gzscuba
Contributor
A couple weeks ago, my wife and I got back from our honeymoon on St Lucia, and I thought that I'd write up a trip report. In this report, I'll focus on the diving. If people are interested in details of other aspects of the resort (food, activities, etc), send me a message, and I'll post a review of that, too. Let me first say the reason that we chose to go to Sandals on St Lucia.
We were initially looking at going to the south Pacific (specifically Yap), but we had read that the currents there could be really strong, and we're fairly inexperienced divers (up to 29 dives now), so we wanted someplace that was not too challenging, and we didn't want to have to sit on a plane for almost 24 hours each way. So we started looking at the Carribbean. We decided not to go to one of the really good diving islands, like Bonaire, since we were concerned that there would be little to do if we couldn't dive (from an ear problem, or such). Besides, we weren't going to be diving every day. We also decided to do an all-inclusive, since we didn't want to have to worry as much about spending money. Sandals' SCUBA program is included in the all-inclusive package, so we figured that if we did a bunch of dives (we ended up with 7) we'd be getting our money's worth. We chose St Lucia mainly because we'd heard that the reefs around Jamaica have been decimated by overfishing, and we have some friends that had gone to St Lucia and recommended it. It seemed that the Scubaboard opinion of St Lucia was that it was okay. Considering that most of our dive experience has been the good ol Wisconsin green/brown scenery with green/brown fish, we figured that the diving would be fine. We chose the Sandals Halcyon resort (it's one of three on the island) because it seemed sorta small and intimate.
So we ended up getting to the resort and head over to the watersports area to ask what we have to do to start diving. We were told that we had to come back the next morning for an in-pool refresher. The next day, I take my Bonine (I get seasick at the drop of a hat), we head over to the pool and talk with the instructors for a bit. Turns out that since we had dove in the last 6 months, we didn't have to take a pool refresher. They signed us up for a single tank ~40 ft dive that afternoon. They like for the first dive you do with Sandals to be a shallow/easier dive so they can make sure that you won't kill yourself or the coral.
The actual boat mooring isn't at the resort, since there isn't a boat dock, so they have you wait for a van in the lobby of the resort to take you to the marina. I'd say it's no more than a 10 minute drive (unless there's a lot of traffic). The marina/dive op serves both the Sandals Halcyon and the Sandals St Lucia (aka the Golf Resort). I think that dive boats can actually dock at the Sandals Grande St Lucian (the other Sandals resort on the island).
So we get on the boat for the dive - there are either 4 or 6 certified divers and a bunch of resort course divers. Since this afternoon dive is an easier one, they generally take the resort course divers on it. The 4-6 certified divers is a common theme - maybe because it was the off-(aka hurricane) season. Luckily the certified divers followed a different divemaster than the resort coursers. The boat itself was pretty big, with two levels. It could probably hold more than 20 people. Luckily, it vented the diesel exhaust in some intelligent way that kept me from smelling it. I usually sat up top anyway to feel the wind. That seemed to help any seasickness problems.
I'll take a second now to discuss the equipment used. Sandals uses all Cressi equipment, and generally I found nothing wrong with it. On one of the dives, the reg breathed a little funny. On another my depth gauge read a little deep. I think my wife's depth gauge may have been dead on one dive, but she just checked with mine. We stay fairly close together as a buddy team so this wasn't a problem. The BC's were jacket weight integrated! That was very surprising to me. We'd rather dive integrated than having a weight belt, so that was great (of course they had weight belts available).The BC's seemed in fairly good condition. Tanks were AL80's. The divemaster was diving with a computer (more on that later). We brought our own 3-2 wetsuits, and the shop had wetsuits for rental (for a price). We didn't bring our fins, so we used full-foot fins provided. Next time we go on vacation, I'll take my booties and my "foot pocket" fins. I feel like I've got more control in them.
