LizSpinks
Registered
We're vacation divers who certified 2 years ago. We chose the La Romana/Bayahibe area of Dominican Republic in order to consider it for our wedding in a year. As we like to dive on holiday we did lots of research to chose a dive shop and book ahead. While I was considering another local shop which had good reviews, I instead decided on booking with Sharky's Crew for a few reasons: they do private valet diving where you are the only customers on the boat, and they look after all your gear which makes for relaxing vacation diving; they have excellent TripAdvisor reviews; and finally when I made contact to start planning the trip, Denise was wonderful at answering our questions and even questioned some plans and gave us her opinion, which was invaluable. She helped specifically with our dive planning but was also happy to help with our general DR tourist plans.
After several info-packed emails from Denise, we were booked for four days of diving at the beginning of December and paid through PayPal which was easy, and settled upon doing our Advanced Open Water Certification along with some other dives, including a day trip with lunch. We bought our AOW books and did our reviews prior to our vacation so as not to take up any precious beach time.
Our diving began the morning after arriving at our All-Inclusive, Dreams La Romana, and Sharky's shop was just a short and scenic 10 minute walk south down the beach to the small fishing village of Bayahibe, and very easy to find after Denise's clear instructions. The shop is only open when they are going or coming from dives and she thoughtfully warned us of this in case we wandered by the day before our dives and wondered why they were closed. Vlad, Jerry and Pierre were waiting to greet us on the first morning and we learned that Jerry is in the process of taking over the business from Vlad and Denise. Pierre will stay on as the DM. Vlad and Denise are Czech by way of Vancouver for 30 years and have been living in the DR for about 7 years. We understood they'll stay living in the area, but now will have some more free time to visit their kids and their families. Jerry has recently moved from Saskatchewan, and Pierre is from Belgium and took over as DM from his brother David. They were all very warm, welcoming and fun and we immediately knew we'd made a great choice for our week of diving.
On our 4 days we dove Viva Shallows, Dominicus Reef, Parque 1, Coca Reef, El Penon, the Aquarium (south, not at Catalina Island), and the 2 wrecks Atlantic Princess and St. George. For our AOW we chose Deep, Navigation, Wreck, Night and Peak Performance dives. Vlad planned out our dives perfectly so we started with some easy warm-up dives as we don't dive frequently, started our AOW with Peak Performance, which helped us better enjoy the later dives as our buoyancy got better and better, and saving the day trip for the end where we could just dive, relax and not worry about any more learning. Vlad was a great instructor and we had a lot of fun while learning tons and gaining confidence. He and Pierre obviously both love to dive and were great at finding lots of interesting reef life. We saw lots of the usual caribbean Sergeant Majors, parrotfish, french grunts, trumpet fish, blue chromis, blue-headed wrasse, butterflyfish, blue tangs, yellowtail snappers, rock hinds and squirrelfish. Less common and therefore more enjoyable to find were honeycomb cowfish, boxfish, sharpnose pufferfish, porcupinefish, flounders, sand divers, spotted drumfish, flamingo tongue snails, stingrays, green and spotted morays, lobsters, crabs, blue-banded coral shrimp, tiger tails, a barracuda, a turtle, and unfortunately lionfish. We were surprised not to see any angelfish or triggerfish. And while nurse sharks, spotted eagle rays and seahorses are sometimes found, we weren't lucky this time.
Our diving highlight was our night dive. Night diving was a bit nerve-wracking for me to contemplate, but by the 3rd day of diving, I felt so comfortable with this crew that it was no big deal at all, and it was an incredibly peaceful experience. As is the usual advice, we went back to a previous dive site, Viva Shallows, so we had a bit of familiarity. We got lots of tips from Vlad to make the dive more enjoyable, like not shining our lights directly at the parrotfish as they sleep in a protective mucus bag they they form around themselves for protection. We kneeled in the sand at one point and blocked our lights so it was jet black and we could see the bioluminescence as we waved our hands. We found a moray out of it's hole and were super excited to find four octopuses and watch them shape and colour shift. We both look forward to lots of night diving in the future.
We loved diving privately, having the boat (Sharky) to ourselves, and being able to dive to our air limits. By the end of the week, we had an 80 minute dive which was awesome. On our day trip, we could choose where we went and decided to forgo Saona Island and the crowds that are almost impossible to avoid, and went to the Piscina Natural (natural pool with red starfish) after checking out the mangroves. It was our furthest boat ride at about 25 minutes. Lunch was delicious and some Brugal Rum cokes helped end our dive week in fine style. We weren't rushed at all and Pierre was great company while we traded stories.
What else can I share? The boat captain Gato only spoke Spanish but was great at his job and pleasant. Always close by when we surfaced and helping haul our gear and us on board. The boat was clean, well-maintained and stocked with lots of water. Everyone at the shop was happy to hang out and chat and share info about the area. Jerry was kind enough to drive us back to the resort beach after our night dive when it was a bit too dark to want to walk it. All the gear was in great shape, and when I got toe blisters from my own closed fins, Pierre lent me booties and open fins for the rest of the week. If you collect dive shop shirts, they have a cool Sharky's logo. Another nice touch is the photos they take of their clients and upload to their facebook page on a regular basis, so your friends at home can see what you're up to on holiday. All in all Sharky's crew gave us a great dive experience where we were impressed by both the big and little things.
