Many people on this forum recommended Pelican Adventures, so I used them as one of my operators. They are a very big operator located at the Holiday Inn, with outlying sites at other hotels. I booked with them at the Wyndam, and I booked for the Antilla, Aruba's most famous wreck.
I was picked up at my hotel, and was directed to a window on the pier to hand in my paperwork and get my weights. No one was there. Then a boat pulled up, and divers began to disembark. A young lady who appeared to be a DM got off, entered the building, and then went to the window to check in the materials these people had used. Then she began processing our work. It was then about departure time. There were no tanks on the boat, but there were many on the pier ready to go. We asked if we were supposed to take them onto the boat. She looked around and seemed surprised to find she was the only one from the company there. She told us to wait until the captain showed up.
Eventually she told us we could get on the boat and get our gear out. Finally, some other people from the company showed up, and they started loading the tanks. It was already past the scheduled departure time, and we all started setting up our gear rapidly. The DM for our trip then showed up and asked softly for all the divers to get onto the pier for a meeting. Both of us who heard him did so, but the others stayed at their tasks. He waited patiently with us until the captain told him he would not have time because they were shoving off. It was a short trip, and we spent most of it setting up our gear.
The guide was not only DM led, it was DM followed. There was a guide at the beginning and end, and we were required to stay between them. I was among the first down the descent line, and it was nine minutes into the dive before the rest of them got down. My snorkeling wife was on the deck, and she told me later that a beginning diver, flustered by the chaos and rush, had trouble getting down and had to abort the dive.
We circled the wreck in a group and did a minor penetration or two in some wide open areas. Total bottom time, including the nine minute wait, was 52 minutes.
I was at the very end of the group, so I did not see what happened next. Back at the mooring line, as we prepared to ascend, a teenage diver vomited, panicked, and bolted to the surface. My wife told me that once he was on board, he lay on the deck vomiting. He then developed a powerful headache and was writhing in pain. One of the crew members came with a bucket and washed away the vomit. According to my wife, that was the sum total of attention he received from anyone from Pelican Adventures.
When the rest of us got on board, the boat started to return to the dock. When we realized what had happened, several of us began to to talk with the boy and his father in order to render what care we could. One of us asked the crew about help, but he was shrugged off. We continued to help after we debarked. He began to get better, which is a good sign. I learned that he was prone to migraines, which often are preceded by vomiting. (My own son followed that pattern.) I suspect that was the problem. We gave the father some pretty standard recommendations about getting medical help.
After standing around a while, we went back to the window and asked about our return rides. The young woman at the window looked around and saw that everyone else was gone, so she drove us back to our hotels.
This was my only dive with them (I canceled my other plans), so it probably does not reflect common practice. Your results may vary.
