Caribbean hot spots

Photo: Lawson Wood Photo: Lawson Wood Photo: Lawson Wood

If you’re prepared to go a little way off the beaten track the Caribbean can provide some great diving. DIVE readers give their verdicts to Kate Quarry. Photographs by Lawson Wood


Breezy in Belize - Michael Brown

Michael Brown, 65, is a ‘more-or-less retired’ marine engineer who lives in Renfrewshire, Scotland with his wife, Kari. He learned to dive eight years ago in the Maldives and has clocked up more than 500 dives since then. He and Kari visited Belize in March 2001 on a trip organized by Scuba Safaris.

Our trip to Belize was for three weeks. We stayed on the Belize Aggressor, with a few days on land on either side. The route on the liveaboard is partly governed by weather, and there was quite a breeze blowing all the time we were there, which precluded going to some of the sites. One dive I did on both weeks was the Blue Hole. It’s an odd geological formation with dark underhangs and enormous stalactites, but there’s no life in there. Both times it was a fairly quick dive, the visibility wasn’t great, but it was good to say, ‘We’ve done it.’

Belize is the only place in the Caribbean we’ve visited so far. I didn’t think that the diving was as good as in places such as Palau, Yap, Cocos and Papua New Guinea, where the dive sites are always totally different from each other. Around Belize they were all quite similar and less colourful than I’d seen before. But, there were some great swim-throughs along the edge of the reef where we had to squeeze ourselves through. There were also different sorts of fish from those I’ve seen before: groupers, great barracuda, angelfish, jawfish and hawksbill turtles, and many smaller fish. There was one huge turtle that I got a good look at. We’d been warned to keep out of its way as it wouldn’t deviate from its path! The tarpon, which I’d never come across before, were interesting – you could see their eyes shining red on night dives. It could be quite unnerving when a large, silent fish darted right over your shoulder when you were least expecting it.

In Belize City we took a taxi to some Mayan ruins, and then to the zoo, which was worth seeing – all the animals were endemic and more or less in their natural habitats.

My wife, Kari, uses a wheelchair and doesn’t dive and the crew on the boat were always extremely helpful. She did get a bit fed up with the dive talk, though! We wouldn’t go again – only because generally speaking we don’t go back to places we’ve already visited. The exceptions have been Palau and Papua New Guinea, but we did enjoy our trip to Belize.


C'est bon, Bonaire - Brian Lowe

Brian Lowe, 46, and his wife and buddy, Susan, have dived Bonaire three times. They have always arranged their trips to the island with dive operator Harlequin, and have stayed at Captain Don’s Habitat each time. Brian is a business development manager for an antiques company, and lives in Daventry, Northamptonshire. He has been a diver for six years, and both he and Susan are PADI master scuba divers.

We’ve been to stay at Captain Don’s Habitat in Bonaire three times because of their round-the-clock diving policy – you can dive at any time of night or day. On our last trip, when we were there for two-and-half weeks, we spent more than 49 hours diving, and usually did two or three boat dives a day, plus a shore dive and a night dive. On one trip we did take advantage of the unusual diving arrangements, as the coral was spawning – we dived at 10pm for three nights running. We saw the eggs coming out of the coral heads, the coral heads ‘smoking’ as they released the sperm, and we saw sea cucumbers and brittlestars releasing eggs as well. On one night there were more than 100 people in the water watching the spawning.

The trip to Bonaire is long – from the UK you usually need to change planes in Amsterdam and Curaçao, but it is worth it, as the diving is excellent. It’s very easy, as there’s little current and good visibility. There aren’t many big pelagics, but we frequently saw black-tip sharks, turtles, octopuses, morays, stingrays, eagle rays and frogfish, and the corals and sponges are in very good condition. Inevitably, the people on the other dive boat saw a manta on one trip, but we’ve seen a bait-ball of small fish being hunted by tuna, and on night dives you regularly get followed by huge tarpon that like to use the light of your torch to help them hunt.

At the Habitat the rooms are very good. We usually have a junior suite with two queen-sized beds, balcony, air-conditioning and TV. The restaurant is great, with a lot of local seafood dishes and because we’re diving so much we usually eat there for convenience. It’s also easy to meet people and get talking in the bar.

I’ve dived the Caymans, Hawaii, Maui, Barbados and the Florida Keys but I prefer Bonaire, as everything’s so easy and the island people are very friendly. You can visit any time of year, as hurricanes don’t affect it, in fact it is very popular during the hurricane season [August] as it can be hard to go elsewhere in the Caribbean.


Reggae regalia - Andy Hayhurst

Andy Hayhurst, 36, lives with his partner, Pam, in Sedbergh, Cumbria. He works as a TDI trimix instructor and as a sheep farmer which, he says, means he gets ‘little sleep’. He’s been a diver for 12 years, and has dived nearly all of the islands of the Caribbean, with the exception of St Kitts and Saba. Andy and Pam visited St Vincent with Diversion Dive Tours in January 2000.

