Andaman Islands Havelock

[tavarish]

Forget about Barefoot they're expensive and located on the other side of the island. beautiful beach but you are REALLY stranded.

Barefoot got two locations. One at Beach number 3 where there is budget accommodation (very close to Dive India) and the other at Beach number 7 (the Beach that Times Magazine said was the best in Asia) where it's a more upmarked resort.

Diving wise it's the same prices for fun dives with both operators, while Barefoot is cheaper on PADI courses (Dive India also conduct SSI courses and they are slightly cheaper the PADI courses at Barefoot).

 

[willitrain]

Hi there,
We were out there about 2 months ago for a couple of weeks.
We dived with both Dive India (Island Vinnie's) and Barefoot Scuba. As the guy says above the dive shops are in fact about 100m from each other. Prices are nearly the same.
Personally I preferred Barefoot, mainly because they were a little less busy than Dive India so I could get on the dives I wanted to. And because the boats weren't so crowded. But either way they take you to the same sites and are all good guys.
Island Vinnie's does good dive packages if you want to role up your accomodation, food and dives altogether.
But, the food isn't as good (not that it's bad, but there are a couple of great places to eat: Wild Orchid and Emerald Gecko) as some of the other places on the beach. In my opinion you'd be better to go and stay at one of the beach "resorts" nearby and wonder down to the dive operators. We stayed at Emerald Gecko and then cycled down to the dive operators in the morning.
As to the dive sites, I actually thought most were fantastic. Not sure what the silt comment was about, maybe we were really lucky. But when we were there visibilty was 30m plus, and there was fish teaming in Button Island, Minerva, Dixons and Johnny's.

The diving isn't all that challenging, but if you want to gaze at a myriad of colourful fish and startling colourful coral then you won't go wrong!

 

[mikkylad]

As posted by Bowmouth, I would suggest liveaboard for the Andamans to really get the best out of the place.

Take a look at MV Philkade and check out the schedule to see if it fits.

Mik.

 

[tavarish]

As posted by Bowmouth, I would suggest liveaboard for the Andamans to really get the best out of the place.

Take a look at MV Philkade and check out the schedule to see if it fits.

Mik.

If your only aim is to do a number of dives and you do not want to travel through India then I agree that liveaboard is the better choice. But you will miss out on the fantastic atmosphere on Havelock Island, the great beaches (beach number 7 is the best beach in Asia according to Time Magazine) and much more. So if you do not mind the travel and want to explore something in between the dives a visit to Andaman Islands is great

The dive shops on Havelock also offer more knowledge about the dive sites as most of the best ones was discovered by staff in these dive shops. And every season these staff discover even more dive sites.

Last year Barefoot Scuba had one trip from Havelock to Barren Island for diving, and there might be a chance they do it again this year apparantly (with a larger boat or speedboat). So unless you want to avoid travelling through India and are only interested in loads of dives, it can be in my view be a good idea to visit the Andaman Islands and drop the liveaboard.