Cuba trip cancelled for Oct. considering Belize, is one location better than another?

[chillyinCanada]

I stay right in town at a smaller boutique hotel with large balcony, all rooms face the ocean and are studio units with kitchenettes and living space. My preferred dive op is Amigos del Mar and all I have to do is leave hotel and within a few steps I'm walking onto their dock. They are also the dive op with the large comfy yacht for going out to the Atolls for 3 tank day trip, either Blue Hole with 2 excellent follow up dives at Halfmoon Wall and usually a site called Aquarium or the Turneffe 3 tank day trip, which may or may not go to the Elbow. I don't recall, perhaps there are 2 different Turneffe day trips.

I also like the dive ops Island Divers and Chuck and Robbies.

As said before, any of the dive outfits will pick you up where you stay and drop you back at end of your dive day, whether that is after 2 tanks or the long 3 tank dive day out to the Atolls.

2 tank local dives normally return to the dive op dock for surface interval.

For me, staying where I do and diving Amigos, is ideal as I can easily return to my room during surface intervals should I have need or desire to do so.

 

[Jayfarmlaw]

If you do book a Bluehole trip, make sure you check daily to make sure it is still going. I don't remember the op we dove with, but it was part of the Sunbreeze Hotel. The only reason I booked the trip was to go on the Bluehole trip. The day before the trip, when we came back from our morning dive, they told me that the trip did not make. It is common in those circumstances to put their divers on another company's boat, but Amigos but was in for service. Our dive op showed no interest in calling anyone else. I ran down the beach to Ramon's and they were able to get me on the next days boat. Almost Everything about Ramon's was great. There were definately some divers that had no business on that dive, but....they had the $350 and a c-card.

Maya air will get you around much faster than the ferry and I don't remember it being terribly expensive. It will take a boat ride to get to Half Moon Caye though.

That being said, if you could stay on Half Moon Caye it literally looks like the Corona commercials. It's One of the most beautiful places I have ever been AND the diving in the area was leaps and bounds better than anything around AC. I could dive Aquarium 10 tims in a week and be perfectly happy.

I don't want to hijack the thread, but @TT_Vert can you tell me why your Cuba trip canceled? We leave August 27 for ours.

Jay

 

[TT_Vert]

Thanks guys, lot's to take in. I think I'd like to spend under 6K for 10-14 days if possible. As far as my trip to Cuba, there is a travel ban in place for the US again.

 

[chillyinCanada]

I'm somewhat concerned about the OP's month of travel (October) for Belize due to hurricane season.

Perhaps instead of providing info for Belize, we should be providing info and encouragement for locations typically below the hurricane belt?

 

[Downing]

Almost Everything about Ramon's was great. There were definately some divers that had no business on that dive, but....they had the $350 and a c-card.

Jay, when did you do this dive? If it was 2016 or later, then one thing about Ramon's that's not great is that they are apparently ignoring their responsibilities under the Belize National Code Of Practice For Recreational Scuba Diving Services. This is a comprehensive code of practice that was adopted in 2016 in part specifically to address former unsafe practices by some dive operators at the Blue Hole, including taking divers who had neither the skills nor the experience to do the dive.

A C-card + cash isn't supposed to cut it any more. At a minimum dive ops are required to review with the potential customer the Safety Screening Form with each potential BH customer. The form documents the diver's certifications and experience, including recent experience and deep dive experience, signed off on by both the diver and the dive leader. The dive leader is given the option to approve the diver or require a refresher course and/or additional specified training. I know Splash in Placencia also requires either an AOW or Deep Dive certification in addition to the screening.

So if this happened in 2016 or after, I'm really surprised that Ramon's would take obviously unqualified divers. I was present at Half Moon Caye when Ramon's brought in the body of a staff member who died while free diving on their Blue Hole trip (but not at the Blue Hole). I would have thought that such a terrible experience would have made Ramons even more likely to follow safe practices ever since.

As far as my trip to Cuba, there is a travel ban in place for the US again.

Easy enough to get around the ban. Just go to Cancun first, then fly back and forth from there. My wife and I did it years ago.

I found the diving there surprisingly not that great compared to Belize. But Cuba itself is definitely worth checking out, especially before McDonalds and Hilton Hotels move in. If we go again, I'd spend more time on the mainland and less time in the water.

