Diving Holidays in Cuba - The Ultimate Guide

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Also if you take your own dive gear make sure it is excellent working condition, repairs to any dive gear may be impossible in Cuba. Avoid rental gear at all costs. If you can ,bring a small bag of tank o-rings to give to the crew that takes you out. O-rings are very hard to get in Cuba and they will appreciate it.
 
For the price of diving Jardins de la Reina, one can have 2 or more very lovely Caribbean trips. Inasmuch as, they're feeding at Jardins, definitely not worth it to me. I can dive Raja Ampat for that $5000.
 
For the price of diving Jardins de la Reina, one can have 2 or more very lovely Caribbean trips. Inasmuch as, they're feeding at Jardins, definitely not worth it to me. I can dive Raja Ampat for that $5000.
Thats true, it is very expensive in comparison to other livaboards, not worth it, being Cuba it should be much less expensive. The money all goes to that German company and very little money is paid to the Cubans working on it.
 
Went there in September through the Aggressor Fleet. First, the educational sponsor, Oceans for Youth was expensive. We did a tour of Old Havana, which was worthwhile.
then a bus tour of 'Modern' Havana, which amounted to a tour of the dilapidated 70's style soviet apartments in the west part of Havana...disappointing. the Tour Guide, Damian, was a devout Communist Party member, & would start ranting about how the US screwed Cuba, blah, blah.. At lunch, He called me & my brother, pricks, in Spanish, not knowing that we both speak fluent Spanish. Needless to say we ditched the tour after that....
Diving was at the Jardines de la Reina. the vis was minimal, water temp was from 86 to 88. Didn't see alot of fish, some silkys... All dives were done on the same reef. It got to hard to discriminate one dive from another.
Bottom line: save your money. the Cubans do not like Americans, & diving was so so....
 
We are definitely looking at this for the future
 
I am diving with my son November 3 to 10 and deciding between Coco View in Roatan and Aggressor in Cuba. Any thoughts?
 
As a new diver on my 2nd dive trip we went to Cuba. Varadaro. Found the dive shop in the town and signed up for 10 dives, with the intention of doing 10 more over 2 weeks. I intended to build up my experience there as a new diver.

Crap.

If not enough people signed up on a given day, "the boat is broken" (strange, very nice, well kept boat with a good crew that seemed to get miraculously repaired for the next day when enough warm bodies showed up...)

So they'd say, well we can do the beach dive (did that once. That was really enough).

Night dive? Oh sure, but you have to arrange that privately - not in your package.

The people at Baracuda, the dive shop, were very nice, to be sure. Equipment was in new condition, the place was very well organized, nice buses to pick you up at the hotel and bring you there or to the marina. Amilkar, the barman out there makes a great Margarita. Good DM's (except one who seemed to be on a power trip).

Good dives were the wreck (a small intentionally sunk-for-divers Russian frigate at about 100') and a bus drive over to Bay of Pigs (with lunch thrown in IIRC at a restaurant along the way). But even that made for a long day and only 2 dives. Reefs were otherwise not very impressive.

And by the way, plenty of Americans - and that was before the "lift".

So with the intent of bucketing 20 dives, I managed 10 in 2 weeks. Not happy. They're just not geared (at least then) to really do diving daily. (Didn't help, perhaps, that their customer base was spread all over the resorts...)

So before heading out to Cuba to dive, do some research with people who have been recently.
 

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