Being the only diver on a family vacation…
It happens very often. You plan a great vacation with your family to a tropical destination like Playa del Carmen, but you are the only scuba diver in the family. This puts you in quite the predicament, doesn’t it?
How do I spend as much of the vacation time I have with my family, yet still manage to get a whole bunch of awesome dives in during that time?!
Fortunately, there are many things that can be done to get you in the water, get you diving and still keep your family happy with you.
- You can arrange for the non divers in your family to participate in the Discover Scuba program. This way, they can take the theory and pool session in the morning (maybe while you get 2 dives in), and then in the afternoon you can join them for another 2 amazing shallow dives. This is a great way to introduce your family to the wonderful world of scuba diving, and they will get to experience first hand all of the great things that diving in Playa del Carmen can teach them!
- If they are interested, they can do their Open Water Scuba Diver course, and you can join them during the open water dives of the course! How great would it be to have a bunch of certified divers in your family? Imagine being able to plan every vacation you take together as a dive vacation!
- They don’t have to do the entire course here though. They can start their course back home at a dive centre in your home town, and then they can finish their courses as a referral course in Playa del Carmen.
- If all of that fails, then there is always the option of bribery… A round of golf or a day at the spa while you get your dive on sometimes does the trick. After all, we get that not everybody is interested in diving, and no matter how many youtube videos, photos, or amazing diving stories we share with them, their minds are not going to change.
One of the great things of diving in Playa del Carmen is that when we do ocean dives, the reefs are quite close to the coast, so on our morning trips we are usually back by (or before) noon, giving you plenty of time to enjoy the rest of the day with the family.
Diving in Cozumel and in the Cenotes is a bit more time consuming, but we are usually also back by around 1:30-2:00 PM, so you are not away from them all day.
Being a small dive center with small groups does give you (and us) options that some of the bigger resort operations don’t have. That is why we have morning and afternoon trips for local ocean diving, and we can customize the trips to suit your schedule (of course it all depends on our other guests as well).
It is important to remember that family vacations are exactly that. They are for spending quality time with the people you love the most.