oh, not a let down, I did say I would do it again. But, we saw the Ocean Dancer, and it looked really nice. Sounds like the Aggressor should be really nice as well. So those boats are tempting and part of me just wants to try something different and compare.
One of the disappointments on the Manthiri was the food, sometimes it was quite good and sometimes not so much. The regional dishes were good. We were told one of the cooks was a great Italian cook, but he wasn't. Sometimes there would be a good snack and sometimes there were stale packaged cookies. Sometimes breakfast was good and sometimes bleh. Just all very inconsistent. (One pet peeve, I like cold drinks, and pretty much all there was to drink was warm bottled water, they didn't seem to do ice and didn't have anything else to drink like lemonade, tea, or whatever.) The service was very good as was our cabin.
The diving was generally great, but there were some quirky things about the diving on the Manthiri. I'm not sure if that was just the best way to do things there, or if another boat would do things differently. Climbing up and down to the dive panga was a pain and sometimes dangerous, most or all use dive pangas but I don't know if they are all set up the same way. The dive schedule was completely random and not well communicated, often you didn't really know when you would be diving next beyond give or take a couple hours, not that it matters much but it was unusual. Conditions on the dives seemed quite unpredictable, even with a divemaster with supposedly extensive knowledge and experience in the area. Since I have nothing else there to compare against I don't know if this was a person doing a really great job in the local conditions, or if someone else would have done better/differently. A lot of the dives were in strong currents and it usually made sense, but one dive comes to mind where we got dropped into a raging current (the dive briefing was full of warnings like "don't go too far in that direction or you will get sucked into the cavern and not be able to get out") - which seemed a bit much as in this case they could have dropped us in the lee of the plateau we were diving, where we were headed anyway, without missing anything special.
So I have mixed feelings. I might go on the Ocean Dancer the Aggressor and get a sanitized experience and miss the Manthiri, or it might provide awesome diving without the quirks. No idea.
