My group just returned from Beqa Lagoon Resort (literally - after just under 43 hours of travel I’m writing this as I wait for my laundry to finish in the washer) and we all had a great time.
The resort itself was in good shape. My wife and I stayed in Bure #2, a beachfront villa. The rest of my group (25 in total) stayed in a combination of Beachfront Bures, the Koi Lagoon Bures, and we also had the entire 4 suite building (The “Delta House”).
My wife and I never had any issues with AC or Hot Water (well….my wife did - but only because she wrongly assumed that the shower was setup to be OFF/COLD/HOT like here at home, and not OFF/HOT/COLD like it was clearly labeled and also instructed during the welcome briefing). She was not alone in making this assumption in our group. A couple other people made the same error for the first couple of days.
One bedroom in one of the “Delta House” units had a wonky AC unit. But it turns out that the remote control was just in need of a new battery, and using any other remote on it worked until the new battery was sourced the next day.
Mosquitoes were not really an issue for this trip. No more so than any other environment. I’ve gotten more bites in my back yard than I did on this trip. At dinner time I would just spray my legs or forearms before heading to the mess hall, and was fine.
My wife rarely joins me on my dive trips, and is more of a 5 star resort type of person than a typical dive resort person. As a standard, in St Barths we stay at Le Toiny or in Aruba, etc, Mrs FancyPants will always book us at a Ritz-Carlton or Four Seasons. Im more of a pirate shanty town kinda traveler when solo. So while I have no problem overlooking issues at places, she normally is a much more higher maintenance traveller.
So with that being said - she said she had a blast at Beqa Lagoon and hated leaving. The staff continually went out of their way to be accommodating. In passing my wife casually made a comment about one of the flowers she saw on the property, and totally unprompted, every morning one of the cleaning staff that had overheard her brought her a bouquet of them.
The food was generally between fine and excellent (the lamb is fantastic, as was the tuna). The chicken & some of the other fish dishes were always good, but 50/50 would be slightly over cooked. Never dry or rubbery, or inedible, just not perfect.
Breakfast would take a bit of time. I’d always get to the mess hall at 0630 and check in, but I never got my food before 7-715am. It was never an issue. I was never rushing to get to the shop for the 0745 check in, which, in typical island fashion always started around 0805 anyway.
You placed your breakfast order the night before while at dinner. They had menu cards out at every dinner service so you selected the following days meals while eating dinner.
After breakfast We would then head out for 2 boat dives on local reefs. Boat rides were typically in the 20-40 minute range, and the seas were fairly calm. The first couple days when it was stormy we had some bigger 4-5 foot chop that made getting in the boat a bit of a goat rodeo. The dive guys will have your gear all set up on the boats every morning. They make sure it’s all taken care of after both dives as well. You will be assigned a rubber made bin, and the guys will have all of your gear stowed in the bins every day. The only think I took off the boat after the 2 tanks was my camera and Bluetooth speaker (side note - Country Music is HUGE on Beqa. I don’t know what music I was expecting to hear….but it wasn’t Country). When you get back onboard every morning they’ll ask you to give your gear a once over, check your air, etc. Typical dive boat 101 stuff. If you want to shore dive, all you have to do is let the guys know, and they’ll off load it for you after your 2 tanks, and they’ll make sure it’s back on board in the morning for the next boat trip.
The weather was rainy and grey the first 2 days. On each of those days we had 1 good dive site and 1 **** dive site. The rest of the trip was much better. Our first dive of the trip was laughable in how bad it was. Viz was under 15’. I felt like I was back in NJ doing a black water recovery dive. We went to the other side of the lagoon and the second dive was much better. Viz closer to 85’. Almost all of the life is above 55’ or so, and everything above 30’ is really stunning. All of the sites we hit in the 10 days we were there I would consider ‘shallow’. I think the deepest anyone in our group hit all week was 112, and I think he had to have brought a shovel down with him to get that mark. I hit 108’ by basically swimming under one of the wrecks. The average depth was closer to 65’ across the 21 dives we had done. Visibility was between good - excellent for us after that first day.
