Dive review Barbados & Aruba

[wystiria]

Here is the dive portion of my recent review of the Carnival Destiny.

 

Barbados:

We Dove on Barbados and had a fabulous experience. We dove with “Dive Barbados”

John Moore

Dive Barbados

Tel (246) 422 3133

majo@sunbeach.net

http://www.divebarbados.net

 

and John and his wife Mary took great care of us!!! We are freshly certified and this was our first open dive in warm salt water. I had told them this ahead of time and that we would need a buoyancy check and help with weights etc. They were really great about this. In fact I need to give John credit – he achieved something I know is very hard to do!! He was a great help to us, explained things, gave advice BUT never crossed that thin line and became condescending or anything like that. He was great really gave us the guidance we needed but still let us figure things out for ourselves etc. It was a really good first “away from our dive shop” experience. I would recommend this shop to anyone!

 

As for the actually dive it was decent….we saw some eels which I have been fascinated with ever since tahiti and some cool flounder etc. But I think the reef has seen better days AKA prior to last years hurricanes.

 

Honestly I think that spending a month in the south pacific has ruined us for the Caribbean. With that said we are hitting the western islands next January and maybe that will change my mind. My advice – dive and snorkel in the Caribbean as much as you can prior to going to the south pacific!!!!!!!! (oh and yes I know Barbados is not the premier dive site in the Caribbean  )

 

 

Aruba:

Lastly the port of Aruba, Sadly I was sick for this port so I couldn’t really enjoy it  however I had set up a dive on this island and my husband and friend went with out me (yeah I know it was such a bummer) They had a good time, the actual diving was much better than on Barbados. They say some sea horses and a eagle ray plus more fish as a whole. They did a wall dive here and had a shore entry.

 

As for the Dive shop – they were no where near as impressed as on Barbados. Now we went with Windie’s Watersport and they had been recommended by our dive shop at home. Both my husband and friend agreed that this dive master (rene) did not pay any attention to the two of them, never asked to see their dive cards and as a whole did not give them a good explanation of the site nor gave a good tour once underwater. This was very disappointing to them as they didn’t know the area and were expecting Rene to be more of a guide.

 

I did include in my original e-mail’s that we were new divers so it wasn’t as if they figured we were experienced divers and would want to fend for our selves. On this particular dive our friend had a few issues with her BCD – now it is new and so she isn’t 100% familiar with it. What happened was she got a pocket of air stuck in it and couldn’t purge it. They were doing a shallow dive and once she accended a bit the air expanded and she started rising to the surface. So to stop this she went head first down kicking while trying to empty her dump valves. Kind of comical if you imagine it. Granted they were shallow and going to the top wouldn’t have been a problem. Anyway the Dive master missed the whole thing. My husband actually had to help her get the last dump valve at the back of her BSD.

 

 

*** for those of you who are divers I want to report that we never hit the reef once  as newbie divers that was my biggest worry! But after our buoyancy check with Dive Barbados we had no problems keeping neutral buoyancy……well except when there was too much air in our BCDs as in the story above  but that didn’t hurt the reef!

[wystiria]

I forgot to say that other than the dives in Bora Bora through discover SCUBA, we have only dove up here in CT and RI and the water temperatures were in the 40's when we went. Yes we are crazy - it was what was avaliable to us.

 

 

I do have more details if people want them - vis/temperature etc. But I wrote the above blurb for the general carnival audience....so let me know if you have questions.

[bruce-r]

Thanks for taking the time to report on your experiences.

[w&k]

Wystiria-

 

I absolutely agree that John and Mary are totally awesome! Am going to get in touch with them soon as we return to Barbados in the spring.

 

What is their new boat like? Particularly, size, ladder, and shade. Their old one was ripped off just before we got there last November.

 

Also many thanks for the tip on Aruba - I'm starting to research.

 

Welcome to diving!

 

Wendy

[gvre]

Wystiria-

Hi, glad to hear you got Certified:D. Yeah we had a great time with you in Tahiti, and now if you go back there you can enjoy some of the best diving in the world.

We will be in Barbados in November with Toto and Jim on a 14 day cruise. We have booked a dive with Dive Barbados, but can't figure out what their boat is like. Is it small and covered? We dove here in April with the ship operator, one of the worst dive operators ever. Never again!! We knew better.

Good to hear from you let us know.

thanks

Richard

[wystiria]

Hey Richard and Debbie!

 

How goes it? I am so jealous you are cruising with the gang in Nov!! Wish I could tag along. At least we will be cruising in january so I have that too look forward to!