 

[chillyinCanada]

Jay, when did you do this dive? If it was 2016 or later, then one thing about Ramon's that's not great is that they are apparently ignoring their responsibilities under the Belize National Code Of Practice For Recreational Scuba Diving Services. This is a comprehensive code of practice that was adopted in 2016 in part specifically to address former unsafe practices by some dive operators at the Blue Hole, including taking divers who had neither the skills nor the experience to do the dive.

A C-card + cash isn't supposed to cut it any more. At a minimum dive ops are required to review with the potential customer the Safety Screening Form with each potential BH customer. The form documents the diver's certifications and experience, including recent experience and deep dive experience, signed off on by both the diver and the dive leader. The dive leader is given the option to approve the diver or require a refresher course and/or additional specified training. I know Splash in Placencia also requires either an AOW or Deep Dive certification in addition to the screening.

So if this happened in 2016 or after, I'm really surprised that Ramon's would take obviously unqualified divers. I was present at Half Moon Caye when Ramon's brought in the body of a staff member who died while free diving on their Blue Hole trip (but not at the Blue Hole). I would have thought that such a terrible experience would have made Ramons even more likely to follow safe practices ever since.



Easy enough to get around the ban. Just go to Cancun first, then fly back and forth from there. My wife and I did it years ago.

I found the diving there surprisingly not that great compared to Belize. But Cuba itself is definitely worth checking out, especially before McDonalds and Hilton Hotels move in. If we go again, I'd spend more time on the mainland and less time in the water.

Did you dive the Jardines de la Reina?

 

[Fishyhead]

The sargassum was really bad on east facing beaches on AC when I was there in June. If I were going to go back to AC, I'd fly to San Pedro, rent a cart from Carts Belize which is right outside the Tropic Air terminal and drive north over the bridge and stay somewhere near White Sands dive shop. Its quieter and away from a lot of the construction going on in the south of the island.

 

[Ministryofgiraffes]

depending on how long you go for, you can do a cash deal with some of the cart guys...but i know that will be unpalatable for most...i'm not saying you should do it, just that you can....

 

[Downing]

Did you dive the Jardines de la Reina?

If it's great diving, then probably not, lol.

During the dive portion of the trip, we stayed on a small island south of Cuba. Compared to the mainland, it kind of sucked as it was for tourists only. The only Cubans allowed on the island were the workers so it had very little Cuban "vibe" to it. There was only one dive op. Really nice guys but not well organized, which is being kind. There was a sea turtle rescue center next door that we had seen before on a National Geographic Special so that was pretty cool.

It's not that the diving was bad; it was just ok. I expected more given how little industry there is in Cuba.

But I was only there for two weeks and we did around 20 dives, all in the same general area. That's a pretty small sample size, so I'm probably not being fair. If we ever go back, I definitely won't go to that island again. Havana, on the other hand, was beyond cool even though it smelled of sewage at night (major sewer infrastructure problem) and you have to fend off beggars everywhere you go, which I'm used to since we have a major homeless problem here.

 

[KathyV]

...Easy enough to get around the ban. Just go to Cancun first, then fly back and forth from there. My wife and I did it years ago. I found the diving there surprisingly not that great compared to Belize. But Cuba itself is definitely worth checking out, especially before McDonalds and Hilton Hotels move in. If we go again, I'd spend more time on the mainland and less time in the water.

Cayman Airways also flies to Havana so you can fly to Grand Cayman and then go to Cuba, we investigated doing that in the past but we never made it. At that time it was my understanding they would not stamp the passport of a US citizen with "Cuba", they would stamp a plain piece of paper and put it inside your passport, so you could remove the paper and avoid questions when you went through Immigration upon return to the US through Grand Cayman. I don't know if that is still the practice.

Our enthusiasm was cooled after we talked with a group of Brits staying on Cayman Brac that had gone to Cuba and their description was negative about the diving, the accommodations, and the people. They had all gotten sick in Cuba and one of them had been robbed.

But that was only a second-hand report, we've never been to Cuba ourselves and I don't know if they dived the Jardines de la Reina. Maybe we will make it there someday.

I believe that you can also fly to Cuba from Canada and Jamaica and other non-US locations.