, after an attack during the War of the Castes. The attackers killed many other villagers, but Cárdenas survived whilst clutching a small wooden cross.
Legend has it that Cárdenas vowed to start an annual festival wherever he settled, to honor the religious power of this crucifix. Today, the original Holy Cross Festival forms part of the wider Festival of El Cedral, which includes fairs, traditional feasts, rodeos, bullfights, music and competitions. The celebrations last about 5 days in all and are held every year at the end of April or beginning of May.
Late 20th century
In 1959, Jacques Cousteau discovered the extent and beauty of Palancar, the coral reefs at the south of Cozumel and publicized it as one of the best places to go scuba diving in the world. Although the original airport was a World War II relic and was able to handle jet aircraft and international flights, a much larger airport was built in the late 1970s. This resulted in much greater tourism to Cozumel.
Scuba diving is still Cozumel's primary draw, mainly due to the healthy coral reef marine communities. These coral reefs are protected from the open ocean by the island's natural geography. In 1996, the government of Mexico also established the Cozumel Reefs National Marine Park, forbidding anyone from touching or removing any marine life within the park boundaries. Despite the importance of healthy reefs to Cozumel's tourist trade, a deepwater pier was built in the 1990s for cruise ships to dock, causing damage to the reefs, and it is now a regular stop on cruises in the Caribbean.
Diving Attactions
21st century
The island was struck directly by two Category 4 hurricanes during the 2005 Atlantic hurricane season, Hurricane Emily and Hurricane Wilma, which together devastated much of the infrastructure and tourism industry on the island. Several successful efforts have been made to reconstruct damaged areas.
Singer Kirsty MacColl died on this island, after a tragic accident on December 18, 2000 in which she was hit by a speedboat owned by Mexican supermarket millionaire Guillermo González Nova (owner of Comercial Mexicana). The original case resulted in minor penalties for a crew hand, but the Mexican authorities have recently agreed to re-open the case due largely to the efforts of the Justice for Kirsty campaign organized by Kirsty's mother. The campaign's supporters include U2's Bono.
Geography
Cozumel is a flat island based on limestone, result of karst topography. The highest natural point on the island is less than 15 meters above sea level. The Cenotes are deep water filled sinkholes formed by water percolating through the soft limestone soil during thousands of years. Cenotes can be explored by snorkeling, swimming or diving, in which several marine species can be appreciated. Ancient inhabitants of the island also used the large holes in the rocks for shelter, particularly to escape the heat, by digging out small caves in the ground.
Biodiversity
Cozumel has a number of endemic species and subspecies of bird including:
Endemic dwarf mammals are found on the island:
Endemic marine life:
Demographics
Cozumel relies solely on tourism for income - online tourist guides generally state the unless you came to island to scuba dive or charter fish, there is little to do as the ruins and sights are limited. There are over 100 restaurants on the island and many hotels, some of which run dive operations, have large swimming pools, private docks, multiple dining facilities, and offer complete wedding and honeymoon packages.
All food and manufactured supplies are shipped onto the island.
There are two universities on the island: UQROO and Partenon. In addition to teaching English as a degree, they offer five other career options including natural resources research, tourism and commercial systems.
Government
Cozumel is part of the State of Quintana-Roo (Q-Roo). The Municipality of Cozumel consists of the island of Cozumel and a piece of adjacent mainland.
The "Presidente Municipal" Mayor of Cozumel is elected every 3 years by citizen elections. The current Mayor of Cozumel belongs to the National Action Party (Partido Acción Nacional, PAN) and his name is Gustavo Ortega Joaquín.
Hurricane Wilma
Hurricane Wilma, one of the most powerful hurricanes on record, hit the island in 2005 with devastating effect. The usually lush rainforest was sheared off. The tops of trees disappeared and no leaves were left on the highest five feet of almost every tree. A significant amount of vegetation was ruined when salt water washed over the island. The sewers of San Miguel were also heavily damaged.
Reconstruction was swift and concerted. Even before the hurricane cleared the area, the supplies needed to restore the island were already being gathered on mainland Mexico. While many treetops remain bare and sewer construction creates traffic problems, the island is currently being restored for tourism.
As of May, 2007, several of the larger hotels on the beachfront were still in various stages of reconstruction, with some of them still deserted. Divemasters on the island report that much of the marine life has yet to come back to previous levels, leaving far fewer fish, spiny lobster, seahorses, stingrays, etc to be seen. Additionally, the coral has not recovered its former variety of color, being primarily shades of brown. Two of Cozumel's three cruise ship piers are now open, with International Pier opening in May of 2006, and Punta Langosta Pier opening in September of 2006. The Puerta Maya Pier, which took more damage, is not yet open, and may not open before 2008.
References
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