scubanurse
Registered
Hello all,
Returned from Ambergris Caye last week and just wanted to post a quick trip report. We were in San Pedro from March 21 - 28 03. First trip there. At first we did't like San Pedro but after a couple of days we really started to enjoy it and will probably go back some day. The town of San Pedro is small. You can walk anywhere. Restaurants were a bit more expensive than we were expecting but everything we ate was very good. By the third day we had discovered the little street vendor stands, there are several right together. The food is very good and super cheap. Steak burritos for US1.50. Needless to say we ate there alot. There were also several grocery stores toward the north end of town that had good prices. Don't go to Rocks Grocery way overpriced! If you are a beer drinker selection is pretty much limited to Belikin, Guiness or Miller pony bottles. Belikin beer is pretty good especially if fixed with lime (like Corona). The cheapest way to buy beer is to go to the distributor and get it by the case. You have to pay a small deposit on bottles and case but it is still alot cheaper than puchasing in stores. We stayed at Aquamarina Suites which is right in town. Our room was actually a 1 bedroom apt with fully furnished kitchen including microwave and blender. The rooms are lg and very nicely furnished. All rooms have a balcony and overlook the pool and ocean. Wonderful place staff is very helpful especially Alberto.
We did our diving with Aqua Dives. We had heard that they were good. I regret to report that we did not find this to be true. If we had not prepaid for our dives we would have switched dive operators. The boats we were on were overcrowed, on several days we had 18 and 19 people on our boat. We never had the same divemaster, different one each day. They kept your gear at the dive shop after the first day and told us they would pick us up at the dock with our gear set-up and ready to go each morning. This was never true, each day we would get the boat to the dive shop and get out of the boats and wait while they tried to figure out who would be on which boat and tried to find your gear. Very unorganized. Gear was thrown into piles on the back of the boat on several days. Most of the time I had to have my tanks changed because I would only have 2500-2600psi to start. After a couple of days they actually started saying that 3000 is a full tank but in Belize 2700 is OK. Very frustrating. Most days we did not get back to shore until 130pm. Lots of restaurants close from 2pm-5pm so hard to find lunch at times. Enough about above the water lets go under. The diving was good even thoug h we dove a couple of sites the twice. Avg depth was 60 ft with vis 60-80ft.
Being a new diver this was easy diving and allowed me work on skills, dropped from 18 to 14 pounds and felt much more relaxed and comfortable with bouancy. Saw lots of soft coral. Very differant that Cozumel but still beautiful. Swam with turtle on one dive. On another dive the divemaster was feeding nurse sharks and actually caught one and rubbed it't belly putting it to sleep. Had a nurse shark follow me the most of one dive did't know it until we came up and my buddy told me. There are lots of lg grouper and jacks, they will swim right up to you. Also lots of trumpet fish but you have to look close or you might think they are seagrass. On one dive we had dolphins swimming around the boat. Unfortunatley they took off as soon as divers started getting in the water. Had one dive where the dive masters miscounted and thought they had lost a diver we all had to wait while they tried to find the diver who never existed! All in all we had a good trip and will go back. We will not dive with Aqua Dives. I contacted them to request to speak with someone about our concerns and they did not respond. This seems to me that they don't care very much about divers safety or comfort.
;-0
Returned from Ambergris Caye last week and just wanted to post a quick trip report. We were in San Pedro from March 21 - 28 03. First trip there. At first we did't like San Pedro but after a couple of days we really started to enjoy it and will probably go back some day. The town of San Pedro is small. You can walk anywhere. Restaurants were a bit more expensive than we were expecting but everything we ate was very good. By the third day we had discovered the little street vendor stands, there are several right together. The food is very good and super cheap. Steak burritos for US1.50. Needless to say we ate there alot. There were also several grocery stores toward the north end of town that had good prices. Don't go to Rocks Grocery way overpriced! If you are a beer drinker selection is pretty much limited to Belikin, Guiness or Miller pony bottles. Belikin beer is pretty good especially if fixed with lime (like Corona). The cheapest way to buy beer is to go to the distributor and get it by the case. You have to pay a small deposit on bottles and case but it is still alot cheaper than puchasing in stores. We stayed at Aquamarina Suites which is right in town. Our room was actually a 1 bedroom apt with fully furnished kitchen including microwave and blender. The rooms are lg and very nicely furnished. All rooms have a balcony and overlook the pool and ocean. Wonderful place staff is very helpful especially Alberto.
We did our diving with Aqua Dives. We had heard that they were good. I regret to report that we did not find this to be true. If we had not prepaid for our dives we would have switched dive operators. The boats we were on were overcrowed, on several days we had 18 and 19 people on our boat. We never had the same divemaster, different one each day. They kept your gear at the dive shop after the first day and told us they would pick us up at the dock with our gear set-up and ready to go each morning. This was never true, each day we would get the boat to the dive shop and get out of the boats and wait while they tried to figure out who would be on which boat and tried to find your gear. Very unorganized. Gear was thrown into piles on the back of the boat on several days. Most of the time I had to have my tanks changed because I would only have 2500-2600psi to start. After a couple of days they actually started saying that 3000 is a full tank but in Belize 2700 is OK. Very frustrating. Most days we did not get back to shore until 130pm. Lots of restaurants close from 2pm-5pm so hard to find lunch at times. Enough about above the water lets go under. The diving was good even thoug h we dove a couple of sites the twice. Avg depth was 60 ft with vis 60-80ft.
Being a new diver this was easy diving and allowed me work on skills, dropped from 18 to 14 pounds and felt much more relaxed and comfortable with bouancy. Saw lots of soft coral. Very differant that Cozumel but still beautiful. Swam with turtle on one dive. On another dive the divemaster was feeding nurse sharks and actually caught one and rubbed it't belly putting it to sleep. Had a nurse shark follow me the most of one dive did't know it until we came up and my buddy told me. There are lots of lg grouper and jacks, they will swim right up to you. Also lots of trumpet fish but you have to look close or you might think they are seagrass. On one dive we had dolphins swimming around the boat. Unfortunatley they took off as soon as divers started getting in the water. Had one dive where the dive masters miscounted and thought they had lost a diver we all had to wait while they tried to find the diver who never existed! All in all we had a good trip and will go back. We will not dive with Aqua Dives. I contacted them to request to speak with someone about our concerns and they did not respond. This seems to me that they don't care very much about divers safety or comfort.
;-0
