Choosing a Caribbean Diving Destination- Rodales a good place to start?

[Rick Murchison]

DocVikingo once bubbled...
consult the latest edition of Undercurrent's "The Travelin' Diver's Chap Book" http://www.undercurrent.org/ . No ads, no BS.

Excellent advice - Doc V writes for undercurrent, so his view might lean that way just a tad, but I don't, and my view says Undercurrent is the only truly reliable source of information in wide distribution.
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Now, as to a specific recommendation, your description of what you're looking for sounds to me like the "Mayan Riviera" - and my specific recommendation would be Villas de Rosa, between Akumal & Tulum.
Rick

 

[DavidE]

You sound like my wife and I with several contradictory requirements! If you aren’t “hard core” divers and want stuff to do every other day, your best bet is to look at some of the places that are a little “touristy”. Maybe with a little night life, history and scenery for all of the between-dive days. So you stay away from St. Thomas, Jamaica and other over-populated places with lots of drinking and unfriendly natives.

We have “settled” for St. Lucia (at Anse Chastenet), the Caymans and Aurba as our favorites. All have good to great diving, low crime rates, and plenty of non-diving activities. They also have great beaches. We particularly like Aruba, even though it’s touristy, because we feel most comfortable with the natives. We just accept that having a few tourist attractions, like great restaurants, duty-free shopping, casinos and nightclubs are more than compensated for by everything else. We find that on these islands it’s also fairly easy to stay away from what we don’t want.

As far as Rhodales and Undercurrent recommendations, it’s a good place to start. The next best place is your traveling companion followed by both personal recommendations and a good travel agent.

Above all, plan to have Fun!

DavidE:doctor:

 

[New Hoo Diver]

First of all, thank you so much for all of your advice. Armed with everyone’s suggestions, I came up with a few ideas that I would love to get thoughts on. Since the original subject heading of the thread is now somewhat misleading, I have started a new thread above under the subject heading “Caribbean vacation advice needed."