My son and I just got back from our vacation and I thought I would post a report. Arrival was smooth and easy. We made it thru customs and got our bag quickly and were brought to Budget for our truck rental. In no time we were at Golden Reef Inn checking in and finding out what we had to do to get our check out dive. We went to Wannadive at Eden Beach and after getting our tags/paperwork we made the quick dive. We didnt really understand the purpose of the dive since no one paid any attention to us gearing up, getting in, or getting out. We did the Saturday - Saturday trip and here were our impressions...
Lodging: We stayed at Golden Reef Inn. Accommodations were nice and we had no problems throughout the stay. We met other folks there and had lots of good conversations. The morning breakfast was great. We also did the Monday night BBQ and it was good as well. A little on the pricey side, but Gibi was worth it. They had a place to rinse your gear and we stored it on our porch area.
Diving: We did 25 dives over the week and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. We saw eagle rays, turtles, squid, sting rays, eels and more fish than I could imagine. The reefs were amazing. Our favorites were:
Angel City
Ol Blue
Andrea I & II
Hilma Hooker
Karpata
Even the ones not listed as favorites were great. The only disappointing dive we did was a night dive at Eden Beach. There simply isnt much of anything there. We did run into the wreck, which saved the dive.
Visibility was good. We typically maxed out in the 50-80 ft range and did a couple up to 100. We dove with 3mm suits and were fine. I was a little chilled one day we did alot of dives, including a night dive, but never broke out the 5mm.
For the majority of the time we had no issues with tanks. We dove Nitrox and a couple of times had to go back because there were none available. We used their gauge to check our fills and thought it was strange that they rarely matched what they put on the tanks. Normally they were within 1%(ie 31 instead of 32), but occasionally found it off by a little more. We always calibrated first... Overall it was a pretty simple process and worked well.
Photography: I rented a camera from Buddys and it was the best $125 I spent. I was very impressed with the expertise of the shop and Im still going thru the 600+ pictures I took. I highly recommend them. I went back daily and downloaded the pictures to my laptop.
Park: We thought the park was ok, but nothing spectacular. The roads are very bad and it was a long drive. Since we couldnt dive on Friday afternoon we did it and it took about 3 - 4 hours. There were some nice and interesting spots. We did see/feed donkeys outside the park on our drive back to town.
Food: We tried to go on the cheaper side and hit the grocery store for some meals, mostly sandwiches at lunchtime. We did eat out a couple of times. The Pasabon Pizza & Bar made some great affordable pizza.
Things we learned:
Lodging: We stayed at Golden Reef Inn. Accommodations were nice and we had no problems throughout the stay. We met other folks there and had lots of good conversations. The morning breakfast was great. We also did the Monday night BBQ and it was good as well. A little on the pricey side, but Gibi was worth it. They had a place to rinse your gear and we stored it on our porch area.
Diving: We did 25 dives over the week and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. We saw eagle rays, turtles, squid, sting rays, eels and more fish than I could imagine. The reefs were amazing. Our favorites were:
Angel City
Ol Blue
Andrea I & II
Hilma Hooker
Karpata
Even the ones not listed as favorites were great. The only disappointing dive we did was a night dive at Eden Beach. There simply isnt much of anything there. We did run into the wreck, which saved the dive.
Visibility was good. We typically maxed out in the 50-80 ft range and did a couple up to 100. We dove with 3mm suits and were fine. I was a little chilled one day we did alot of dives, including a night dive, but never broke out the 5mm.
For the majority of the time we had no issues with tanks. We dove Nitrox and a couple of times had to go back because there were none available. We used their gauge to check our fills and thought it was strange that they rarely matched what they put on the tanks. Normally they were within 1%(ie 31 instead of 32), but occasionally found it off by a little more. We always calibrated first... Overall it was a pretty simple process and worked well.
Photography: I rented a camera from Buddys and it was the best $125 I spent. I was very impressed with the expertise of the shop and Im still going thru the 600+ pictures I took. I highly recommend them. I went back daily and downloaded the pictures to my laptop.
Park: We thought the park was ok, but nothing spectacular. The roads are very bad and it was a long drive. Since we couldnt dive on Friday afternoon we did it and it took about 3 - 4 hours. There were some nice and interesting spots. We did see/feed donkeys outside the park on our drive back to town.
Food: We tried to go on the cheaper side and hit the grocery store for some meals, mostly sandwiches at lunchtime. We did eat out a couple of times. The Pasabon Pizza & Bar made some great affordable pizza.
Things we learned:
- The Shore Diving book by Susan was well worth it.
- Find the red rock if you are going north! Its a long drive around the island if you dont take the shortcut back, but geez was that a rough road.
- Mosquitos were there, but not terrible. We made sure we didnt leave any standing water around.
- When leaving make sure you get thru customs early. We were lucky we did because the place got packed and places to sit ran out. It could be because of the time we left (4pm), but we were glad we had a chair and access to power for that period of time. Our flight left 1 1/2 hours late as well.
- Watch your speed! They had a speed trap setup by the airport with 10-15 cops waiting to hand out tickets. I heard they had one on the north side recently as well.