 

Let's see John and Mary's boat was pretty small, and it had an over hang. one motor and a hang over the side anchor. you do have to wade through the water at their shop to board the boat. that wasn't a problem for us and I doubt it will be for either of you. When we went is was just me Ken and Meg - Meg was in tahiti but didn't go with us on the Tara Vana. John and mary were really great - although the diving didn't compare to the little we did in bora bora!

 

So have you or Debbie dove in Gand Cayman? in january we are hitting Roatan, Cozumel, Belize and GC. I have dive operators lined up for Coz (dive w/allison) and Roatan (Subway Watersports) but I have yet to set anything up in GC. If you guys have any reccomendations I would love to hear them!

 

Oh and Ken and I are moving to MA - we both took new jobs in the last few weeks. we are excited about it but this whole working in one state and living in another is beging to take it's toll! Anyway my email will change. I now have a gmail.com account and it is wystiria. I am not putting it together for you since then the spam will head there too!

 

Hope you guys are doing well! tell everyone we say hi!!

[starsjohn]

Hi Richard and Debbie and Wysteria,

 

Yes, you cannot beat the FP for diving over the Carib. The best dive so far has been in Bora Bora on a night dive. Going back in October for the whole month. I am using some of the dive operators that are friends of my local dive center. Did 3O dives in the FP last year.

 

John

[lazygirl cruiser]

I had a completely different experience with John and Mary. First of all, Mary did a great job of meeting our ship and driving us to the dive shop in Barbados. But this was where the good stuff ended.

 

Their boat wouldn’t start so we all had to bide our time waiting for the engine to turn over. Finally, after an hour of waiting, we were told that we could get on the boat.

 

We waded into chest deep water, carrying all our gear and then hauled ourselves onto the tiny boat. No easy access to the pirogue.

 

This is the same boat that was “stolen” last year. There wasn’t even a radio for communication on the boat.

 

At the dive site, John got into the water first and instead of waiting for the group he immediately went down without waiting for the other divers to enter the water. (The rest of the group was still waiting our turn to enter the water.) As the visibility was pretty bad, it wasn’t worth the risk of trying to find John.

 

As most of us had no idea where he had gone, most decided to abort the dive and returned to the pirogue.

 

There was no one on the boat and no ladder to get back on board! The Captain” had tied up to another boat and climbed aboard it so he could chat to them. We had to scream and yell for quite some time to get their attention so we could get out of the choppy water, exhausted.

 

I am an experienced, advanced diver. I’ve dived off the Zodiacs in French Polynesia and have never experienced such lack of safety and service.

 

I’ll never dive with John ever again.

[wystiria]

ROB7 - that sounds like an awful experience. i am sorry your dive went so badly. There is no excuse for poor service in the water! it is not safe in the slightest.

 

How many people were with you? just curious - I can't really think of any justification on why john wouldn't wait in the water for everyone, he certaindly did for us.

 

As for the getting on to the boat Like I said that wasn't a problem for us but I could see it being a problem for some. it takes some strength and balance to climb on to a moving object fully loaded with heavy gear.

 

 

**I noticed that you were in Tahiti in Oct. of 2004 - did any of the rest of us meet you? all the replies above are from memebers who were in Tahiti pretty much spanning the month of october!

[lazygirl cruiser]

Hi Wystiria,

 

Perhaps John was having a bad day! My husband and I are advanced divers with many years experience, and he may have decided to stay with the less experienced divers. Still, as the visibility was so poor that day, he should have checked that all the divers were in a group, as per our pre-diving talk.

 

I was on the Marquesas part of the TP cruise. I remember diving with another cc "John" who did the back-to-back. That was such a great cruise.

[Bubble Blower]

I have dove Barbados 2 times and each time I dove it was with One on One with Sarah. She has a small boat and it only holds 6. She has gotton a larger one for bigger groups. She is extreamly patient and realy knows her dive stuff. I recomend her dive company. Is very safty oriented and is a stickler for following the dive tables. She her main boat has a small canopy area and you do back roll in. I had never gotton to do that untill I dove with her. She and her captian make it easy to get back on board and just made me feel relaxed. The first time I dove with her was in 2002 sept. and Last year 2004 in Oct.

I recomend you check out her site and get to know her as I have gotton too.

http://www.one-on-one-scuba.com/index.cfm

Steve

[AlexandraIsHere]

I had a completely different experience with John and Mary. ...Their boat wouldn’t start so we all had to bide our time waiting...We waded into chest deep water, carrying all our gear....

 

It sounds like you had a very similar experience to the one my two teenage sons and I had when diving on Barbados last March. But my dives were with ScubaShack. I had arranged the excursion with Roger Hurley via email ahead of our cruise. Upon arrival in Barbados, there was no sign of the person who was supposed to pick us up at the pier. It turned out that Roger was off-island and the person filling in was having some trouble keeping things going in his absence. Two hours, several phone calls, and lots of sweaty misery later, we were finally put into a cab and taken to the dive shop. We then carried our gear and belongings about 200 yards down the crowded beach before swimming with it out to the dive boat 150 yards offshore.

