Southern Carribean snorkel & discover scuba

[Kluge]

This fall we're going on a southern Caribbean cruise - the islands we're visiting are Tortola, St. Maarten, St. Lucia, Barbados, Grenada, Aruba and Curacao. We tried Snuba last year and are eager to try scuba and also snorkel in other spots. For those of you in the know, which islands would you recommend for a discover scuba experience, good snorkeling, or "fuhgeddaboudit?" We do want to do other things on islands with on-shore interest as well, so we want to cross some off our list for snorkel and/or scuba.

[HarryTravels]

Basically Aruba and St. Martin have very poor snorkeling and only poor scuba. Barbados I would rate fair in bot S&D. Curcaco has very good snorkeling but you have to rent a car and drive to the WEST END to a series of bays where you can find quite good places. Diving is also fairly good. If interested go to Fodor's Forum and search Curccaco snorkeling and you will see my reports of just where to go., St. Lucia I would say is about equal to Curacao in diving but not up to it in snorkeling and Grenada is good for diving but only fair for snorkeling.I hope this helps.

[Kluge]

Thanks! That's 100% more information than I had before.

[24butterfly]

This fall we're going on a southern Caribbean cruise - the islands we're visiting are Tortola, St. Maarten, St. Lucia, Barbados, Grenada, Aruba and Curacao. We tried Snuba last year and are eager to try scuba and also snorkel in other spots. For those of you in the know, which islands would you recommend for a discover scuba experience, good snorkeling, or "fuhgeddaboudit?" We do want to do other things on islands with on-shore interest as well, so we want to cross some off our list for snorkel and/or scuba.

 

 

In Aruba, we took a taxi to Baby Beach--it's pretty difficult to do on your own to find--but the taxi driver picked us up at a pre-arranged time. It's called Baby Beach b/c there's a wading area, and then if you swim out past the breakwater thing, the snorkeling is great. Not sure or don't remember about the rest of them--sorry.