We just returned from a long weekend stay at another hotel on Isla Mujeres. Because our hotel did not have their own dive operation, they offered to sign us up for two-tank morning dives at Hotel Garrafon for Friday and Saturday mornings. After an hour late start on Friday morning, two dive shop employees accompanied the three divers out for the first dive.

When we surfaced from the first drift dive, the boat captain who said he would be watching our bubbles was approximately a quarter of a mile away and it took several minutes of whistling and waving to get his attention to come pick us up out of the open water. Upon our arrival back at the resort to reload the boat with new air tanks, we noticed that our dive knife and compass were missing from the gear bag we left on the boat during our dive. After searching all around the boat and dock, we found both the knife and compass hidden in the captain’s box beneath the steering wheel of the boat. As the two dive shop employees were the only people to have access to the boat during our dive, we chose to pay for our completed dive and leave the hotel immediately.

Scuba diving is a dangerous sport where safety and trust plays an utmost role of importance. After six years of nothing but fabulous diving experiences all over the world, we definitely learned a valuable lesson about researching dive shops more before each trip. Based on other reviews written on the hotel, we were shocked by our experience with Hotel Garrafon and wanted to suggest for other traveling snorkelers and divers to beware of the untrustworthy staff at this hotel.