The dives had a quick briefing - reminder of hand signals, and the rule was that you signalled the divemaster when you were at 1000 PSI, and they would leisurely turn the dive - the entire group goes to a 3min safety stop, and then surfaces. If you get separated from the group, search 1 min, head up. And don't touch the coral. Pretty standard, I guess.
Anyway - 1st dive - Anse Cochon - max 40 ft for 40 min. Keep in mind that this was my first Caribbean dive. I had along with me a cheap UW disposable camera with housing. I was amazed. The reef seemed to be in very good shape (considering that I thought La Nina was supposed to bleach out the Caribbean coral). Lots of fish. I was pretty overwhelmed, so I had trouble remembering what I saw for the dive log. Luckily I bought a quick little $10 fish ID book. Lots of Sergeant Majors, little blue fish (Blue Chromis?), huge numbers of sea urchins, damselfish, some grunts, trumpetfish, brain coral, some kind of cylindrical coral, and more. The divemaster found a (I think) spider crab, and a seahorse. There was also something that looked a bit like a lionfish that was resting on the bottom (I don't think it was a lionfish though. This dive was reef dive, with some current, allowing you to drift a bit.
Needless to say, we were very impressed and signed up for 3 more days of two tank dives. (Once you "proven" yourself with the easier dive, they let you do two tanks.) However, you cannot dive more than two tanks/day. Guess they would rather be safe than sorry. They have three "themes" that they rotate: wreck, wall, and soufriere (right next to the volcanoes). We also put our names on a list for a night dive. This costs extra ($60 per person) and requires a minimum number of people to sign up. Nobody else did, so we didn't get a chance to do a night dive, which was okay. We were pretty busy.
Dive #2 - Coral Gardens - max 70 ft for 44 minutes. For those that have the tables memorized - yeah - we took it right to the bleeding edge of PADI's NDL. However, it really should have been a multilevel dive because we spent most of our time at 50-60 feet. This dive served as a reminder to us that we should always calculate our NDL beforehand if diving tables, and we shouldn't blindly trust the divemaster. As it turned out, we were okay.
This dive was a wall drift dive practically between two volcanic mountains (the Pitons). Just the view from the surface was breathtaking. Again, I took the camera. The only problem with holding a camera is that I really didn't get to see as much, because I felt like I was chasing a good picture a lot of times. Anyhow, doing a drift was great - completely effortless. Saw: blue tang, atlantic spadefish, variety of grunts, some damselfish, some grouper, Sgt Majors, Parrotsish, blackbar soldierfish, glasseye snapper, goby's, trumpetfish, and spotted drum.
We had a 1 hr surface interval and then went down for the second tank.
Dive #3 - Anse Chastanet - max 50 ft, 39 min
St Lucia has a bunch of marine reserves designed to help keep the fish populations up and preserve diving tourism. I consider this a really smart thing (tm).
I won't fill up more space relisting fish that we've already seen. But new fish: spotted moray eel, and LOTS of sea urchins. Also saw a spotted scorpionfish. This dive was sort of drifty over a reef. Unfortunately, at one point, we had to swim against the current. It was doable, but I didn't appreciate having to work that hard.
When we got back to the resort, we went for a massage, and dinner at the French restaurant at the Sandals Golf resort. It was a very nice way to finish off the day, to say the least.
Next day:
Dive #4 Anse Galet - max 60 ft, 35 minutes
Drift wall dive. There were lots of schools of tiny fish - maybe blue chromis or juvenile bluehead or wrasse that stayed a bit off of the wall. The larger fish tended to hang out closer into the wall in crevices. Saw more Sgt Majors, Blackbar soldierfish, spotted goatfish, parrotfish, trumpetfish, fairy baselet, tobaccofish, yellowtail damselfish, doctorfish, butterflyfish
1 hr surface interval - oh btw - there were pastries, cheese sandwiches, water, and juice on the boat during the SI. Generally I abstained, not wanting to tempt seasickness. By now, I found that taking two Bonine in the morning kept me pretty much seasickness-free (along with avoiding the boat exhaust).
