TCI-Provo - Beaches, report

Hello All -
Well, we (my boyfriend and I) went to Provo from Nov. 3 - 10th and stayed at Beaches (we found a great deal, so figured "why not"....ugh, what a mistake). It pretty much rained the first few days due to Hurricane Michele. After going through their "Skills Check", we were able to go diving on Monday. What a horror. The boat ride was enough to keep you from wanting to dive! Seas were very rough, and vis was awful. We dove around West Caicos - not in Grace Bay, as it was too stirred up from the storms. Didn't see anything exciting -- I've seen much more on easy drift-dives in Cozumel. We were constantly fighting with the current. It just wasn't fun.
Diving was then cancelled for the rest of the week due to the rough seas and high winds around West Caicos. We spent our time hanging out by the pool and working on our tans...as there really wasn't much else to do. There's no real "main town" in Provo...at least none that we found. We even asked a few drivers if there was a main street, or town....no was the answer.
We finally got to go diving again on Friday - the day before we left. Seas were still rough, and the vis was even worse than on Monday. Almost missed a whole school of young barracudas because the vis was so poor. I guess we just picked a bad week to go.
I've heard others rave about TCI and Provo...but I really wasn't impressed. I'm sure the storm and the surge prevented us from seeing anything besides a few barracuda. Needless to say we won't be going back...especially to Beaches (waaay too many things wrong with that place to list here right now). What the heck were we thinking??!! The people in the dive shop were actually happy that we couldn't go diving....less work for them. Aieeegh....just give me Cozumel any day!!!

Liz

Thanks for the report. I stayed at Beaches in the Bahamas and they weren't much better then you described.
I still have room on the group to Cozumel in March ...

Hi Malleycat,

Yes, just an unlucky week. I arrived on 10th diving with Caicos Adventures for a week. Vis was changeable every day but most of the time we got 20/30m

My overall outlook on the diving is that it is a bit samey. Jump in, drop down to say 30m gradual ascent travelling along the wall to 15M at the turn and come back along the top. It would have been perfect if we did a wreck or something to make a change.

These walls are very dramatic and we did see plenty of large creatures which made for an exciting week, reef sharks every dive, eagle rays, a devil ray on one dive and a whale shark on our last day together with dolphins on the boat rides and many turtles. My 2 previous trips were to Red Sea and Maldives both top spots Red Sea has much more coral and Maldives has more fish life but I would go back to TCI some time.

It is a shame it seams you were unlucky with H. Michelle and the resort.