hi, I looking to plan my honeymoon. I'm confuse between few different places. My future wife and I have arround 60 dive and certifed advance padi (will be arround 100 dive in june). The trip will be at the end of june 2009. Were looking for clear water, warm water, current or not. Were more into sharks, whale sharks, manta or stingray, turttle... werck dive are really nice too.
were thinking about the Caymans island,Turk and caicos, Galapagos or the oposite Bali and Fiji.
were thinking about a liveaboard for the first week and hotel for the second week.
any advice ?
you should probably have posted this down on the General Travel Forum.
Liveaboards are great and will spoil you forever.
But, most liveaboards book up months in advance so you need to start looking at availability right now for your dates.
But, if you think you can book
Galapagos for next summer right now, you are probably going to be disappointed. The liveaboards there book up years in advance with whole boat bookings by groups usually. Sometimes they have spots open that you can get into, but you need to start looking right now if that is what you want. You will see sharks there for sure.
Turks and Caicos and
Caymans liveaboards both will give you beautiful clear water and a chance to see sharks and turtles. Aggressor has a boat at each, and Explorer Ventures has a boat at T&C. Both get rave reviews. If you do a week at either on a liveaboard, you will find that the land-based dive ops don't quite stack up. Grand Cayman has lots of topside stuff to do when not diving, I don't think T&C has much of anything except sitting on the beach, if that matters.
Fiji has several liveaboards and I have heard that all of them are great. Diving is a bit more advanced that T&C or Caymans, and there is current. But you will be able to see sharks and possibly mantas, too. The land based places like Wananvu and Beqa Lagoon get rave reviews and friends who have been to each say they are true exotic luxury.
Bali is supposed to be amazing topside and the diving good. I have read many mixed reviews on the liveaboards there. Indonesia in general has amazing diving though so you might want to consider just diving 2 different islands, like a week at Sulawesi and a week at Bali, etc. This 2 week trip, Fiji and the Galapagos trip would be your most expensive, probably
double the Caribbean trips, if that matters.
robin