When you are picturing the Coki Beach Dive Club in your mind, think of a small shack, not anything fancy; I believe it's actually a large panel truck that they open up and extend awnings and such from, plus pulling out gear, etc. Right by the open back end (which faces the beach), they have several large foot lockers. These aren't locked, but they are very public and right under the nose of the dive people. You can store your things in there all day; we just had our towels, sunscreen, and hats on the beach most of the time and, later on, our lunch bag, with everything else in there. It was only about 100 ft. or so from where we put our stuff on the beach to those lockers, maybe less, so it's no big deal to get things.
When we (2 families total, 4 adults and 3 kids) got there (9 AM?), they gave us all snorkeling equipment to use for the day, plus boogie boards with clear viewing panels in them for the 3 kids. We all snorkeled and played in the water for a while; that is a great time because it gets much more crowded later. I even saw 2 squid; apparently that is rare because they are shy animals. Around 10:30 or so, they pulled us over to the side of the truck and did a 20 min. or so scuba basics course. We were sitting in folding chairs under an awning for that. Because we needed to have one adult to supervise ds5, and because the other mom and I were both very nervous, we split up; ds9, dd9 (who decided not to do it at the last minute), the other mom, and I did what was basically the "Bubblemaker" class. It was very fun, and just right for nervous moms! Even at 4-6 feet, there are lots and lots of fish to see. We came back in, and the two dads went out, much deeper and for much longer. Throughout the day we played in the water and snorkeled a lot. We stayed until about 2:30 then started packing up; we easily could've stayed longer, but we didn't want to take any chances about getting back to the ship in plenty of time. Do take along either one credit card or traveler's checks or something to pay for your scuba (unless you've arranged ahead of time to have it charged to the one you gave them for the reservation), and some cash if you want to buy a soda, cool drink, postcards, or whatever, as well as for the taxi.
We were very careful about sunscreen, and as a CA native I'm accustomed to being careful at beaches, and yet we still got burns; I think you can't put it on often enough. I would really recommend wearing a hat that you can wear in the water except for scuba (maybe even while snorkeling!), and t-shirts that you've washed in Rit Sungard, or some other protection. Even in March the sun was intense and the reflection from the water makes it even worse.
If you PM me with your e-mail, I'll send you pics from there, so you can get a little idea of what it's like! BTW, the family we were with is from Bowling Green
