galapagos liveaboard or land based.. with hire gear?

[mslise]

Looking for some advice on diving galapagos. I'm about to head over to the galapagos islands as part of a longer trip for a non-diving cruise and hadn't actually planned to dive.

It now turns out I will have some time and I could possibly either do a liveaboard or else I would do land based trips.

The catch is that I only have my dive computer, mask and hood with me. There's no way I can get my own gear sent over in time.

My concern is that being a once in a lifetime type of spot, most of the boats are geared towards divers with their own equipment so I'm not sure if gear is available on board to rent. Also, the diving being challenging in spots, it's nice to have good gear you can rely on, which sometimes hire gear isn't. Has anyone done a liveaboard with people using hire gear? Or has anyone got any comments about whether this is a good or bad idea?

My feeling is that I should stick to land based trips with one of the dive shops with a good rep (ie scuba iguana most likely) as it's not so intense and I can always switch out any equipment I'm not happy with.

Thanks for any advice!

 

[Wookie]

I've read horror stories about hire gear land based. I would say your best safest bet is with any liveaboard. They'll have far better gear, as a rule. There is a thread here about it somewhere, about a year ago.

 

[champ]

The problem with dive gear in the Galapagos is that the government puts such a high tax on imported items (I think is around 100% tax). When we were there, the dive master on the liveaboard offered my wife full price for her used wetsuit (it was for his wife).

 

[DiveTheGalapagos]

You can now get decent rental gear through liveaboards. That they were renting crappy, malfunctioning equipment resulted in too many complaints and problems to continue the practice. Some have brought their own gear in and others have become more selective. This past week, I sold some new gear (wetsuits new or used one week, Aqualung Kronos reg used for 2 weeks, etc.) to a friend in San Cristobal who has one of that island's 2 land based dive cupos and needs equipment. Back inflate BC rentals are rare to come by as most are jacket style. One guy does have a couple of Black Diamonds. I know of at least one Knighthawk available, depending on your size. Write to me at leslie@divethegalapagos.com and I'll put you in touch. Take your own computer or they're $15 per day to rent and no batteries to buy if your rental battery dies.

Land-based diving includes equipment. And a surprising number of Galapagos live-aboard divers rent equipment. Many are travelers who don't particularly want to trek Machu Pichu, etc with dive gear.

 

[laurenceh]

unless you can dive wolf and darwin (which you can only do from a liveaboard) i wouldn't go to too much effort and hassle.