Page 101 - Mexico Diving From the Caribbean to Pacific Isles

Vision Magazine article in in 1958 titled over-run by Americans who were in search A fter the fall of Cuban strongman Ful-
of a Caribbean paradise. The frequency of gencio Batista’s government to Fidel
A “Cozumel se Acapulciza” (or Cozumel Castro’s communist rebels in 1959, Castro
is becoming an Acapulco”) discussed that flights from Merida to Cozumel had risen nationalized the American-owned hotels
and casinos on Cuba. Americans began
North-American tourists have been coming from four to nine a week, and they were all looking for other Caribbean destinations
to visit for vacation. Cozumel was one of
to Cozumel for a few years. A1959 Esquire fully booked. Rooms had risen from sixty the beneficiaries of this turn of events. The
flood gates were now open and Americans
magazine article wrote that he was charg- cents a day to $4.00 a day. “Millionaires,” were visiting the island in droves. By 1961
Cozumel was appearing in Life Magazine as
ing $8.00 per day for his services, boat and wrote Humphreys, “accompanied by lawyers an “unspoiled vacation spot.” Hotel construc-
tion took off, with a dozen new lodgings
equipment. The business grew and Bob took and construction engineers, arrived and opening prior to 1970 and the new vaca-
tion destination of Cozumel took its rightful
on a several Cozumeleños as interns and departed, leaving in their wake visions of place in the world.

trained then to take care of the tourist. In modern hotels, night clubs, yacht basins

1960 El Clavado Dive Shop and Aqua Safari and swarms of cruise-ship visitors”. Cozumel

opened and the boom of Cozumel scuba would never be the same.

diving was launched and never looked back. I n 1960, Clay Blair published his book, Div-
ing Pleasure and Treasure, in the United
In the May 1959 issue of Holiday Magazine,
John Humphreys, who started the tourist

rush with his original article published in States and it was republished in 1961 in

1955, took note that huge differences had Great Britain. The book discussed the sal-

occurred on the island since his first article vage of the wreck El Matancero, a Spanish

was published four years earlier. Humphreys merchant vessel that ran aground on the

wrote the island was on the verge of being coral reef near Akumal in 1741.