Just came back this weekend from a week at CBBR. Here are my thoughts.
My Diving Experience:
Started in the 70's as a kid, dove for 6 years. Re-certified at 50 8 years ago when my wife decided she did want to dive after all.
6 trips to Bonaire, I to CocoView in Roatan, and 8 in the past 3 years to Cozumel and going back there in April.
What I like to see:
Visibility, color, healthy reefs, lots of fish large and small, photography.
CBBR Resort:
Spectacular. We just loved everyone there. From the house staff to the bartenders to the chef. The dive staff is superb. Our DMs, BJ and Tom, just awesome people, enthusiastic about their island and their work. They know the dive sites like the back of their hand and give the best dive prep I've seen (not knocking CocoView in any way or Pedro Pablo in Coz). These folks understand how the service they provide is tied to their business and personal success better just about any place we've visited in our travels. And it's genuine, not faked. If you go, don't skip Mr Mossy's taxi trip around the island as well. He's a hoot.
The Diving:
It was windy all week. We were able to dive the south side the first two days only and the rest of the dives were around the west end and headed north-north-east. We had one nice calm day to make the LC trip, but we were on a boat with a group that had dove with CBBR many times and the idea was immediately rejected. Sad how people can sometimes be, but so goes our first world 'problems'.
Visibility was pretty good on most dives with many up to 100' even when a bit murky due to wind.
Color, meh. Everything seemed covered in brownish-green algae. Clearly, our number of trips there show a preference for Cozumel. I missed the colors of Coz.
Reef health was quite good. Encourage by the stands of elk horn. Lots of giant vases. Walls were reminiscent of Coz but for the color. Lots of variation to the structure from pristine sand to rubble to knobs both shallow and deep.
Fish levels were disappointing with Bonaire and Coz being our reference points on this.
Each dive started with a prep of what to expect to see that ended up feeling like a list of what one would hope to see instead by EOW.
Did see one elusive flying gurnard which was cool as hell. No green morays but did see a couple brown spotted on the last day. On three dives we saw small spotted eagle rays. Props to BJ for teaching us to lay low when they're sited. During the week there were some green moray sightings and 3 octopus sightings we missed out on including one octopus out swimming while munching a lobster.
Overall, fish, meh.
Photography, a few cools shots of the gurnard running with its wings spread were great. BJ pointed out a blue lettuce leaf slug. I suck at photo and sightings at this point and am always blown away by how the DMs can spot things like that. Left the camera behind the last two days as I was just bored and decided to spend some time diving.
Overall:
Like most of us, we talk to people on trips about the places they've been and what they would suggest. The Caymans were on a lot of peoples lists. Many claiming the best diving in the Caribbean so it piqued our interest.
We read up a lot before going including here on SB. Our original choice was LC based on research, but couldn't get in even though we were booking in August for a February trip.
Given that we only have so much time and money to spend on dive trips, the dive experiences get the most weight in our conclusions and future decisions. We spoke with other more seasoned dive travelers than us on the trip regarding their impressions and most all were in agreement: good trip, glad we tried it, fantastic accommodations and staff, diving so-so.
There aren't any plans in our future to go back to the Caymans at present.
.....I need a few tequilas.
