BalekFekete
Contributor
Hi everyone,
Time for another trip report from @The Turtle Whisperer and myself, this time from our recent trip to the Beaches resort in Turks and Caicos. As with most of my prior reports, I'll get the advanced notice out of the way now: this report is for a vacation with diving, not a diving vacation. If it's the latter you're looking for, where the whole trip is centered on diving only, then save yourself the trouble and stop reading as a Beaches won't be for you. That said, we clocked in 14 dives over the course of our stay, so IMO there was no shortage of diving.
Cliff notes: Everything about the trip met or exceeded our expectations, and we will very likely be returning to the resort (especially if/when we start having another generation added to our immediate family).
Now onto the more detailed review...
The trip to the island was a nice, uneventful direct flight out of Philadelphia, just short of 4 hours from wheels up to wheels down. Moving through the airport was easy (especially as they deplaned from both the front and the back), with immigration quick and painless. The longest delay was just having luggage offloaded, but after about 15 minutes we were on our way through customs with nothing to declare and outside to the sun and heat. Beaches had a kiosk set up at the far end of the area for pick-up of arriving passengers and quickly took our names, provided us with our room number, tagged our bags, and had us on a shuttle in no more than 5 minutes. Then it was a 20 minutes ride to the resort where they dropped us off with our luggage and we started the check-in process. Where we were at a different area of the resort (more on that in a minute), they called in an extended golf cart for us and shuttled us over to the Key West area where we were checked in by the Concierge. We were walked personally to our room, given a brief review of amenities available either from the resort or present from our loyalty level status.
After finding the closest restaurant for lunch, we then proceeded to tour the grounds and locate the dive operations to sign up for the week of diving. As has been the case in all the Sandals resorts we've visited, the landscaping was pristine. Beautiful flowering plants, shrubs, and bushes lined all of the walkways no matter where you were on property. I especially noted the care in varying the colors of the landscaping with the architecture of the area of the resort you were in. What was planted in the Key West area was different than the Italian or French area, but was clearly done purposefully and with excellent effect. Being we went on shoulder season, the resort never felt crowded and the idea that children are allowed was never the distraction I had thought it would be going in - rather, I enjoyed having the families around. Restaurants were exceptional as usual and expected from a 5* resort, with highlights being the Sky restaurant and its incredible view at sunset.
But enough about that...onto what ya'll likely care around....the diving!
Our last diving was at the 2022 Invasion in Cozumel, so it was a high bar to be met. As with other sites we've visited, each day offers a choice of a 2-tank trip in the morning, or a 1-tank trip in the afternoon. They will not allow you to do both, except on Sunday when they only do a single tank dive in the morning. Every other day they vary the location of the dives - M/W/F the boat takes a longer ride (~45 minutes) to the point of the island, and Su/Tu/Th/Sa they stay closer by within the Bay. The former tended to be deeper dives, typically along a really nice wall, where the latter more reef diving in the 50-60' depth range. Each dive was led by a DM or Instructor and set to a minimum pressure reached by the group of divers, normally 6-8 people in total. They turned the dive at 1500PSI, and routinely I was ascending with 1000-1200PSI in the tank after +/- 40 minutes underwater. Without a doubt Sandals/Beaches run their operations conservatively, and that will turn off many here I suspect. However, for what the Mrs. and I look forward to in these trips (remember above...vacation with diving...not diving vacation), it works for us. The boats were well maintained, and the crew a delight to spend time with. A special shout-out to "Happy" who was our Instructor as we completed our Deep Diver speciality certification.
Visibility was great the entire week, easily over 100' in crystal clear, balmy water. As you'll see in the photos and video, we were greeted by a wide variety of sealife, healthy coral. Between the two locations, there were a surprisingly limited number of named dive sites, so we found ourselves repeating several over the course of the week. However, as everyone reading already knows, no two dives are the same even at the same location...so never gave it much of a thought myself. One of the dives that stood out for me was to Shark Hotel where, it would appear, at least for a short period the sharks were evicted and the turtles had moved in. Speaking of sharks - this was our first trip where we encountered the reef sharks at all, let alone on 80%+ of the dives we did. It was a true watershed moment for us and something we both enjoyed immensely!
Pictures taken by the Mrs. can be found here, with some of my favorites to follow. Additionally here is a video with the clips I captured over the diving as well (in 1080p if you're willing to wait for it to load). Hope you enjoy them!!
