Bigd2722
Contributor
Best place to stay for diver and non diver on belated honeymoon?
Dive op?
Best time of year?
thanx
Dive op?
Best time of year?
thanx
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Hi everybody !
Going 1st time to Dominica in mid February. It'll be my 1st tropical diving trip ever, althought I've diving for 25 years. Any advice about the kind of wetsuit I should bring and any idea of the water temperature ?
Thanks folks, have a good day.
My husband and I just got back from our honeymoon there. It was absolutely amazing, and the diving was phenomenal. We spent the first 5 days down on the shore diving, then spent 3 days in the mountains hiking. On the coast we stayed at Fort Young. The hotel was very nice but not luxurious by western standards and the staff was super friendly and helpful - great recommendations for sightseeing and restaurants. In spite of many reviews I had read about the food being so-so, we were both pretty pleased with the food, especially in the bar area it was tasty and reasonably priced. When we moved into the mountains we stayed at Cocoa Cottage. It was beautiful, but the rooms are fairly open to the elements - no screens on the windows or doors, and the mosquito nets in the rooms are very much necessary - and this was difficult for my husband who has a serious issue with bugs. In spite of my husband's issues with the bugs, I would highly recommend both hotels.
We dove with two different dive operators. We had followed the recommendation of friends and booked several boat dives with Dive Dominica, rather than booking diving through Fort Young. This was an unfortunate decision because it turned out that Fort Young books through Dive Dominica, so if we had booked through Fort Young, we would have had the same experience it just would have cost us $10 more per day and we would have been picked up and dropped off at the hotel each day rather than having to take a taxi to and from the Dive Dominica dock every day (with taxi expense, this would have netted us a savings of $10 per day - not a huge deal, but it would have been nice). We had the same Dive Master each time and he was fantastic. The groups were fairly typical size for a large operator - our smallest group was 6 divers with 2 Dive Masters and our largest was 12. We were there over New Years and it was very important to us that we dive Champagne Reef on New Years Eve. Dive Dominica could not guarantee us when we made the reservation several months in advance that we would be diving there on that day, so we reserved a dive with Champagne Reef Dive Company. This was an excellent decision. We had so much fun on our day dive that we booked a night dive with them with them as well, and each time my husband and I were the only divers with the Dive Master. In fact, on the night dive they had two trainee Dive Masters, so it was 3 DMs to 2 divers.
We were there Dec. 29-Jan 5. On the coast the weather was awesome - 80 degrees, with 30 minutes of gentle rain once per day. Up in the mountains the temperature was about 5 degrees cooler (when we went hiking high in the mountains I think it got as low as 60 degrees), but we had torrential rain from about 1pm-6am every day. We were told by the B&B operators that this was highly unusual for the time of year, but they put out a 55 gallon rain barrel to catch some of the water one day and in 2 hours it was overflowing. The rain cut several of our hikes short and ended our Boiling Lake hike about half way through. We were still able to have a lovely time, we just got good use out of our ponchos. Since hiking was cut short the B&B operators arranged a guide to give us a driving tour of the island. We both ended up having way more fun on the tour than we imagined and were so glad our hosts suggested it and arranged it for us.
I hope you and your wife have fun in Dominica. It's truly an amazing island. My husband and I can't wait to go back.
Nice info, I have a couple of questions. My wife and I are also considering going in June and staying at Fort Young. Would you stay there again.
How about the diving? and large things? sharks? ect?
Thanks,
Russ