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TDI Stage Cave in Mexico: 38 dive centres on TecDiveTools, with agencies, courses taught and a summary of what students say. 13 publish course prices.
TecDiveTools lists 38 dive centres teaching TDI Stage Cave in Mexico. 13 of them publish course prices, in the currency the shop advertises and with the date each was checked — not converted, and not estimated.
Listings are ordered by how much evidence exists about their technical diving, not by a star rating, with any paid Featured listing shown first and marked as such (how rankings work). 25 of these 38 carry reviews we have read and classified as being about technical or overhead training. The count excludes recreational certifications by name, so a busy resort does not outrank a one-instructor cave operation on the volume of its reef trips. Separately, 24 have at least one instructor whose reviews we have read and summarised — a dive centre carries no synthesis of its own. How we read and count reviews.
Looking for individual instructors instead? Instructors in Mexico.
About the course
Stage Cave (officially 'Stage Overhead Diver' in TDI Part 2 standards) teaches cave divers to extend their range using stage cylinders—auxiliary gas bottles clipped along the guideline to supplement back gas beyond what a single tank configuration allows. This course is designed for Full Cave Divers seeking to push deeper or longer into cave systems, teaching stage-cylinder management, gas planning for extended penetrations, and the specific procedures for clipping, unclipping, and switching to stage bottles mid-dive in overhead environments.
Students complete 3 or more cave dives (each 90+ minutes) across 2 different dive sites, demonstrating mastery of: stage-cylinder rigging and deployment, complex gas planning for extended bottom time, stage bottle clipping and unclipping at depth, emergency procedures with stages, safe stage handling under task-loading, and proper decompression protocols with stage support.
The centres listed above teach TDI TDI Stage Cave in Mexico. Requirements are set by the agency, not the centre, so they are the same wherever you train — what differs is price, class size and how much diving is included.
38 dive centres on TecDiveTools teach TDI Stage Cave in Mexico: Playa del Carmen (24), Tulum (4), Akumal (3), Puerto Aventuras (3), Cancun (2) and Mexico City (2). Each is listed above.
The cenotes are the benchmark place to train: around 24–25°C, very clear, with daylight cavern zones for a first course and some of the longest mapped cave systems in the world for full cave and beyond. The number of entrances and the variety of passage — decorated, wide, low, haloclined — let you train on different cave profiles in a single trip.
One centre in the TecDiveTools directory publishes a whole-course price for TDI Stage Cave in Mexico: Deep Dark Diving, at $825. 3 centres charge by the day instead, which is not comparable with a course total. Prices differ mainly in what they include, so compare the inclusions before comparing the numbers. Prices were last checked in September 2026.
Between 3 and 5 days, based on the durations 3 centres publish for it in Mexico. The time depends on the centre's schedule, weather, and how quickly the required skills are demonstrated — agencies set a minimum number of dives, not a fixed number of days.
At the same tier in TecDiveTools' cross-agency comparison, dive centres in Mexico also teach IANTD Adv. Cave - Stage/Multi-Stage Diver (13) and NSS-CDS Stage Cave Diver (1). They are comparable rather than interchangeable — each agency sets its own standards and card, so check which one your next course accepts.
