My wife/buddy is taking us " kicking & screaming " to jam/dive/relax. If you have experienced this resort please give us the lowdown. We love to dive but take everything into consideration. My darling is a critical -care pediatric nurse; I practice law. We want to relax. Your thoughts, please!
I stayed there for a week several years ago.
The resort is very relaxing, has a nice pool, a very nice beach, and the water is very nice. almost not waves on the beach though as it's in a bay, but the water is crystal clear.
The rooms are nice. We stayed in an oceanfront suite when we went. because of the foliage (trees) between the buldings and the beach, you could barely see the beach. the suite is on the end of the building closest to the beach also. behind them are the ocean view rooms, or views of the trees in front of the ocean, at least on the ground floor. so if I went back, I'd either get a 3rd floor ocean view (so I could actually see the ocean) or just get a garden view room for a discounted price.
The restuarants are set up with a "formal dining room" (nice shirt/slacks for men, dress for women), a buffett style, a patio restuarant, and a burger/pizza bar type.
All drinks and food are all inclusive, but they are wimpy on the alocohol content on the drinks. They will pour more, but you have to ask for it.
They also have a massage spa that we didn't try.
They do several tours from the restaurant. A shopping tour, a tour to Ricks Cafe (which was overated and I woudn't do again, but you might want to visit at least once), a snorkel boat tour / booze cruise).
Dive Operations:
Their boat is an Newton Dive Special 35 or 36 footer. It's a very nice boat and was never crowded. most days was just 5 or 6 people at most. one day with students we might have had 10 peole.
All your diving is included in the price of your hotel room. But they only do 2 single tank dives each day. one in the morning and one in the afternoon. except saturday they do two dives in the morning, one of them a deep dive. saturday afternoon is boat mainteance, etc and sunday they dive crew is off I think.
their morning dive departs around 9am and gets back by 11am. The afternoon dive leaves around 1pm (I think) and gets back by around 3pm. leaving you plenty of time to hit the beach or eat between.
Dive gear is included. when I was there it was sherwood BC's/regs and AL80 tanks. (air only, no nitrox at the time). They also had masks/fins, but they were the cheap snorkel type fins. Once you get set up for the week they have your gear set up on the boat when you get there (if you're using their gear). They also have wetsuits, but I'm not a fan of rental wetsuits. I took my mask, gloves, camera, etc... and just used their rental gear so I wouldn't have to worry about takiny my gear down.
most of the dive sites were reef sites within a 10 minute or so ride of the resort. all the single tank dives were 65' or less in depth. the reefs were in good shape and lots of fish. It was much better than I anticipated.
There is an option of a night dive one or two nights per week if they get enough people. I think there is a $40 surcharge for this. they include dive lights.
you can also get a video of you and your buddy taped. They focus mostly on the divers paying for the video, but include everyone. I saw the 'final version' of the tape in the VCR they had in the resort and it was pretty good and well worth the $40 bucks for what you got.
one thing you'll want to do is go get all your signup and paperwork out of the way as soon as you get there before they close down for the day so you can get on the dive the next morning.
if you want to just go and relax, this is a good place to go. not much to do, but it's relaxing... the best part is just sitting on the beach. the beach faces west so good sunsets.
hope this helps. feel free to ask if you have questions.
mike
