sabidaddy:
Thanks for the replies. How close to ambergris can you dive? What I mean is can you shore dive? How deep is the water? Also I heard a lot of negativity on the Blue Hole. What are your opinions on that?
My wife and I went to Ambergris Caye (San Pedro, town) June 2003. We stayed at Ramon's Villiage, which is an old-style mid range resort. Not all inclusive, but definitely catered to a diving vacation.
No, there is no good shore diving in the San Pedro area of Ambergris, but the boat trips beyond the barrier reef take minutes to a half-hour. Some people were picked-up by our dive boats at the city pier on several of the trips, so that may give you an idea of the independants in town, of which there are MANY!
The blue hole is a deep, double-tank dive that requires some experience for real sport safety level. As a matter of fact, the plane we left on at end of vacation (a puddle-jumper to Belize City) held a young diver with deco sickness en route to Hyperbaric time. There is a chamber in Belize city, by the way. He did not dive with our boats, either.
Our last day of potential diving was literally washed out by extreme offshore wind, so we paid for a guided snorkling trip inside the reef to Hol Chan marine park, where we spent our first scuba dive for familiarization on day one. This is a protected area at a breech in the barrier reef to the open sea that is always full of large and small sea life. On the first dive there, the only sighting of a whale shark was along side of our boat just before we descended, not to be seen again all week! Also saw many rays, sharks, turtle,tarpon,etc.
If you haven't booked your hotel yet, you might compare rates at Ramon's,as there is nothing else much to do in Ambergris but scuba. They have a web sight easily looked by a google search. Happy diving,
Airhead.