Dive #5 North Beach Anse Cochon - max 45 ft, 44 min
Reef dive with a drift during the second half (luckily the current was in our favor that day. How can I put this? Holy crap, there's a lot of stuff down here! Most notable was the juvenile spotted moray. It hadn't found a suitable hole, yet, so it was searching around mostly out in the open. When we found it, it was hiding around a rock and we saw its tail. Then the head peaked out. Then it started sort of swimming toward us. It probably wouldn't have attacked us, but we decided to get the hell out of Dodge anyway. I noticed a couple of caterpillar like things on the bottom - sea cucumber, or could have been the "Thing". There was an odd coral formation that looked like it had a series of lionfish spines on it. I never did find out what that was. Also saw spotted drum, Sgt Majors, grouper, Stoplight parrotfish, yellowhead jawfish, honeycomb cowfish, standard and spider crab, sand diver, goatfish, and parrotfish. At near the end, we saw a single barracuda. Very cool, though we didn't really want to get too close to it.
Dive #6 Wreck - Lesleen M - max 58 ft, 40 min.
Unfortunately, I got something in my eyes at the beginning of the dive (either sunscreen or defog - subject for another scubaboard post), so I was in some pain for the dive and the surface interval, but there was still quite a bit to see. The wreck is a japanese freighter that was sunk for use as an artificial reef. It is standing upright, so we took a tour around the ship, then went into the hold (not an overhead environment) and took a tour of the inside, then took a tour of the superstructure. Saw french angelfish, 2 spotted morays (one outside and one inside), rock beauty, blackbar soldierfish, blue striped grunt, bicolor damselfish, blue chromis, parrotfish (striped, princess, and others), scorpionfish, sea urchin, sand diver, sharpnose puffer, and tobaccofish. The wreck had some nice coral and sponges on it. However, some of it showed damage from a careless diver.
During the SI (45 min) I was able to clean out my eyes, and I was ready for the second dive.
Dive #7 Virgin's Cove - max 45 ft, 47 min
Reef dive with some mild current. Saw 4 yey butterflyfish, yellowtail snapper, yellowtail damselfish, bicolor damselfish (juv and adult), the obligatory Sgt Majors, blue chromis, group w/ red spots, tobaccofish, fairy basslet, parrotfish (M/F stoplight, M/F princess) bluehead, blackbar soldierfish, trumpetfish (1 blue, 1 yellow), smooth trunkfish, spotted goatfish, spotted drum (hiding), spotted moray, either shrimp or lobster hiding in a coral head. There was a HUGE crab that looked like it could take off my wrist. The divemaster scared him up. Also, sea cucumber and the divemaster scared up the "Thing". It's this centipede like thing that evidently releases a white cloud of stinging badness when it's pissed off. Anyway, it was a really breathtaking dive, and a great way to finish up the diving.
General comments - Like I mentioned, I thought the coral was in great condition, and it seemed like there were lots of fish around. There certainly was a lot of fire coral - we were very careful to keep our hands off the scenery. Annoyingly, some of the other divers were not as considerate and were trying to pick up shells and the like. There were also a couple of people who really needed to work on their buoyancy control and gear stowing. There were some cases of octo bashing against coral. It seems that all of the muck diving in Wisconsin paid off pretty well - my wife and I were generally able to stay where we wanted in the water column using breath control. Generally my air consumption was fairly good, too, or at least good enough that dives weren't being called because I was an air hog. The staff also seemed very professional. I heard that they didn't allow one or two people in the resort course to dive because they didn't think the divers were safe. I figure that's the mark of a reasonably responsible dive operation. Note that the two tank limit per day means that really hard core divers probably don't want to go with Sandals.
Anyway, I hope someone benefits from this post - sorry about the length. I must be trying to unseat Seajay as the king of long posts. If you're interested about other resort activities, food, airlines, etc, let me know and I'll post about that.