Most of our group did the Tiger Shark dive twice. It runs on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. I think the cost is $200 USD per trip. Each trip is 2 tanks, with your bottom time Being about 30 minutes. That might get called early if the sharks start to get too aggressive. Me and my buddy only managed to get 1 day in at The Cathedral. Our group had 2 boats, and on the first day of Shark Dives, my boat suffered an engine malfunction, so we missed that Shark dive day. The other boat said that they had Bulls, Nurses, & Lemons on the first dive, and 4 Tigers come in as well on the second tank. Two days later, both boats were able to make it out to the Cathedral for another Shark Dive and it did not disappoint. Words really couldn’t do it justice. My buddy & I were the first off the boat, and literally splashed down nearly on top of 2 tigers as soon as we got down to the reef top at 15’. They were maybe 12’ long each. As we got to the wall, there were Bulls & Lemons already swimming past us, and nurses hanging around in the center. 4 more Tigers joined, including a massive 15 foot pregnant female Tiger. You see a 8 or 9 foot Bull Shark, and think “that’s a big f’n fish”….and then a Tiger Shark the size of a school bus swims a foot in front of you and whacks you with its tail, and it DWARFS the Bulls. You REALLY need to keep your head on a swivel down there. Our group had to repeatedly shove the sharks away. It was really jaw dropping & awe inspiring. As you sit on the bottom the dive staff are positioned behind and above you with some poles to prod the more curious Tigers and Lemons away. The Bulls generally kept their distance, especially when the tigers were around. We had our surface interval, and went back down and again had 6 Tigers with us. In talking with the other groups at the resort, they all had at least 3 tigers show up on their 2 tank trips.
Water temps were 75-79°F for all of our dives, with the exception of one dive we did out by the barrier reef on the western side of the lagoon. That had a colder current that dropped it down to 72°F. I just wore a long sleeve rash guard and board shorts the entire trip and was never cold. For comparison- I wear the exact same kit diving in Bonaire in January or Mexico, Belize, etc. The same people that wear a 3mm or 5mm in those locations wore one in Beqa as well.
Our group did a handful of shore dives off the resort itself, but while totally fine, it wasn’t anything special. It was actually a much better snorkel reef than scuba reef, so that is what we used it for most.
The resort itself was in good shape. My wife and I stayed in Bure #2, a beachfront villa. The rest of my group (25 in total) stayed in a combination of Beachfront Bures, the Koi Lagoon Bures, and we also had the entire 4 suite building (The “Delta House”).
My wife and I never had any issues with AC or Hot Water (well….my wife did - but only because she wrongly assumed that the shower was setup to be OFF/COLD/HOT like here at home, and not OFF/HOT/COLD like it was clearly labeled and also instructed during the welcome briefing). She was not alone in making this assumption in our group. A couple other people made the same error for the first couple of days.
One bedroom in one of the “Delta House” units had a wonky AC unit. But it turns out that the remote control was just in need of a new battery, and using any other remote on it worked until the new battery was sourced the next day.
Mosquitoes were not really an issue for this trip. No more so than any other environment. I’ve gotten more bites in my back yard than I did on this trip. At dinner time I would just spray my legs or forearms before heading to the mess hall, and was fine.
My wife rarely joins me on my dive trips, and is more of a 5 star resort type of person than a typical dive resort person. As a standard, in St Barths we stay at Le Toiny or in Aruba, etc, Mrs FancyPants will always book us at a Ritz-Carlton or Four Seasons. Im more of a pirate shanty town kinda traveler when solo. So while I have no problem overlooking issues at places, she normally is a much more higher maintenance traveller.
So with that being said - she said she had a blast at Beqa Lagoon and hated leaving. The staff continually went out of their way to be accommodating. In passing my wife casually made a comment about one of the flowers she saw on the property, and totally unprompted, every morning one of the cleaning staff that had overheard her brought her a bouquet of them.
The food was generally between fine and excellent (the lamb is fantastic, as was the tuna). The chicken & some of the other fish dishes were always good, but 50/50 would be slightly over cooked. Never dry or rubbery, or inedible, just not perfect.
Breakfast would take a bit of time. I’d always get to the mess hall at 0630 and check in, but I never got my food before 7-715am. It was never an issue. I was never rushing to get to the shop for the 0745 check in, which, in typical island fashion always started around 0805 anyway.
