Huahine snorkel safari

[chrismch]

I would love to get some feedback on Princess' Huahine snorkel safari. We're going in Nov and just booked it. We've also booked a couple of scuba dives on Raiatea and Anau. We'll be doing our first night dive in 2 weeks and went ahead and booked the night dive on Bora Bora. Any feedback on any of those dive locations would be great. We're relatively new divers. :p

[maygoddess]

I would love to get some feedback on Princess' Huahine snorkel safari. We're going in Nov and just booked it. We've also booked a couple of scuba dives on Raiatea and Anau. We'll be doing our first night dive in 2 weeks and went ahead and booked the night dive on Bora Bora. Any feedback on any of those dive locations would be great. We're relatively new divers. :p

 

Hi there! Just got back a few weeks ago. We did not do the Princess snorkel in Huahine...we did Marc's tour which is at max 20 people if he fills both his "canoes" of 10 each. The Princess snorkel group may be 30-40 people and you do pretty much what we do and end up on a motu just 100 yards+ away from Marc's tour and the group looked to be having a great time. I prefer the more intimate experience of Marc's rather than a big group..but I think either on Huahine would be fine. Not sure what Princess charges, but marc's is $80pp and well worth it even with the funky rainy weather we had in the morning..the afternoon at the picnic turned out to be nice and sunny and warm!

 

My husband did the Princess night dive in Bora Bora. This was the ONLY Princess excursion we booked and the only reason I booked through Princess rather than Top Dive was that TD wanted a guarantee of 6 people..which I couldn't guarantee. Forgot the operation who ran the BB night dive..my husband said they were good, but he was not particularly thrilled with the dive itself. They saw some sea life that may have not been around in the day..but not as much as he expected. He booked a dive with Top Dive for the next morning and much preferred that over the night dive. He then also booked with TD again in Moorea and loved that as well..especially since his dive boat was about 100ft away from some breeching whales!

 

My husband didn't dive at all in raiatea..not sure what to expect there..we did go to a snorkel site that had some great sea life near a "drop off" near the currents..beautiful stuff.

I only snorkel and have to say that THE BEST snorkeling I did was in Bora Bora through the coral gardens we went to our an excursions. We skimmed above some pretty shallow areas and saw beautiful shades of pink, purple, etc. We saw many colors of clams, tons of sea urchins...I followed my husband as we gently navigated around the corals..kinda scary being so close up to it, but I managed my way through and wore gloves just in case I had the urge to put my hand down on some coral. I did manage to scrape my calf on some coral in huahine on my 1st time out in water..nothing too bad.

 

Anyway..hope that helps! You will love it no matter what you do there!!

[candydane]

. . . wore gloves just in case I had the urge to put my hand down on some coral. I did manage to scrape my calf on some coral in huahine on my 1st time out in water..nothing too bad.

What kind of gloves did you wear? Regular scuba gloves or some cheaper alternative? Did you put anything on your coral scrape to help it heal?

[maygoddess]

What kind of gloves did you wear? Regular scuba gloves or some cheaper alternative? Did you put anything on your coral scrape to help it heal?

 

These were water gloves I got at a local dive shop. I didn't want heavy neoprene dive gloves that were upwards of $30+..something light and simple..so the dive shop guy got me these lightweight cloth gloves that had little "traction dots" on the inside. Not sure what they are actually called but ya know that little plastic no skid dots?ANyway..they were around $16 and I only wore them the one time in the coral garden given we were so close to the coral and it was quite abundant. Someone mentioned there was fire coral in there so that is probably what prompted me. And of course, not once did I put my hand down. I am sure if I had not worn them, I would have accidently touched a million times.

 

When I scraped my shin/calf area, I didn't treat it right away. I did have a bottle of lavender essential oil back in my cabin..I think after a day or two, I used that..and it healed. It was not a really bad scrape luckily.

 

It seems like it was easier to accidently scrape your legs when you were in water that had just little heads of coral sporadically around..I was up snorkeling..put my legs down and then I kinda bobbed backwards and twisted around quickly and scraped up against a small head of coral. In the garden area in bora bora..I was much more careful given that I was surrounded in all directions of ever size and height of coral!

[tahitisweetie]

when I got a coral scrape in riviera maya(akumal) it wouldn't heal at all until I put neosproin on it--

I hope this helps; I figure for the little space that the tube takes, I will always travel with it now-

[chrismch]

Thanks for the suggestion of the neosporin! It sounds like you're so close to so much stuff that you really have to be careful. And I guess that goes double if you have any kind of current to contend with and keeping track of your buddy.

[candydane]

Thanks for the information on the gloves and on the Neosporin. Definitely worth taking!!

[laurieb]

Maygoddess-

who did you book to go to the coral dropoff on Raiatea? this is the one place we didn't get back to this last trip and the one place we really want to spend more time at. was it next to a lagoonarium?

[maygoddess]

Hi Laurie...on Raiatea..the only snorkeling we did is in this one spot I think where most of the excursions go..we had chartered a private catamaran and sailed from 1-7pm on the cat..they brought us to this one spot near an island out in the lagoon..this was not really a coral garden like you may be thinking like Bruno does..or near any lagoonarium which I believe is more on shore. We were out close to where the open ocean was and there was a current going in one direction. There were buoys out there and they told us to stay right of the buoys so we don't get caught in the current and could not swim back to the boat. So a few of us went really close to the buoys where there was a natural "drop off"..and there seemed to be better sea life out..but we really had to kick hard to get back and had to be careful not to swim too far out from the buoys.

 

hope that explains it..this was probably nothing like what Bruno does..not sure exactly where he does his drift snorkel..our catamaran operators didn't seem to know of many snorkeling sites other than this one..which I thought was wierd...but with my limited french and their limited english.I couldn't communicate well about tryingout other spots..but we had a nice long sail around anyway!