 

Eventually we were all aboard and headed for our first dive site. It took the captain and divemaster about 40 minutes of trying to locate the dive site once we arrived at the approximate location. After several false starts and divers scattered all over the surface before everyone was in the water, it was time to drop. The reef was somewhat interesting and we were visited by the tourist submarine. We spent much of the dive swimming against a strong current instead of turning around and enjoying a nice drift dive. Go figure.

 

Second dive was again swimming against the current and we had the amazing opportunity to look at a lot of sand. We eventually reached a sand-covered, dead coral reef, at which time it was time to turn around and swim back to the boat, again viewing lots of exciting sand.

 

As we neared the shore, the captain managed to get a rope wrapped around the propeller and had to kill the engine. The boat then proceeded to bounce off a couple other boats before drifting back out towards open water. We were still 400-500 yards offshore, but a few of the divers opted to jump in and swim for shore at this point. As we had a few things we hoped to keep somewhat dry, we waited a little longer to see if the captain and divemaster could clear the propeller and get the boat running again. No such luck. Eventually they had another boat throw a rope and tow us a little further towards shore, as we had drifted quite a ways out while they were cutting the rope from the propeller. The tow into shore ended 400 yards offshore and we ended up swimming in with our gear, cameras, clothes, etc.

 

Then they had the audacity to try to charge us 50% more than the rates I had negotiated with Roger! Fortunately I did have the email from him with the rates we agreed to and after about 20 minutes of dispute, that was the amount I paid. I felt it was way too much, considering the experience we had been through and the fact that we did not have any time left in port to shop, hang on the beach, etc. as we should have had if the excursion had gone smoother from pick-up to finish.

 

Maybe things are different at ScubaShack when Roger is on-island, but I don't know that I'll give them a second chance.

[Majo]

I have just had this posting by Rob7 pointed out to me and feel I have to answer this.

After such a long period of time I can’t remember this day or the dives but I have been in touch with one of the other divers on that day and he doesn’t remember any problems other than the boatman having trouble starting the boat.

 

First the boatman was new and did have some problems with the boat at first and I’m sure both Mary and myself would have been most apologetic about the delay.

Anyone who owns a car at some time will have had trouble with it, anyone who owns a boat will tell you multiply potential problems.

 

The sea conditions on the west coast of Barbados are usually calm though nature can cause rough seas and we can’t get the boat in as close as we like to make getting on and off as easy as possible.

 

Our “Tiny Boat” is a thirty foot Pirogue taking a maximum of six divers per trip.

The boat is equipped with two engines, canopy, marine radio, (we carry a cell phone also) First aid kit, O2, and a boarding ladder.

We also carry spare regulator, mask, weight belt and lots of loose weights.

This is the same boat that was “stolen” in 2004; I fail to see why Robyn highlights this?

 

Before all dives I brief divers thoroughly covering method of entry and exit, depth, time, safety stop what we may see on the dive, I also carry a delayed marker buoy in case we have current and don’t go back the mooring line.

 

I have never ever gone off and left divers regardless of experience level, however some who don’t listen to the briefing try and go off and leave me.

We had a full boat that day and five were pretty experienced and one newly certified fifteen year old girl.

Of the five experienced divers one had 1000+ dives one 500+ one 261 and Rob7 and husband with 91 dives each.

I know for a fact that the other four divers did not abort the dive and don’t remember any one doing so neither does the diver I have been in contact with, by the way he is a British Police Officer.

If our boatman was on another boat he shouldn’t have been but he would have been at most thirty feet from our boat and able to give assistance when needed.

We do have a ladder as stated before; the way Rob7 writes it we didn’t have a ladder period.

 

As stated in Rob7’s next message “maybe John was having a bad day and stayed with the less experienced divers” the fifteen year old would certainly have been my main focus, maybe I judged wrongly who needed my attention if you had to abort and were exhausted

by Barbados dive conditions?

 

If Rob7’s posting was true I would have expected a serious complaint to have been made none was made.

The dives on that day were max 80ft, 32 minutes with a safety stop, second Dive Max 50ft, 68 minutes.

I feel this is a very unfair, distorted and exaggerated reply to Wisteria’s positive report on our operation.

We do our best to make sure people have a good safe experience while diving with us; Rob7 seems to be an exception to all the other positive feed back on us in various forums.

 

Sincerely

John Moore

Dive Barbados.

[DiveCruiser]

Anyone dive in Dominica off the destiny and with who. Was it worth diving??????

 

Thanks

Bob