A Christmas Snorkel in Cozumel

Princess Cruises called it an Elite Champagne Catamaran Sail and Snorkel with Lunch, an excursion I took in Cozumel on Christmas Eve. I was especially interested in snorkeling the Mexican island's reefs; out of the twenty or so trips the cruise line offered, it fit the bill.

Of course I could have rented a car and snorkel equipment for the same amount of money, $100, and driven along Cozumel's southwestern coastline where I could have parked at a number of spots. The protected reef is just several yards off most of the island's shore, an easy and mostly safe swim in calm weather.

However it was a special holiday and I wasn't alone, lucky to be traveling with my partner of thirty-two years. So together we decided on the Princess excursion, where he mostly champagned and I mostly snorkeled. We would rendezvous on the deck over a lunch of fresh salads with guacamole and chips.

The catamaran met us a short walk from our ship, at the southern-most cruise port in Cozumel. The boat motored less than a mile south, near the entrance to Marina Maleta where small water craft docked. In clear site of our floating hotel, the Caribbean Princess, and amidst a fair amount of boat traffic, the catamaran weighed anchor and everyone who wanted to snorkel, including my husband, dove in.

Our guides directed us to swim as a group and head north, in the direction of the prevailing current and our lead guide, Hugo. The catamaran would catch up at the end of our short snorkel.

Below us lay a vast reef of colorful corals and marine life. Even though the water was relatively deep, maybe twenty feet in spots, I was able to photograph and identify many of the fish that swam below us: parrotfish, surgeonfish, filefish, groupers, angelfish, and wrasses to name a few.

Hugo pointed deep below at an eel, spotted and writhing, as it escaped into a hole in a patch of coral. Shortly after, I noticed a large, stationary fish toward the deeper water away from shore, the first of at least two barracudas we encountered.

We weren't in the water long, no more than a half hour, before most of the snorkelers boarded the catamaran for their first glass of champagne. Not surprisingly, my husband was in that first wave of imbibers. While I'm no teetotaler, I was happier being the last snorkeler back on the boat.

While we lunched al fresco, the catamaran motored past our cruise ship gleaming in the tropical sun and reached our second stop several miles north. Again we were close to shore but this time in a quieter area without any busy marine traffic. Hugo and his team untied paddle boards and tethered a 'lily pad' raft to give our group an hour of fun in the sun and water. Meanwhile cervezas and margaritas joined the endless supply of champagne while 20th century American pop music played.

A Booze Cruise on a Pirate Ship was one of the other excursions Princess offered; I started to think I had joined it. Fortunately Hugo had kept the snorkels and masks out in case anyone wanted to check out the marine life between the boat and the rocky shore.

"It's mostly sand without a lot of things to see. Sometimes there are fish at the buoy where we're moored," Hugo informed me. When I asked a fellow tourist who had just snorkeled around our catamaran, he told me there wasn't anything to see.

Undeterred and with at least a half hour still scheduled at this stop, I donned a mask and a snorkel and jumped into the calm, warm sea. Sure enough, near the mooring line was a smooth trunkfish. Several bar jacks and ocean surgeonfish hovered nearby.

I didn't see any other notable fish life - I was starting to think Hugo and the other snorkeler were right - until I swam the fifty yards or so to shore and encountered a web burrfish, a type of spiny box puffer, motionless on the sea floor. Nearby was a juvenile French angelfish, quite photogenic with its bold yellow and black stripes.

Looking toward the catamaran I could see my husband waving me to come back with one hand and a glass in the other. We're we leaving? Back at the boat, I found out we still weren't ready to set sail and, besides, several other snorkelers were still close to shore.

I headed back in their direction for another ten minutes, happy I did because I photographed Atlantic blue tangs, more surgeonfish, and a yellowtail damselfish. Most exciting of all was finding a banded butterflyfish, black-and-white striped to blend in with the white sand and dark shadows of the stark underwater landscape.

Back on the catamaran, the crew unfurled a sail so we at least partially breezed our way back to the pier and the Caribbean Princess. Drinks were still flowing and a photographer was selling pictures she had taken of us both underwater and partying on deck. Her prices were quite high: $100 for the whole digital set, $50 for a selection of four specific files. There were some terrific underwater shots, an especially vivid one of me pointing my camera at some distant subject, but the prices seemed astronomical.

Even though we were in Mexico and even though I asked Hugo to intercede, the prices were fixed with no haggling or negotiating: corporate rules! I still actually saw at least two customers pay for the photos. With only minutes left in the excursion, I finally discovered some of the elite on the Elite Champagne Catamaran Sail and Snorkel with Lunch.