Turneffe Island Resort vs Belize Aggressor

[llray35]

My husband and I are interested in going to Belize the last week in June and are trying to decide between a land-based vacation, such as TIR; or a liveaboard, i.e. the Aggressor. We are very interested in the concept of liveaboard diving but are wondering if the cost difference is justifiable. TIR looks and sounds wonderful. What do you think? Anyone done both? Which do you prefer and why?

Thanks for the info.

 

[TCDiver1]

It's been several years since i've been there but i enjoyed TIR a great deal. We were treated very well.

The rooms are nice, the resort is nice (very basic but clean, quiet and remote) and many of the nice dive sites like "The Elbow" are less than 15 minutes boat ride away. In fact we ran into the the Aggressor moored near several of the sites on a couple days so they're diving the same spots for the most part.

The food was family style local fare, very good and plentiful.

The only rub i had was the vis was bad several days when we were there. I think that was more of an exception related to luck of the draw rather than the norm.

Do a search on "Turneffe Island Resort" and you will find several threads regarding this topic.

 

[darkstar]

Liveaboards like Belize Aggressor are all about offering intensive diving opportunities with up to 5 dives offered per day and new sites usually every 1/2 day because the boat moves. You don't have to dive all of the dives and in my experience on two trips, about half of the passengers dive 4 times per day or less.

Depending on weather, Aggressor normally dives the sites near Turneffe on Sunday, Thursday afternoon and Friday morning. The rest of the trip is usually on the outer reefs and a morning on the Blue Hole. On both trips that I was on the captain moved the boat for better diving and to accommodate requests from the passengers.

If you're trying to maximize your diving, it's hard to beat what a liveaboard has to offer. Either option would be a great vacation though.

 

[Downing]

The diving schedule at TIR is definitely more relaxed than the Aggressor's. Only two to three dives a day, no shore diving, only one night dive--and, for reasons that were never made clear to me, you have to give up a day dive to do it.

If you're planning to be a diving dog on this vacation, then the Aggressor would definitely be the way to go.

On the other hand, if you want to both dive and relax in a tropical island paradise type setting, then TIR is perfect for that.

To paraphrase that candy bar commercial, sometimes you feel like a diving dog, sometimes you don't.

 

[Ralph Capeling]

If you want to also enjoy some inland adventure tours on days when the weather isn't the best for diving, you may want to consider Placencia (the caye you can drive to). You can check it out at Splashbelize.com