Here are my opinions of all Caribbean islands I’ve been to in the last 20 years. They are ranked by favorite to least favorite. If you need more info on a particular island let me know. Also, please share your experiences as well because we are always looking for new places to try. If you dove some of the places at the bottom, please let me know what you thought.
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Upcoming trips: St. Lucia ( Feb 2012)
Thanks, Bill, for the great compilation.
My wife and I are in the process of planning our first dive-centric trip in Feb/March 2012, so your detailed post and replies that followed are extremely helpful.
As a newcomer to Scubaboard (and fairly new to diving), I was going to stay quiet and just listen to what more experienced divers have to say. However, since you happen to be heading to St. Lucia soon, and we just returned from a week at Sandals Grande in St. Lucia in mid-Dec 2011, I figured I'll share my 2 cents.
As many of you could have guessed, Sandals Grande is kind of the opposite of, say, Scuba Club Cozumel. From what I read, SCC revolves around diving, and there is little to do besides diving. Sandals is first and foremost a mid-level all-inclusive (yes, alcohol included), and there is LOTS to do at the resort, but scubadiving
is included in the price (which was why I agreed to try it out -- I'm not into beaches and I don't drink, so I have very little interest in all-inclusives). Guests can do a 2-tank boat dive everyday, and basic equipment rental and air fill are included. Night dive is extra ($80). I am not enriched air certified, so I don't know if Nitrox or Trimix are offered and if so, for what price. Sandals is very conservative (everyone goes up when the first person reaches 1000 psi), so it's not like you can take advantage of extra bottom time.
So the diving (as offered by Sandals) is probably not enough for most people looking for a dive-centric trip, but the resort will pamper you otherwise. 5-6 restaurants to pick from (not to mention you can eat at restaurants at the other 2 Sandals resorts on St. Lucia for free), thriving pool with swim-up bar, lots of young newlyweds if you are into people-watching, and the rooms have all the amenities (cable TV with 60+ channels, four-post king bed, AC, ceiling fan, mini-fridge stocked with free soft drink, safe in every room, large shower, and private balcony/patio area perfect for drying out our skins). Did I mention turn-down service? ;-)
Anyway, the diving.
The Sandals Grande is at the north end of the island, and from what I understand, most of the good dive sites are along the southwestern shore, so this means long boat rides (50-60 min each way). Even though most people at the resort party until late at night, there was a group of 10-20 people who were clearly there for the diving like us. We see each other at breakfast at 7am, and on the dock at 8 (the boat leaves at 8:20). Not everyone comes out for every dive, but in the space of a week, you certainly meet up with the same people enough times to develop a sense of community.
Even though my wife and I are fairly new to diving, we've been spoiled by some of the places we've been (Aruba, Curacao, and French Polynesia to name a few), that I cannot say I was blown away by what St. Lucia had to offer. On our first reef dive, we felt there was quite a bit of dead coral, and certainly less fish (both in terms of variety and quantity) than we remembered elsewhere. On Day 3 we went to "Piton Walls", which are walls at the foot of the Piton Petite. That was definitely better in terms of coral health and sealife, but would probably not make the Top 10 (in my short 45-dive career).
Don't get me wrong, we saw lots of stuff: spotted and striped moray, a snake eel, a few lobsters, lots of butterflies, lots of groupers, some parrotfish, a few scorpionfish, a couple of peacock flounders, a few porcupinefish, etc, but we definitely missed seeing some of things we took for granted elsewhere (e.g. sea turtles, rays and sharks).
I don't know how to post photos here yet, but I do have an external hosting site (SmugMug). Of course, most of the photos are not post-processed yet anyway.
There was a ship sunk as artificial reef (Lesleen M), which is apparently tiny by wreck standards, but we enjoyed it since we've never done wrecks before. It was only 60 ft deep, but viz was poor. Actually, viz was never great in the week we were there. Most days were ok, but nothing like the 150+ ft we've seen elsewhere. Air temperature was 31-33 degree C, and water temp very consistent at 27-28, so I never bothered with my 3mm shorty. Current was in general, mild to non-existent, although one day it was so bad that even the advanced divers on the boat surfaced 5 minutes early.
In terms of diver composition, there were 5-6 completely new divers (just getting their C-card that week), but there were also 7-8 divers with advanced certification and brought their own dive gear, so it's a mixed boat. There were usually 2 DMs, so more often than not my wife and I got grouped with the beginners, although it is my understanding the "Advanced" group didn't go much deeper either, since Sandals apparently had a 60-ft maximum policy. (Like I said, they are very conservative.) The Advanced group dove at all the same sites as the "Less Experienced" group, and at most got 5-10 more minute of bottom time.
Sandals filled the tank like we've never seen -- I had 2900 psi once, but most days I start with 3400-3600!! Since we were the "experienced" divers in our group, we usually come up with 1300-1600 left in our tanks. One day I had 2100 left! The average bottom time is about 40-60 minutes.
Anyway, I'm just reporting my experience at Sandals Grande St. Lucia, which is not a dive-centric resort. There were also some famous St. Lucian sites we didn't go (e.g. Superman's Flight), so perhaps we missed the best diving St. Lucia has to offer. Moreover, as much as we might have "complained" about the diving, my wife and I still enjoyed going out everyday, even on days when we knew we were going back to sites we've been already. We don't regret going on this semi-dive-oriented trip at all.
I'm sure you will have a good time in February.