While others may say it's not the best in the Caribbean, we really enjoyed St Lucia, and would go back again.
We were initially looking at going to the south Pacific (specifically Yap), but we had read that the currents there could be really strong, and we're fairly inexperienced divers (up to 29 dives now), so we wanted someplace that was not too challenging, and we didn't want to have to sit on a plane for almost 24 hours each way. So we started looking at the Carribbean. We decided not to go to one of the really good diving islands, like Bonaire, since we were concerned that there would be little to do if we couldn't dive (from an ear problem, or such). Besides, we weren't going to be diving every day. We also decided to do an all-inclusive, since we didn't want to have to worry as much about spending money. Sandals' SCUBA program is included in the all-inclusive package, so we figured that if we did a bunch of dives (we ended up with 7) we'd be getting our money's worth. We chose St Lucia mainly because we'd heard that the reefs around Jamaica have been decimated by overfishing, and we have some friends that had gone to St Lucia and recommended it. It seemed that the Scubaboard opinion of St Lucia was that it was okay. Considering that most of our dive experience has been the good ol Wisconsin green/brown scenery with green/brown fish, we figured that the diving would be fine. We chose the Sandals Halcyon resort (it's one of three on the island) because it seemed sorta small and intimate.
So we ended up getting to the resort and head over to the watersports area to ask what we have to do to start diving. We were told that we had to come back the next morning for an in-pool refresher. The next day, I take my Bonine (I get seasick at the drop of a hat), we head over to the pool and talk with the instructors for a bit. Turns out that since we had dove in the last 6 months, we didn't have to take a pool refresher. They signed us up for a single tank ~40 ft dive that afternoon. They like for the first dive you do with Sandals to be a shallow/easier dive so they can make sure that you won't kill yourself or the coral.
The actual boat mooring isn't at the resort, since there isn't a boat dock, so they have you wait for a van in the lobby of the resort to take you to the marina. I'd say it's no more than a 10 minute drive (unless there's a lot of traffic). The marina/dive op serves both the Sandals Halcyon and the Sandals St Lucia (aka the Golf Resort). I think that dive boats can actually dock at the Sandals Grande St Lucian (the other Sandals resort on the island).
So we get on the boat for the dive - there are either 4 or 6 certified divers and a bunch of resort course divers. Since this afternoon dive is an easier one, they generally take the resort course divers on it. The 4-6 certified divers is a common theme - maybe because it was the off-(aka hurricane) season. Luckily the certified divers followed a different divemaster than the resort coursers. The boat itself was pretty big, with two levels. It could probably hold more than 20 people. Luckily, it vented the diesel exhaust in some intelligent way that kept me from smelling it. I usually sat up top anyway to feel the wind. That seemed to help any seasickness problems.
I'll take a second now to discuss the equipment used. Sandals uses all Cressi equipment, and generally I found nothing wrong with it. On one of the dives, the reg breathed a little funny. On another my depth gauge read a little deep. I think my wife's depth gauge may have been dead on one dive, but she just checked with mine. We stay fairly close together as a buddy team so this wasn't a problem. The BC's were jacket weight integrated! That was very surprising to me. We'd rather dive integrated than having a weight belt, so that was great (of course they had weight belts available).The BC's seemed in fairly good condition. Tanks were AL80's. The divemaster was diving with a computer (more on that later). We brought our own 3-2 wetsuits, and the shop had wetsuits for rental (for a price). We didn't bring our fins, so we used full-foot fins provided. Next time we go on vacation, I'll take my booties and my "foot pocket" fins. I feel like I've got more control in them.
The dives had a quick briefing - reminder of hand signals, and the rule was that you signalled the divemaster when you were at 1000 PSI, and they would leisurely turn the dive - the entire group goes to a 3min safety stop, and then surfaces. If you get separated from the group, search 1 min, head up. And don't touch the coral. Pretty standard, I guess.
