Diving on Southern Caribbean Cruise

[Kim in CA]

Hi All,

My husband and I will taking a cruise in June to the Southern Caribbean. It will be our first trip to the Caribbean. We got certified in Maui in 2005 and returned to Hawaii to dive in Kona last summer. Aside from our cert dives, we have only been on eight other dives, including two night dives, so we are clearly still newbies.

Anyway, one of the reasons we chose the cruise we did is because of the itinerary... interesting islands with some good dive sites and only one day at sea. We will be at the following ports:

Departing from San Juan
St. Thomas (7:00 to 5:00)
Dominica (10:00 to 6:00)
Barbados (8:00 to 5:00)
St. Lucia (8:00 to 5:00)
Antigua (10:00 to 7:00)

So... If we can afford to dive at 3 places... which three would you choose? I think from the research I have done so far, I might choose St. Lucia and Dominica, but it is the third I am not sure of. I am more interested in critters than wrecks, and I am not yet comfortable going much deeper that 80 feet or so.

The cruise ship (Carnival's Destiny) offers "excursion dives" at St. Lucia (a 2 tank boat dive at Soufriere Marine Reserve) and at St. Thomas (a one tank beach dive at Coki Point) I don't know which dive operators they use. I would also welcome any words of wisdom regarding using cruise line excursions versus independent booking.

Thanks in advance.

Kim

 

[drrich2]

My wife & I did our last 2 check-out dives in St. Thomas; our local scuba instructor refered us to Admiralty Dive, which is located in a Holiday Inn there. We were quite impressed with them; we did the private charter, since we needed the individual attention. Our instructor/dive master was Duane, and Marty himself drove the boat. They really put my wife (who was shy & nervous) at ease. Would use them again.

Consider your other excursion options at each location. Our honeymoon was a cruise of the South Caribbean (St. Thomas, St. Maarten, Antigua, St. Lucia, Barbados) with Royal Caribbean. From St. Maarten we did an excursion to Anguila to the Dolphin Discovery place & got to interact with dolphin hands on in the water; loved it. In St. Lucia we did a walking tour in the rain forest; beautiful (but you could sure turn an ankle!). Snorkeled in Barbados, & they lured in a couple of green sea turtles with some food and they swam around us; good fun (incidently, a large porcupine puffer swam under us, quite a ways down).

Richard.

 

[jaybombs25]

I cannot say for the others but St Lucia defiantely has some of the best diving in terms of critters and also a nice shallow wreck off anse cochon teeming with all sorts of critters frogfish seahorses.. Soufriere also has the best diving in the island with turtles and many many different speices of fish. It is probably best not to book with the cruise ship though.. because they usually jack the prices up a fair amount and dont use some of the best dive operates (they want the most profit they can get). The best dive op in st lucia is Dive Fair Helen look it up and you will see. I live in St Lucia so i can defiantely vouch for it. If you are interested in this at all give me a pm and I will put you in touch with the shop

 

[diversteve]

Coki Beach on St. Thomas would be LAST on my list. It's a really marginal dive over a bare reef off a sandy beach. Easy, shallow beach entry but just not much to see there. Also it's 30min. each way by cab/shuttle from the cruise port in Charlotte Amalie. A better option would be Admiralty or Blue Island Divers, they both can pick you up by boat from the cruise pier at WICO/Havensight. If your ship docks at Crown Point, it's a walk to Blue Islands' office.

My third pick from your list would be Barbados...

 

[Kim in CA]

Thank you all very much for your input. We will most definitely NOT book our dives through the cruise ship... will book directly with local dive shops instead.

I have read many good things about Dive Fair Helen in St. Lucia, so I will definitely check with them. We will also contact a couple dive shops in Dominca. At this point if we can swing a third day of diving it probably will be in Barbados. I think we shall skip diving in St. Thomas and take the ferry to St. John for some exploration and snorkeling.

We are certainly looking forward to our first Caribbean diving experiences!