We thought we’d go somewhere different in the Caribbean and decided on St Vincent. We had a two-week holiday: a week on St Vincent and a week on Bequia, a small island very close to St Vincent. On both islands we stayed in self-catering apartments, as it gives you more freedom than staying in a hotel. My initial impression on landing in St Vincent was that there must be a hell of a lot of crime, as there was lots of barbed wire and everything was very, very secure but it turned out that people were just being very cautious.

We went to Fantasea dive centre, which at the time was very new, and we were often the only people diving with them, so we had a lot of choice of where to go. St Vincent has diving to suit everyone, no matter what you want to do or your level of experience. There are good caves, beautiful walls, and as the island’s still being discovered as a dive destination, the coral is pristine. On the reef you don’t see anything large, but there is big life out in the blue. One dive in particular was very, very exciting: It was a hell of a bad day for weather and every dive site had been blown out, so we dived a pinnacle a fair way out in a current of about 4 knots. At 30–35m it became a long reef and we were caught by a down-current – you couldn’t stop even if you wanted to. We ended up at 55m and had to winch ourselves out of the depths using an SMB.

Everyone is friendly, but I’d advise visitors to the main town on St Vincent to get a map, as all the little streets somehow look the same and it’s easy to get lost. Also, every third person tries to sell you dope! We travelled by bus on the islands and you could tell what sort of journey you were going to have depending on the music. If the music was quiet it would be a sedate ride, moderate reggae and it would be faster; but if the music was hammering and the windows were blacked out, you’d be hanging on for grim death!

The diving on Bequia is very regimented, as a lot of cruise ships stop there, but once the organizers realized we were quite experienced, we had complete freedom. The diving wasn’t as good as in St Vincent, except on the days when there were no cruise ships, when I’d recommend it to anyone. When we were there we saw two or three nurse sharks, turtles and barracuda, although the barracuda were deep between two islands on a dive where the swell and current were horrific.

If you don’t like flies, then don’t go to Bequia, there are loads of them – everyone says it’s the only Caribbean island like that. There’s a famous ice-cream stall on the island called Marianne’s; it’s just a little shack, the home-made ice cream is delicious – some people stop at the island just to go there. We are planning to go to teach some of the divers over there about mixed-gas diving, as we can fly in oxygen, helium and nitrox from Barbados. The nearest chamber is also in Barbados, so you have to know what you’re doing. But I’d definitely go to the two islands again tomorrow if I could.


Grand time - Rob Luke

Rob Luke, 42, works as a dentist and lives in Sevenoaks, Kent, with his wife, Shauna, and children James, 13, Holly, ten and Jenny, seven. He qualified as a diver in the Bahamas on his 40th birthday, and spent a week on Grand Turk with a group of divers from Kent in May 2001, which he booked with The Barefoot Traveller.

I’m a warm-water diver: I dived once in a local lake but I couldn’t see anything and although I’ve surfed in cold water, I prefer not to dive in it. I chose Grand Turk in Turks and Caicos because I like diving to be as pleasurable as possible: warm, clear water and pelagics. I thought we’d see whales, sharks and mantas, but it’s not like that at all. I think if you went in March, and were lucky, you might see humpback whales, but the life is, on the whole, small.

It was a learning experience for me: Grand Turk has the most beautiful walls, corals and fish life. At first I just glided over it, but then I started to really look at it. The divemasters identified everything – for example, there are only five species of black coral in the world, and at one site there were all five, one of which is named after Austin, a divemaster.

Diving the walls was like flying: there are wonderful arches that you swim through into the blue, and the visibility was never less than 20m. We saw dolphins every day and sometimes swam with them. The dive operation, Oasis Divers, was excellent, but I understand the others on the island are good as well. The groups of divers were very small and the trips to the dive sites were short – the longest was ten minutes – so you could relax in the sun.
There’s a fantastic trip you can take to Gibb’s Cay – a ‘Robinson Crusoe’ island. You dive for your own lunch, which is conch – it’s then cleaned and made into hot conch salad by the organizers of the trip. Stingrays congregate in the shallows, waiting for everyone to feed them.

It is an idyllic place and I’d go there again tomorrow if I could, but I wouldn’t take my family as there’s not enough for young children to do. There was only one swimming pool on the island, which wasn’t open when I was there, and it does get quite hot. We’d been warned about bugs, but never even saw a mosquito. I stayed at the Turk’s Head Hotel, which was really outstanding, and furnished with real antiques. It had the best restaurant on the island and a lovely bar by the ocean. I sat there hoping to see the green flash as the sun set, but the only one I saw was the slice of lime in my Corona bottle!