We are headed to the Big Island next week and I am late in doing doing some of my planning. I have been looking online at different dive shops and it seems like this very well could be my ONLY dive trip there.
Is there ANY dive shop that actually caters to people who actually come to the island to dive? We are there for 10 days, plan on diving at least 7 of them and want to try and do 3, possibly 4 dives a day. So at minimum that puts us at 21 dives each, 2 divers. We have only been diving a couple of years but every other place we have dove none local seems to have reasonable deal for air/Nitrox.
It seems like shops want to rent the tanks for $10 (air) each, but have free refills. Seems like they only want to let 1-2 tanks per diver go. How does someone who wants to go south or north from Kona actually get to dive? Diving once, loading all your gear to drive clear back to the shop seems like a pretty crappy deal. Even then if we did rent 3 tanks each that is $60/day or $420. On top of that weight is $6/day so another $42 (or cheeper for me to USPS Flat Rate Box my own weights down). I know you can not compare but a year ago in Maui we did the same thing (6 tanks, 6 days + weight for $100) and it seemed super common. In Bonaire nitrox was "included" in our package but for the whole week we had at least 12 tanks (4 divers x3 tanks) in the truck. When we travel to dive we want to dive.
Are there any good options for active divers on the BI?
Is there ANY dive shop that actually caters to people who actually come to the island to dive? We are there for 10 days, plan on diving at least 7 of them and want to try and do 3, possibly 4 dives a day. So at minimum that puts us at 21 dives each, 2 divers. We have only been diving a couple of years but every other place we have dove none local seems to have reasonable deal for air/Nitrox.
It seems like shops want to rent the tanks for $10 (air) each, but have free refills. Seems like they only want to let 1-2 tanks per diver go. How does someone who wants to go south or north from Kona actually get to dive? Diving once, loading all your gear to drive clear back to the shop seems like a pretty crappy deal. Even then if we did rent 3 tanks each that is $60/day or $420. On top of that weight is $6/day so another $42 (or cheeper for me to USPS Flat Rate Box my own weights down). I know you can not compare but a year ago in Maui we did the same thing (6 tanks, 6 days + weight for $100) and it seemed super common. In Bonaire nitrox was "included" in our package but for the whole week we had at least 12 tanks (4 divers x3 tanks) in the truck. When we travel to dive we want to dive.
Are there any good options for active divers on the BI?