Suzanne Redman began visiting the Riviera Maya in the early 90s, seeking the small town feel she had known while traveling the backroads of Baja as a child. She came down for a one-month vacation in 1997 and never left.

After working at various jobs, she eventually gravitated toward the center of town--the dive shop. While answering e-mail there, she received and interesting request: "I've been working as a computer consultant in Toronto for the past six years, and I am planning on taking some serious time off to do some serious diving."

Enter Eric Adamson.  He had never been to Mexico before but had been diving at other locations in the Caribbean.  Suzanne arranged long term accommodations for Eric and he came down to do some serious diving...and kept diving, and training, and diving...and eventually moved in with Suzanne.  It was later said that Eric adjusted so well, so fast, to life in Mexico that we all knew he would never leave.

When you work in one place, even a place as lovely as Akumal, you still tend to need a change of scenery from time to time. In the fall of 1999, just weeks before meeting Eric,, Suzanne made her first trip to Xcalak for some recreational diving and time away from the computer. She loved it so much she came back two weeks later with a few friends. Loved it even more and came back with Eric the first week he was in Mexico. He loved it, too. They continued to come back as often as they could....

Then they found out that the Aventuras Chinchorro dive shop was for sale! "Wouldn't it be cool if we could buy that dive shop?" They sat around and dreamed. Eric suggested we request more info and the asking price. It wasn't too much money but still a lot for Eric and Suzanne. They talked it over with friends and family....and little by little realized that their dreams were about to come true.

That all seems like a long time ago. In July, 2000, we bought the dive shop and our dream really did come true. How did we come up with the name? Well, we wanted to use the words "Xcalak" and "Chinchorro". We played around with catchy acronyms and decided we needed a "T" in the middle. And what better way to describe our lives now that pure XTC.

In the meantime, it's still a lot of work. We didn't come here to make a fortune, just to have a good life and great diving. We love our beach front apartment above our dive shop and meeting happy adventurers to paradise. Plus we have plenty of tortillas to eat and two fat, happy dogs. We owe a great deal to our friends and family for their support during this grand adventure!

In March of 2002, our son Max Emiliano was born. Our employees call him "Tres Banderas" (Three Flags) because he is Mexican by birth, American from his mother, and Canadian from his father. What a wonderful place to grow up! Max was joined by his sister Brianna Irish in Oct 2004, so we won't have to look far to find Max a dive buddy.

We would like to take this opportunity to introduce you to our employees:

Alejandro Batun has been with us since we first came to Xcalak. We originally hired him to paint our sign--but it turned out he was also an excellent captain and fly fishing guide. He liked diving and spent two years training with Suzanne. In the fall of 2001, Alejandro became a divemaster. Now he has made more dives in Xcalak and Chinchorro than any of us and Alejandro was promoted to assistant manager in January 2006. If you are lucky eough to dive with Alejandro, he might show you where he has found hundreds of silver coins from an early 1900s wreck.

Alejandro Diving Chinchorro	Alejandro's Art

Jorge Castro came to work with us in January 2001, he had been fishing Chinchorro with the Xcalak Fishermen's Cooperative for many years but has begun a new career in eco-tourism. He's turned out to be a fantastic dive captain, a favorite of our clients, and finished his divemaster course in 2003. Jorge has the shop record for the most manatee sightings in the Bay of Chetumal.

Jorge prepares his boat for a day's diving	Jorge enjoying paraidse

Tito Salazar was the Chinchorro captain for Aventuras Chinchorro for many years before we bought the dive shop. He came back to work for us in the spring of 2001 when our new Chinchorro boat was launched. Tito has over 40 years of experience captaining in and around Xcalak and Banco Chinchorro. He is also a pretty good diver!

We are proud to have Bob Villier as our most experienced instructor on the XTC Dive Team. He has been diving with us on and off since we opened, and became a full time instructor with XTC in the fall of 2002. Although Bob has been diving the waters off Xcalak for over ten years, most of his diving has been on cold-water shipwrecks in the North Atlantic. He gave up on cold water diving when he became a permanent resident of Xcalak in 1999. Before moving to Xcalak Bob was on the faculty of Temple University in Philadelphia where he was an instructor in the underwater education program. Bob is a NAUI instructor trainer with over a thousand logged dives and hundreds of happy students.

Thanks for reading our story. We hope you'll come visit us so we can share some of the magic with you.

Need help finding accommodations for your stay in Xcalak?

We will be happy to assist you with your vacation planning.

For additional information about
The Aventuras Xcalak to Chinchorro Dive Center or the area in general Email us at: Email Us

Aventuras Xcalak-Chinchorro, Postal 21, Chetumal, Q. Roo, Mexico 77000

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