We checked out of the hostel in Tulum Pueblo and headed to the collectivo point. We took a super cheap collectivo the 60km or so to Playa del Carmen. We zipped along and arrived in what felt like no time at all. Here, we wandered the 4 blocks to the port, bought a ticket for the next ferry heading to Cozumel, and waited a little while for it to leave. All we really saw of Playa del Carmen was the playa, with it's seaweed/ sea grass. There was a general crush of people also heading to the ferry which we successfully navigated, and ended up sat next to a lovely 17 year old called Eduardo, travelling on his holidays with his grandfather, also called Eduardo. The boat oddly had a band playing which was chucking out tunes, including the famous La Bamba by Ritchie Valens. We arrived at the port of San Miguel de Cozumel, said goodbye to the Eduardo's, and headed to a hostel recommended in the Lonely Planet. The hostel was only two blocks away and seemed nice, so we decided to go with it and negotiated a discount for staying for three nights.

Cozumel is an island that is very popular with cruise ships and many other visitors . It was busy! Cozumel is renowned for it's diving, that was our draw to the place. Plus island time, snorkelling opportunities and anything else the island could throw at us.

In the afternoon, we explored the town and surrounding area. Ken's new sandals were broken, so we headed to the Mercado Municipal to have a look for some. We were out of luck, so headed north. We took in Parque Benito Juarez and clock tower, the Museo de la Isla which was shut, the Mestizos Monument, Playa Casitas, and Two Cultures Plaza, a monument to the Mayans and the Spanish. Here a man started talking to us and told us some history of Cozumel and the Mayans, and gave us some berries from a tree to eat. All for a modest fee of course, but he was entertaining so we didn't mind.

We went to the beach and had a drink; Ken went for a dip in the sea which was clear and a nice temperature. Later we headed to a place recommended by Happy Cow for vegetarian food. It turned out to be really expensive and Ken had a piece of crab shell in his food. We'd been very clear with the restaurant so this was upsetting and not a pleasant thing to happen in our otherwise lovely day.

On Friday 31st, we headed to the museum which was open this time. It was a bit of a mixture of stuff, with a good exhibition on reefs and an excellent model of a reef, which someone had put a lot of time and effort into . There were also exhibitions about guns, ships, oppression of the Maya, the history of Cozumel, and diving. The museum wasn't large and after an hour of enjoying the air conditioning, we were back to the streets and looking for a PADI recognised dive shop. We stopped into a few and did a lot of internet shopping for prices, eventually settling on one dive shop because it was the cheapest we could find. This was Cozumel Dive School, though we would actually be diving with Blue Angel, 3km south. We'd also checked the reviews on Tripadvisor and both outfits were rated highly.

Happy with our diving choice, we took a taxi about 12km south to a spot called the Money Bar. This was a resort with a reef off the beach, where we could snorkel, drink, eat, get a massage, rent equipment, basically do whatever we wanted. We took our snorkel gear and headed into the water and a roped off area for snorkellers. We found that the roped off area had small patches of reef and some artificial reef that was successfully encouraging growth. Regardless, there was plenty of life for us to look at, including a spotted eel, a flamingo tongue, parrotfish, angelfish and a lot of curious sergeant majors. We got a drink afterwards, and were brought two as it was happy hour. This encouraged us to drink more of course, then a band started playing classic tunes, including La Bamba and ubiquitous Carlos Vives' tunes, and we stayed for food . And more drinks. Slightly worse for wear and significantly poorer, we headed back to the town for the evening.

On Saturday 1st August, we went diving! Cozumel is renowned for it's pristine reef and gentle drift dives, and we were not disappointed. We walked the 3km to the dive shop, set up our gear, and waited for the dive boat. And waited. Noone was telling us anything so we asked what was happening, only to be told it was on it's way after picking some people up. The boat did eventually turn up and we headed south for a long time, to get to our first dive site.

The dive site was called Santa Rosa, a reef wall, and we dived to 20m for 50 minutes. Here we saw a huge barracuda, two enormous sting rays, a giant crab, a well disguised flounder, a shoal of jacks, and a black sea worm. There were medium currents at the site, so we drifted along and took a few swim throughs across the top of the reef wall. We were following the divemaster and he took us out onto patches of sand a few times, which was frustrating as there was pristine coral a little way away . However because of this, we did see the sting rays - so we can't complain too much.

After some fruit and cake on board, we went to the next dive site. This was aptly called Paradise, and we dived to 15m for 48 minutes. Here we saw three huge barracudas, a flamingo tongue, a giant crab, lots of spiny caribbean lobsters, tiny sea slugs, a donkey dung sea cucumber, an arrow crab and a yellow stingray. The currents were mild at the site, and it was very different; a flat area with sand interspersing the coral. Both sites were beautiful and pristine.

We thoroughly enjoyed the diving, in just two of the places in Cozumel which were stunning. We would think twice about using the same dive shop again, however. The service was completely impersonal. Whilst we said several times that we were doing fun dives, there was a vacuum of power as to who was in control of the dives. Whoever was meant to look after us and make sure we didn't go too deep, and show us the site, didn't do a very good job . The equipment was in good working order, the only problem was a leaking regulator for Jayna. Unfortunately we didn't feel comfortable that the divemaster was fully aware of what people were doing on the dive.

After diving, we headed to a nearby supermarket and managed to find Ken some new sandals again. We walked back into town, remembered a load of other stuff we needed, bought that, and got some dinner in a place called The Pub. Here, the manager let Jayna converse with him in bad Spanish (occasionally interspersed with questions posed in English). We managed to cover topics such as where we were from, where we had travelled, for how long, how long we were staying in Cozumel, where we were going next, work in the UK, and how beautiful the island was. The manager seemed quite impressed that we'd picked up so much on our travels. We still think our stilted Spanish leaves a lot to be desired!
 
On Sunday 2nd August, we got some breakfast at a vegetarian cafe we'd tried to go to twice previously and it had been shut. Breakfast was shakshuka and it was so so good. We checked out of the hostel and headed to the ferry terminal, ready to head to our next stop - Isla Mujeres!