Anyway - 1st dive - Anse Cochon - max 40 ft for 40 min. Keep in mind that this was my first Caribbean dive. I had along with me a cheap UW disposable camera with housing. I was amazed. The reef seemed to be in very good shape (considering that I thought La Nina was supposed to bleach out the Caribbean coral). Lots of fish. I was pretty overwhelmed, so I had trouble remembering what I saw for the dive log. Luckily I bought a quick little $10 fish ID book. Lots of Sergeant Majors, little blue fish (Blue Chromis?), huge numbers of sea urchins, damselfish, some grunts, trumpetfish, brain coral, some kind of cylindrical coral, and more. The divemaster found a (I think) spider crab, and a seahorse. There was also something that looked a bit like a lionfish that was resting on the bottom (I don't think it was a lionfish though. This dive was reef dive, with some current, allowing you to drift a bit.
Needless to say, we were very impressed and signed up for 3 more days of two tank dives. (Once you "proven" yourself with the easier dive, they let you do two tanks.) However, you cannot dive more than two tanks/day. Guess they would rather be safe than sorry. They have three "themes" that they rotate: wreck, wall, and soufriere (right next to the volcanoes). We also put our names on a list for a night dive. This costs extra ($60 per person) and requires a minimum number of people to sign up. Nobody else did, so we didn't get a chance to do a night dive, which was okay. We were pretty busy.
Dive #2 - Coral Gardens - max 70 ft for 44 minutes. For those that have the tables memorized - yeah - we took it right to the bleeding edge of PADI's NDL. However, it really should have been a multilevel dive because we spent most of our time at 50-60 feet. This dive served as a reminder to us that we should always calculate our NDL beforehand if diving tables, and we shouldn't blindly trust the divemaster. As it turned out, we were okay.
This dive was a wall drift dive practically between two volcanic mountains (the Pitons). Just the view from the surface was breathtaking. Again, I took the camera. The only problem with holding a camera is that I really didn't get to see as much, because I felt like I was chasing a good picture a lot of times. Anyhow, doing a drift was great - completely effortless. Saw: blue tang, atlantic spadefish, variety of grunts, some damselfish, some grouper, Sgt Majors, Parrotsish, blackbar soldierfish, glasseye snapper, goby's, trumpetfish, and spotted drum.
We had a 1 hr surface interval and then went down for the second tank.
Dive #3 - Anse Chastanet - max 50 ft, 39 min
St Lucia has a bunch of marine reserves designed to help keep the fish populations up and preserve diving tourism. I consider this a really smart thing (tm).
I won't fill up more space relisting fish that we've already seen. But new fish: spotted moray eel, and LOTS of sea urchins. Also saw a spotted scorpionfish. This dive was sort of drifty over a reef. Unfortunately, at one point, we had to swim against the current. It was doable, but I didn't appreciate having to work that hard.
When we got back to the resort, we went for a massage, and dinner at the French restaurant at the Sandals Golf resort. It was a very nice way to finish off the day, to say the least.
Next day:
Dive #4 Anse Galet - max 60 ft, 35 minutes
Drift wall dive. There were lots of schools of tiny fish - maybe blue chromis or juvenile bluehead or wrasse that stayed a bit off of the wall. The larger fish tended to hang out closer into the wall in crevices. Saw more Sgt Majors, Blackbar soldierfish, spotted goatfish, parrotfish, trumpetfish, fairy baselet, tobaccofish, yellowtail damselfish, doctorfish, butterflyfish
1 hr surface interval - oh btw - there were pastries, cheese sandwiches, water, and juice on the boat during the SI. Generally I abstained, not wanting to tempt seasickness. By now, I found that taking two Bonine in the morning kept me pretty much seasickness-free (along with avoiding the boat exhaust).