Gayle & Matt
Time for another trip report from @The Turtle Whisperer and myself, this time from our recent trip to the Beaches resort in Turks and Caicos. As with most of my prior reports, I'll get the advanced notice out of the way now: this report is for a vacation with diving, not a diving vacation. If it's the latter you're looking for, where the whole trip is centered on diving only, then save yourself the trouble and stop reading as a Beaches won't be for you. That said, we clocked in 14 dives over the course of our stay, so IMO there was no shortage of diving.
Cliff notes: Everything about the trip met or exceeded our expectations, and we will very likely be returning to the resort (especially if/when we start having another generation added to our immediate family).
Now onto the more detailed review...
The trip to the island was a nice, uneventful direct flight out of Philadelphia, just short of 4 hours from wheels up to wheels down. Moving through the airport was easy (especially as they deplaned from both the front and the back), with immigration quick and painless. The longest delay was just having luggage offloaded, but after about 15 minutes we were on our way through customs with nothing to declare and outside to the sun and heat. Beaches had a kiosk set up at the far end of the area for pick-up of arriving passengers and quickly took our names, provided us with our room number, tagged our bags, and had us on a shuttle in no more than 5 minutes. Then it was a 20 minutes ride to the resort where they dropped us off with our luggage and we started the check-in process. Where we were at a different area of the resort (more on that in a minute), they called in an extended golf cart for us and shuttled us over to the Key West area where we were checked in by the Concierge. We were walked personally to our room, given a brief review of amenities available either from the resort or present from our loyalty level status.
After finding the closest restaurant for lunch, we then proceeded to tour the grounds and locate the dive operations to sign up for the week of diving. As has been the case in all the Sandals resorts we've visited, the landscaping was pristine. Beautiful flowering plants, shrubs, and bushes lined all of the walkways no matter where you were on property. I especially noted the care in varying the colors of the landscaping with the architecture of the area of the resort you were in. What was planted in the Key West area was different than the Italian or French area, but was clearly done purposefully and with excellent effect. Being we went on shoulder season, the resort never felt crowded and the idea that children are allowed was never the distraction I had thought it would be going in - rather, I enjoyed having the families around. Restaurants were exceptional as usual and expected from a 5* resort, with highlights being the Sky restaurant and its incredible view at sunset.
But enough about that...onto what ya'll likely care around....the diving!
Our last diving was at the 2022 Invasion in Cozumel, so it was a high bar to be met. As with other sites we've visited, each day offers a choice of a 2-tank trip in the morning, or a 1-tank trip in the afternoon. They will not allow you to do both, except on Sunday when they only do a single tank dive in the morning. Every other day they vary the location of the dives - M/W/F the boat takes a longer ride (~45 minutes) to the point of the island, and Su/Tu/Th/Sa they stay closer by within the Bay. The former tended to be deeper dives, typically along a really nice wall, where the latter more reef diving in the 50-60' depth range. Each dive was led by a DM or Instructor and set to a minimum pressure reached by the group of divers, normally 6-8 people in total. They turned the dive at 1500PSI, and routinely I was ascending with 1000-1200PSI in the tank after +/- 40 minutes underwater. Without a doubt Sandals/Beaches run their operations conservatively, and that will turn off many here I suspect. However, for what the Mrs. and I look forward to in these trips (remember above...vacation with diving...not diving vacation
), it works for us. The boats were well maintained, and the crew a delight to spend time with. A special shout-out to "Happy" who was our Instructor as we completed our Deep Diver speciality certification.Visibility was great the entire week, easily over 100' in crystal clear, balmy water. As you'll see in the photos and video, we were greeted by a wide variety of sealife, healthy coral. Between the two locations, there were a surprisingly limited number of named dive sites, so we found ourselves repeating several over the course of the week. However, as everyone reading already knows, no two dives are the same even at the same location...so never gave it much of a thought myself. One of the dives that stood out for me was to Shark Hotel where, it would appear, at least for a short period the sharks were evicted and the turtles had moved in. Speaking of sharks - this was our first trip where we encountered the reef sharks at all, let alone on 80%+ of the dives we did. It was a true watershed moment for us and something we both enjoyed immensely!
Pictures taken by the Mrs. can be found here, with some of my favorites to follow. Additionally here is a video with the clips I captured over the diving as well (in 1080p if you're willing to wait for it to load
). Hope you enjoy them!!Gayle & Matt
