greenbeans
Registered
Hello all,
I am currently trying to plan a great escape or end of May / beginning of June 2017. We had a baby 8 months ago and live in the desert, so we haven't had a chance to go diving since April 2015 (Bonaire). We have the chance next year to take advantage of grandparent babysitters for about 10 days, between May 26 and June 11... so not a lot of flexibility in timing. We have been diving in New Zealand (while living there for 7 years), Tonga and Niue in the South Pacific, Komodo on a liveaboard, Bali, Bonaire, Dominica, Spain. My husband has about 60 dives under his belt while I have more like 120.
We want to tick a bucket list item off for this trip, and the current contenders are Galapagos and Palau. It looks like the Nortada is available for the Galapagos in our dates, and for Palau I was looking at Ocean Hunter I. Any feedback on those boats? Or more in general, on liveaboards in Palau vs Galapagos? Talk to me a bit about experience level needed, best things you can see, flying to either from the USA (closest major hub to us would be in Texas), which might be more urgent to see (in terms of loss of biodiversity from climate change / human interference)... etc etc.
I'm not sure if we'll have a chance to do another dive trip before this big one, so to refresh our skills we might need to tack 1 day on the front of this trip. I'm fairly confident that I don't really need it, but my husband definitely wants a little water time before a liveaboard experience.
Also, I love underwater photography and am considering upgrading my Sony RX100 setup for this trip... happy with mucky macro as much as with big ticket wide angle stuff. We are not adrenaline junkies.
Galapagos is my dream trip, but if it would be better at a different time of year or with more dives under the belt in the next 5 or so years, than that would sway me towards Palau....
THANKS for your input!!
I am currently trying to plan a great escape or end of May / beginning of June 2017. We had a baby 8 months ago and live in the desert, so we haven't had a chance to go diving since April 2015 (Bonaire). We have the chance next year to take advantage of grandparent babysitters for about 10 days, between May 26 and June 11... so not a lot of flexibility in timing. We have been diving in New Zealand (while living there for 7 years), Tonga and Niue in the South Pacific, Komodo on a liveaboard, Bali, Bonaire, Dominica, Spain. My husband has about 60 dives under his belt while I have more like 120.
We want to tick a bucket list item off for this trip, and the current contenders are Galapagos and Palau. It looks like the Nortada is available for the Galapagos in our dates, and for Palau I was looking at Ocean Hunter I. Any feedback on those boats? Or more in general, on liveaboards in Palau vs Galapagos? Talk to me a bit about experience level needed, best things you can see, flying to either from the USA (closest major hub to us would be in Texas), which might be more urgent to see (in terms of loss of biodiversity from climate change / human interference)... etc etc.
I'm not sure if we'll have a chance to do another dive trip before this big one, so to refresh our skills we might need to tack 1 day on the front of this trip. I'm fairly confident that I don't really need it, but my husband definitely wants a little water time before a liveaboard experience.
Also, I love underwater photography and am considering upgrading my Sony RX100 setup for this trip... happy with mucky macro as much as with big ticket wide angle stuff. We are not adrenaline junkies.
Galapagos is my dream trip, but if it would be better at a different time of year or with more dives under the belt in the next 5 or so years, than that would sway me towards Palau....
THANKS for your input!!