Dive #5 North Beach Anse Cochon - max 45 ft, 44 min
Reef dive with a drift during the second half (luckily the current was in our favor that day. How can I put this? Holy crap, there's a lot of stuff down here! Most notable was the juvenile spotted moray. It hadn't found a suitable hole, yet, so it was searching around mostly out in the open. When we found it, it was hiding around a rock and we saw its tail. Then the head peaked out. Then it started sort of swimming toward us. It probably wouldn't have attacked us, but we decided to get the hell out of Dodge anyway. I noticed a couple of caterpillar like things on the bottom - sea cucumber, or could have been the "Thing". There was an odd coral formation that looked like it had a series of lionfish spines on it. I never did find out what that was. Also saw spotted drum, Sgt Majors, grouper, Stoplight parrotfish, yellowhead jawfish, honeycomb cowfish, standard and spider crab, sand diver, goatfish, and parrotfish. At near the end, we saw a single barracuda. Very cool, though we didn't really want to get too close to it.
Dive #6 Wreck - Lesleen M - max 58 ft, 40 min.
Unfortunately, I got something in my eyes at the beginning of the dive (either sunscreen or defog - subject for another scubaboard post), so I was in some pain for the dive and the surface interval, but there was still quite a bit to see. The wreck is a japanese freighter that was sunk for use as an artificial reef. It is standing upright, so we took a tour around the ship, then went into the hold (not an overhead environment) and took a tour of the inside, then took a tour of the superstructure. Saw french angelfish, 2 spotted morays (one outside and one inside), rock beauty, blackbar soldierfish, blue striped grunt, bicolor damselfish, blue chromis, parrotfish (striped, princess, and others), scorpionfish, sea urchin, sand diver, sharpnose puffer, and tobaccofish. The wreck had some nice coral and sponges on it. However, some of it showed damage from a careless diver.
During the SI (45 min) I was able to clean out my eyes, and I was ready for the second dive.
Dive #7 Virgin's Cove - max 45 ft, 47 min
Reef dive with some mild current. Saw 4 yey butterflyfish, yellowtail snapper, yellowtail damselfish, bicolor damselfish (juv and adult), the obligatory Sgt Majors, blue chromis, group w/ red spots, tobaccofish, fairy basslet, parrotfish (M/F stoplight, M/F princess) bluehead, blackbar soldierfish, trumpetfish (1 blue, 1 yellow), smooth trunkfish, spotted goatfish, spotted drum (hiding), spotted moray, either shrimp or lobster hiding in a coral head. There was a HUGE crab that looked like it could take off my wrist. The divemaster scared him up. Also, sea cucumber and the divemaster scared up the "Thing". It's this centipede like thing that evidently releases a white cloud of stinging badness when it's pissed off. Anyway, it was a really breathtaking dive, and a great way to finish up the diving.
General comments - Like I mentioned, I thought the coral was in great condition, and it seemed like there were lots of fish around. There certainly was a lot of fire coral - we were very careful to keep our hands off the scenery. Annoyingly, some of the other divers were not as considerate and were trying to pick up shells and the like. There were also a couple of people who really needed to work on their buoyancy control and gear stowing. There were some cases of octo bashing against coral. It seems that all of the muck diving in Wisconsin paid off pretty well - my wife and I were generally able to stay where we wanted in the water column using breath control. Generally my air consumption was fairly good, too, or at least good enough that dives weren't being called because I was an air hog. The staff also seemed very professional. I heard that they didn't allow one or two people in the resort course to dive because they didn't think the divers were safe. I figure that's the mark of a reasonably responsible dive operation. Note that the two tank limit per day means that really hard core divers probably don't want to go with Sandals.
Anyway, I hope someone benefits from this post - sorry about the length. I must be trying to unseat Seajay as the king of long posts. If you're interested about other resort activities, food, airlines, etc, let me know and I'll post about that.
While others may say it's not the best in the Caribbean, we really enjoyed St Lucia, and would go back again.
