Where to go in April for a week?

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TallRed

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AOW/Nitrox Certified, Diving since 1977, Cozumel is my favorite for the drift diving, walls and coral

Looking for a new spot to dive in the Caribbean for a week in April. Have been to Bahamas, Caymans, Cozumel, St. Kitts, Turks & Caicos, Jamaica. Don't want to fight currents and don't care about wrecks. Don't want to ride the boat a l-o-n-g time to get to good dive spots. Would be nice to have good shore diving as an option but at 66 I don't want to drag equipment over distances. Don't care about clubs or nightlife. Flexible about food but certainly don't mind a good restaurant or two. Not looking for a fancy all-inclusive or a low-end dive-only hotel. Any thoughts on a new place to try?
 
Bonaire or Curacao. Top islands for shore diving. Boat diving is good too. Based on my experiences, reasonable dive prices on these 2 islands compared to Provo and the Caymans. Plenty of restaurants and moderately priced hotels/condos. Currents are virtually a none issue on the west side of Bonaire.
 
Bonaire. Famous for shore diving, but that is a “young person’s game” in my opinion.

Short boat rides, like 5 to 15 minutes. And the best diving is arguably at Klein Bonaire, so a boat is necessary.

No current to speak of.

It is a mellower place topside than Cozumel, too

Check out Divi Flamingo to get a baseline, then comparison shop.
 
Oops, I forgot to mention I've been to Curacao. :) Bonaire is somewhere I always thought I should probably visit. Broke my back skydiving a long time ago so shore diving can't involve much trekking with equipment.
Thanks for the replies.
 
You say you’ve been to Caymans. Have you hit all of them - Little, Brac, and both East and West ends of Grand (which may as well be separate islands, except you can drive.)

Same applies a bit to Curacao, depending where you based yourself you could pick a very different area of the island and have a different trip.

Liveaboard?
 
I think that St. Croix would be a good choice, very nice boat diving and the Fredricksted Pier is a great shore dive. You could do it several times and never see it all or get bored.

Keep in mind that Easter is late this year on April 21, so the high season may still be in effect in many destinations. Places may already be booked and at the peak price rates. You might be better off looking for something in early May.
 
Maybe the Virgin Islands? It's pretty simple, low current diving unless you look for it.

Fly into St Thomas and spend a few days diving the East End. It's all boat diving except for Coki Beach. Some decent diving in the Cays - we liked Congo Cay diving.

My pick would be Red Hook Divers for boat dives - they dive the best in the area and around St John just across the channel. Sugar Bay Resort is nice - may be nicer than you need. There's quite a few options around Sapphire Bay also.

Then take the fast ferry over to the BVI's. I'm partial to DiveBVI on Virgin Gorda which is a very pleasant island. Nice boats, nice staff, they'll keep/clean your gear. We almost always were back by lunch near their main shop then afternoon dove with them also. Nothing is overly deep, some dives are pretty shallow. They didn't seem to have any sort of time constraints but my group filled the boat all week. Some of us go well over an hour per dive.

Some better than expected restaurants as they cater to the villa crowd - there's a lot of them there.

Or Tortola which is closer but locate near one of the dive operators - it's a long island.Either way many of the dives are in the channel between the two or in a couple clusters of islands nearby - no long rides. We did two dives and were always back by lunch - sometimes earlier. No real shore diving on either island though.

One nice thing about the ferries - there's a lot of them and they're reliable. My friends left VG at 8am, were in Charlotte Amalie by 10 and had 2 hrs. to shop b4 their flight
 
Oops, I forgot to mention I've been to Curacao. :) Bonaire is somewhere I always thought I should probably visit. Broke my back skydiving a long time ago so shore diving can't involve much trekking with equipment.
Thanks for the replies.

Other than the 1000 steps site in Bonaire, there's not much trekking. Either you dive at your resort at the local reef or hop into a truck and park right next to the water. I've had the same experiences in Curacao as well. Depends on how you define trekking. Bonaire is more of a diver's island than Curacao (more dive sites, more divers, more dive shops, more choices). Bonaire is more compact and generally you are less than a 10 minute taxi/drive into town. I stayed at Divi last April and could walk into town in less than 15 minutes. Only issue is that the cruise ships were close by. Going back in a few weeks and staying at Captain Dons for the first time. This hotel is north of the city and takes less than a half hour to walk into town. We do a do it yourself vacation so need to be relatively close to a supermarket and restaurants.
 
I saw somewhere that Cuba is starting to have good support for tourists and scuba, they were diving the Bay of Pigs and the Gardens of the Queen.
 

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