After several info-packed emails from Denise, we were booked for four days of diving at the beginning of December and paid through PayPal which was easy, and settled upon doing our Advanced Open Water Certification along with some other dives, including a day trip with lunch. We bought our AOW books and did our reviews prior to our vacation so as not to take up any precious beach time.
Our diving began the morning after arriving at our All-Inclusive, Dreams La Romana, and Sharky's shop was just a short and scenic 10 minute walk south down the beach to the small fishing village of Bayahibe, and very easy to find after Denise's clear instructions. The shop is only open when they are going or coming from dives and she thoughtfully warned us of this in case we wandered by the day before our dives and wondered why they were closed. Vlad, Jerry and Pierre were waiting to greet us on the first morning and we learned that Jerry is in the process of taking over the business from Vlad and Denise. Pierre will stay on as the DM. Vlad and Denise are Czech by way of Vancouver for 30 years and have been living in the DR for about 7 years. We understood they'll stay living in the area, but now will have some more free time to visit their kids and their families. Jerry has recently moved from Saskatchewan, and Pierre is from Belgium and took over as DM from his brother David. They were all very warm, welcoming and fun and we immediately knew we'd made a great choice for our week of diving.
On our 4 days we dove Viva Shallows, Dominicus Reef, Parque 1, Coca Reef, El Penon, the Aquarium (south, not at Catalina Island), and the 2 wrecks Atlantic Princess and St. George. For our AOW we chose Deep, Navigation, Wreck, Night and Peak Performance dives. Vlad planned out our dives perfectly so we started with some easy warm-up dives as we don't dive frequently, started our AOW with Peak Performance, which helped us better enjoy the later dives as our buoyancy got better and better, and saving the day trip for the end where we could just dive, relax and not worry about any more learning. Vlad was a great instructor and we had a lot of fun while learning tons and gaining confidence. He and Pierre obviously both love to dive and were great at finding lots of interesting reef life. We saw lots of the usual caribbean Sergeant Majors, parrotfish, french grunts, trumpet fish, blue chromis, blue-headed wrasse, butterflyfish, blue tangs, yellowtail snappers, rock hinds and squirrelfish. Less common and therefore more enjoyable to find were honeycomb cowfish, boxfish, sharpnose pufferfish, porcupinefish, flounders, sand divers, spotted drumfish, flamingo tongue snails, stingrays, green and spotted morays, lobsters, crabs, blue-banded coral shrimp, tiger tails, a barracuda, a turtle, and unfortunately lionfish. We were surprised not to see any angelfish or triggerfish. And while nurse sharks, spotted eagle rays and seahorses are sometimes found, we weren't lucky this time.
Our diving highlight was our night dive. Night diving was a bit nerve-wracking for me to contemplate, but by the 3rd day of diving, I felt so comfortable with this crew that it was no big deal at all, and it was an incredibly peaceful experience. As is the usual advice, we went back to a previous dive site, Viva Shallows, so we had a bit of familiarity. We got lots of tips from Vlad to make the dive more enjoyable, like not shining our lights directly at the parrotfish as they sleep in a protective mucus bag they they form around themselves for protection. We kneeled in the sand at one point and blocked our lights so it was jet black and we could see the bioluminescence as we waved our hands. We found a moray out of it's hole and were super excited to find four octopuses and watch them shape and colour shift. We both look forward to lots of night diving in the future.
We loved diving privately, having the boat (Sharky) to ourselves, and being able to dive to our air limits. By the end of the week, we had an 80 minute dive which was awesome. On our day trip, we could choose where we went and decided to forgo Saona Island and the crowds that are almost impossible to avoid, and went to the Piscina Natural (natural pool with red starfish) after checking out the mangroves. It was our furthest boat ride at about 25 minutes. Lunch was delicious and some Brugal Rum cokes helped end our dive week in fine style. We weren't rushed at all and Pierre was great company while we traded stories.
What else can I share? The boat captain Gato only spoke Spanish but was great at his job and pleasant. Always close by when we surfaced and helping haul our gear and us on board. The boat was clean, well-maintained and stocked with lots of water. Everyone at the shop was happy to hang out and chat and share info about the area. Jerry was kind enough to drive us back to the resort beach after our night dive when it was a bit too dark to want to walk it. All the gear was in great shape, and when I got toe blisters from my own closed fins, Pierre lent me booties and open fins for the rest of the week. If you collect dive shop shirts, they have a cool Sharky's logo. Another nice touch is the photos they take of their clients and upload to their facebook page on a regular basis, so your friends at home can see what you're up to on holiday. All in all Sharky's crew gave us a great dive experience where we were impressed by both the big and little things.
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