Turneffe island resort question sat-sat or wed-wed

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Mike

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Trying to get a handle on the different stays they offer. It's either sat to sat or wed to wed.

The wed option gives us a big air fare break. Is there any difference to the experience of going there and doing diving on a wed to wed schedule versus the sat to sat? I'm speculating that the majority of people will be there sat to sat, so does it matter in any way?

I'm imagining that on a sat to sat stay you will start and end with the same group of divers, being on the same schedule as they go through the same process and evolution of going through the dive sites, but on a wed to wed you'd start with the 2nd half of the sat divers stay and what they want to dive and then start over with the next sat group but only dive with them for 3 days in the first series of dives they will evolve through
 
I am flying down to Belize on a Wednesday night redeye arriving Thursday and then flying home on a Saturday after a nice 9 day stay. For me coming out of California that was the best price for air fare. Delta now has direct flight from Belize to LAX on Saturday.
 
I've considered going there and would probably want to arrive or leave on a Wed. The thing that occurs to me it looks like they normally do their 3-dive trip to Lighthouse/Halfmoon/BH on Tuesday. My understanding is if you don't go on that trip there are no other diving options that day. So depending when you would be flying Wednesday you might not want to do that trip the day before, or maybe you'd want to skip the 3rd dive. (I assume all 3 dives are out there, so instead of being back at the resort drying stuff and packing you'd be sitting on the boat.)
 
If you're staying for a week, as opposed to a week and a half or two weeks, and if you're diving, then probably the biggest knock on a Wednesday to Wednesday at TIR is that you won't dive on Saturday. As you were thinking, Saturday is the big transfer day so there's no diving that day since the dive crew is given the day off to take care of their personal business on the mainland. In my three weeks there, most of the guests did Saturday to Saturday, a few did Saturday to Wednesday, and a few did a Saturday to the second Wednesday. Only a couple or three or four guests at most left or arrived on a Wednesday.

Ditto what Damselfish said about the Lighthouse trip as she is correct on all counts.

When we went the first time, we stayed for two weeks, Saturday to the second Saturday. We originally planned to go back to the mainland for a day trip on the Saturday in between, but I ended up doing that on the first Wednesday so by the time the first Saturday rolled around we decided just to hang on the island. It turned out to be a pretty great day as we had the island to ourselves except for just a few staff members who stayed behind to get the cabanas and rooms ready. That worked really well for us since we were there for two weeks, but I wouldn't recommend it for a one week stay.

Have a great trip. We love the place and will return someday in the near future.

But first, it's back to Placencia for more great diving and a look at more dirt...
 
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BZE is also much nicer and easier on Wednesday than on Saturday. I almost always do Wednesday to Wednesday when I go to Belize. But I do not stay out on the Atolls. My guess, is that TIR will do the BH dive around 8-9am. Then the second dive won't be until 11 and will be to about 50ft. The 3rd dive will likely be around 1pm and will be to a max depth of about 30ft. If you fly our on one of the afternoon flights out of BZE (you will want to because its a long boat ride back to the mainland from Turneffe), you will have a full 24hrsafter your last dive. The dive to 30ft hardly even counts. It counts even less on EAN.

So from a profile standpoint, I would not worry about it. If you get back to TIR around 3:30 or so, that doesn't leave much time for drying. However, BCDs dry quickly as do regulators. The only concern would be your wetsuit. My solution would be to only use it for the first dive of the day at Lighthouse Reef and then rinse it in salt water. Start it drying around 11am. Rinse it after you get home. A little salt isn't going to hurt your wetsuit.

As far as the other concerns go, I don't know because I have no experience staying out there.
 
good point about no diving Saturday, I forgot about the obvious. (If I did a Wed thing it would be to do 10-11 nights, so fine with just hanging out on a Saturday. For a week I might be less thrilled about missing a whole dive day.)
 
good point about no diving Saturday, I forgot about the obvious. (If I did a Wed thing it would be to do 10-11 nights, so fine with just hanging out on a Saturday. For a week I might be less thrilled about missing a whole dive day.)

Yep, that sounds like a deal breaker to me too. Glad I asked.

Any issues with going in July?
 
Mike's not doing the Blue Hole anyway. It is too dangerous for him :wink:
 
Trying to get a handle on the different stays they offer. It's either sat to sat or wed to wed.

The wed option gives us a big air fare break. Is there any difference to the experience of going there and doing diving on a wed to wed schedule versus the sat to sat? I'm speculating that the majority of people will be there sat to sat, so does it matter in any way?

I'm imagining that on a sat to sat stay you will start and end with the same group of divers, being on the same schedule as they go through the same process and evolution of going through the dive sites, but on a wed to wed you'd start with the 2nd half of the sat divers stay and what they want to dive and then start over with the next sat group but only dive with them for 3 days in the first series of dives they will evolve through
We returned a little over a week ago from a trip to Blackbird Caye Resort on Turneffe Atoll and they offer the same options. We went on Wed and we found that there were enough other divers on that schedule that we formed our own little "group". Whether you start on Sat or Wed you will be be joining with others that are already established into a group. No problem, you'll just tend to socialize more with those on the same schedule. At our resort there WAS diving available on Saturday.

One drawback (in my opinion) at Blackbird in coming in on Wed is that they do the Blue hole trip on Tuesday so your last day before flying has a very deep dive (plus two others). If your return flight is early then your N2 load would be higher than if you flew out on Saturday (and could sit out the Friday pm dive without having to sit on the boat).

We spent 7 days diving then spent 4 days at Black Orchid resort on the mainland exploring Mayan ruins, a wildlife reserve and other land packages. This worked well for us.
 
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