I am planning to spend probably about 7-8 days of diving in the Caribbean. I have seen many "top N" dive site rankings, and I did not find them particularly useful. I would like to dive, say, in the blue hole in Belize, or the Bloody Bay wall on the Little Cayman, but maybe not for 7 days in a row. Are the other nearby sites equally exciting? Trying to sort this out on my own for each Carribean destination is hard, given the sheer number of places to choose among. Island hopping is not an option, I feel it incurs too much overhead. I am looking for a well-rounded destination that has multiple quality sites in close proximity (such as, one hour of driving), and possibly something to do other than to eat or sleep in the afternoons (more diving, good snorkeling, tropical forests to walk into, or whatever), and also quality hotels and restaurants and overall good infrastructure.
As far as the type of diving, I am looking for deeper sites with excellent visibility and some dramatic scenery, possibly more than just endless fields of coral. On some of our recent trips to Hawaii, I have enjoyed the Corsair wreck dive on Oahu, the Molokini backwall, the Reef's End drift and the Pinnacles on Maui, and Cathedrals on Lanai. So far, we have been rather disappointed by the shallower and shore dives. I found muddy green waters not quite as inspiring. We have plenty of ship wrecks here in NYC in a cold muddy water, and I am looking for something dramatically different. I think I am particularly growing to like drift diving.