You placed your breakfast order the night before while at dinner. They had menu cards out at every dinner service so you selected the following days meals while eating dinner.
After breakfast We would then head out for 2 boat dives on local reefs. Boat rides were typically in the 20-40 minute range, and the seas were fairly calm. The first couple days when it was stormy we had some bigger 4-5 foot chop that made getting in the boat a bit of a goat rodeo. The dive guys will have your gear all set up on the boats every morning. They make sure it’s all taken care of after both dives as well. You will be assigned a rubber made bin, and the guys will have all of your gear stowed in the bins every day. The only think I took off the boat after the 2 tanks was my camera and Bluetooth speaker (side note - Country Music is HUGE on Beqa. I don’t know what music I was expecting to hear….but it wasn’t Country). When you get back onboard every morning they’ll ask you to give your gear a once over, check your air, etc. Typical dive boat 101 stuff. If you want to shore dive, all you have to do is let the guys know, and they’ll off load it for you after your 2 tanks, and they’ll make sure it’s back on board in the morning for the next boat trip.
The weather was rainy and grey the first 2 days. On each of those days we had 1 good dive site and 1 **** dive site. The rest of the trip was much better. Our first dive of the trip was laughable in how bad it was. Viz was under 15’. I felt like I was back in NJ doing a black water recovery dive. We went to the other side of the lagoon and the second dive was much better. Viz closer to 85’. Almost all of the life is above 55’ or so, and everything above 30’ is really stunning. All of the sites we hit in the 10 days we were there I would consider ‘shallow’. I think the deepest anyone in our group hit all week was 112, and I think he had to have brought a shovel down with him to get that mark. I hit 108’ by basically swimming under one of the wrecks. The average depth was closer to 65’ across the 21 dives we had done. Visibility was between good - excellent for us after that first day.
Most of our group did the Tiger Shark dive twice. It runs on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. I think the cost is $200 USD per trip. Each trip is 2 tanks, with your bottom time Being about 30 minutes. That might get called early if the sharks start to get too aggressive. Me and my buddy only managed to get 1 day in at The Cathedral. Our group had 2 boats, and on the first day of Shark Dives, my boat suffered an engine malfunction, so we missed that Shark dive day. The other boat said that they had Bulls, Nurses, & Lemons on the first dive, and 4 Tigers come in as well on the second tank. Two days later, both boats were able to make it out to the Cathedral for another Shark Dive and it did not disappoint. Words really couldn’t do it justice. My buddy & I were the first off the boat, and literally splashed down nearly on top of 2 tigers as soon as we got down to the reef top at 15’. They were maybe 12’ long each. As we got to the wall, there were Bulls & Lemons already swimming past us, and nurses hanging around in the center. 4 more Tigers joined, including a massive 15 foot pregnant female Tiger. You see a 8 or 9 foot Bull Shark, and think “that’s a big f’n fish”….and then a Tiger Shark the size of a school bus swims a foot in front of you and whacks you with its tail, and it DWARFS the Bulls. You REALLY need to keep your head on a swivel down there. Our group had to repeatedly shove the sharks away. It was really jaw dropping & awe inspiring. As you sit on the bottom the dive staff are positioned behind and above you with some poles to prod the more curious Tigers and Lemons away. The Bulls generally kept their distance, especially when the tigers were around. We had our surface interval, and went back down and again had 6 Tigers with us. In talking with the other groups at the resort, they all had at least 3 tigers show up on their 2 tank trips.
Water temps were 75-79°F for all of our dives, with the exception of one dive we did out by the barrier reef on the western side of the lagoon. That had a colder current that dropped it down to 72°F. I just wore a long sleeve rash guard and board shorts the entire trip and was never cold. For comparison- I wear the exact same kit diving in Bonaire in January or Mexico, Belize, etc. The same people that wear a 3mm or 5mm in those locations wore one in Beqa as well.
Our group did a handful of shore dives off the resort itself, but while totally fine, it wasn’t anything special. It was actually a much better snorkel reef than scuba reef, so that is what we used it for most.
