Caribbean Family Beach/Dive Destinations

[arew+4]

Eat breakfast in rental, pack lunch, morning dive, or two depending on ambition, lunch afternoon dive. Back to the rental early dinner, Twilight or night dive and you are at 3-4 dives a day. A couple of days of this and you will find your self bumping up against NDL on moderate profile dives.

Cozumel you are at the mercy of the boat schedules, even in an Ai rush through breakfast, two tank morning. Rushed late lunch, catch an afternoon 1 or 2 tank maybe a night dive once a week.

 

[Kimela]

If money is of no concern, I'd highly recommend the Intercontinental Presidente in Cozumel. Two nice beaches, lots of lounge chairs on the beach going unused; the beaches are calm; the snorkeling just off the beach is wonderful (as well as nice shore dives); they have a 'family pool' that is very nice, and an adult pool. It's not an all-inclusive, and there are no restaurants within easy walking distance. If you do a day of boat diving with their onsite dive op you get free unlimited shore dives - otherwise the shore dives are $10 a tank. Taxi rides to do other things are relatively inexpensive (but pay in pesos and know the cost ahead of time so you pay the right price).

 

[tursiops]

- fishy and high probability to see eels, shark, turtles, octopus

You can search on the REEF.org data base to find the sighting frequency for your favorite animals.
For example, Green Morays are most likely to be seen in Tobago, Bonaire, and Florida, whereas Reef Sharks are most likely in the Garden of the Queens in Cuba and in French Cay in T&C. Green Sea Turtles are most likely in Saba and the East Coast of Bonaire (where you will see dozens...).

 

[arew+4]

Or you can go to playa pescadaroe on Curacao and be pretty much guaranteed to see turtles up close.

 

[Skeptic14]

A common response to diving questions about Provo is that it is best to be done by LOB. I disagree. Yes if you are doing strictly a dive trip and want 3 plus dives a day every day than perhaps. But if that is not your goal, staying on Grace Bay and diving there is fine. Two tank AM or 1 tank PM dives off Grace Bay work just fine for a family vacation and if sharks is your thing you should see them on just about every dive.

Which ops did you use for your Provo diving? Do you recall what time typically you returned from morning dives?

We were pretty close to going to Grace Bay in the recent past but 3 things nixed it:

- up tick in crime seemed more concerning on Provo to my wife than GC
- seemed typical that returning from morning dives would be around 2pm or later vs before noon on GC
- When we were in final research stages it seemed Grace Bay would be another 20-25% more expensive than even GC

That said... if the beach is that much better than 7MB, we may have to reconsider, although not getting back from morning dives until 2pm is definitely not optimal for a family trip.

 

[Skeptic14]

We as a family are/were Curacao junkies, doing 3 trips in two years (with the 4th cancelled in the Pandemic). At first, it checked all the boxes when the daughter didn't want to just dive every day. Then it became dive, dive, dive, but still go explore (so 2 dives a day, each day, and do something else on the same day). We have done A/I resorts and "Apartments" (shop and cook on our own), renting a car to explore, and using a service (The Dive Bus) for shore based diving (daughter has a tendency to get sea sick).

I am in withdrawal currently as the Pandemic put us in a financial situation of no big travel which we are still climbing out of.

Can't wait to go back....

okay, this thread depressed me....

Thanks for the feedback @rhwestfall, Curacao is at the top of the list currently for an alternative to 7MB based on a lot of positive feedback. What other dive destinations would you compare the Curacao diving too favorably?

If money is of no concern, I'd highly recommend the Intercontinental Presidente in Cozumel. Two nice beaches, lots of lounge chairs on the beach going unused; the beaches are calm; the snorkeling just off the beach is wonderful (as well as nice shore dives); they have a 'family pool' that is very nice, and an adult pool. It's not an all-inclusive, and there are no restaurants within easy walking distance. If you do a day of boat diving with their onsite dive op you get free unlimited shore dives - otherwise the shore dives are $10 a tank. Taxi rides to do other things are relatively inexpensive (but pay in pesos and know the cost ahead of time so you pay the right price).

Thanks for the suggestion, I'll take a look!

You can search on the REEF.org data base to find the sighting frequency for your favorite animals.
For example, Green Morays are most likely to be seen in Tobago, Bonaire, and Florida, whereas Reef Sharks are most likely in the Garden of the Queens in Cuba and in French Cay in T&C. Green Sea Turtles are most likely in Saba and the East Coast of Bonaire (where you will see dozens...).

Thanks, I'll have to dig through the data and see what I can discern.

 

[rhwestfall]

Thanks for the feedback @rhwestfall, Curacao is at the top of the list currently for an alternative to 7MB based on a lot of positive feedback. What other dive destinations would you compare the Curacao diving too favorably

IDK - I'm no great traveler.. My warm water dive history (ancient) is San Salvador, Bahamas and Bonaire. "Recent" is Jamaica, Key Largo, and Curacao.

 

[tkaelin]

Which ops did you use for your Provo diving? Do you recall what time typically you returned from morning dives?

Diveprovo. They were pretty good. Return times for the Grace Bay trips were between 1-2 PM.
Two trips. 2011 & 2016. I enjoyed the time out on the boats but both trips were with family dive members.

 

[Skeptic14]

Hey @tkaelin, I just stumbled upon your trip report from Curacao in November, and see you've been to Curacao 5 times.

How does the diving compare to Provo and other places you've dived?

I found Lions Dive last night doing some prelim research, looked promising. What other places have you stayed in your previous Curacao trips?

Thanks

 

[tkaelin]

How does the diving compare to Provo and other places you've dived?

I enjoyed the diving on both but my preference these days is to shore dive and Provo is all boat diving as far as I can tell. I did really enjoy the boat trips on Provo to West Caicos and French Caye as well as spending some down time on the beach at Grace Bay so we will probably return at some point.

Cur has boat and shore diving. Bon and Cur are very similar in the diving so what you read or experience in Bon will apply to Cur. I like the little stuff and taking my time to explore at my own pace which I can do on Cur. I also solo dive. I also have a diving spouse and diving grown kids so my situation is a bit different as to what we look for in a place to travel and where we stay. On Cur turtles, eels, octopus and rays common. Sharks and big game fish not so much. I think CUR, like BON, is very fishy. Can't really say whether more or less so than Provo.

I found Lions Dive last night doing some prelim research, looked promising. What other places have you stayed in your previous Curacao trips?

We really liked Lion's Dive but we did our stay there after staying and getting our diving in on the quiet side in Westpunt. LD is very nice and I could see it being well suited for you trying to get some diving in while taking a family vacation with nondivers.

The places we have stayed were out in Lagun, Lagun Blou and in Westpunt, Nos Krusero and Allwest. We have a trip booked next year with a week at Allwest and two nights at LD.