Coral reef destination recommendation

[bvbellomo]

I am looking for some suggestions for a dive trip.

I live in Ohio, padi certified, have some experience doing dives in Ohio, only snorkeling in the Caribbean. I've had a coral reef tank for 15 years and would love to dive a real reef. I am in the middle of a divorce, so probably a lower budget trip, but I have no idea how much I can afford. Likely looking for fall or next winter.

 

[ibj40]

Of all the places I have dove, worldwide (and granted, I have not dived in every destination that will be mentioned in this thread), if you are looking for easy, colorful, no stress; then I would recommend Puerto Aventuras, MX. A little over an hour South of Cancun, gated community, pretty decent selection of places to eat, and great access to other attractions (such as Mayan archeological sites and theme parks).

We usually stay in a condo, but there are a couple of all-inclusive hotels inside the compound. We use Dive Aventuras for diving (they can do both reefs and cenotes), a very professional, self-contained dive shop.

 

[gopbroek]

Cozumel, beutiful reef and reletively cheap.

 

[KathyV]

Sorry to hear that you are having a tough year; it sounds like you could use a nice vacation trip!

Will you be traveling alone? A lot of dive resorts base their prices on double occupancy and there is an upcharge for single occupancy.

Take a look at Anthony's Key Resort in Roatan, they offer a 2-for-1 all-inclusive special which works out the same as "no single supplement." But some of their cheaper units don't have air conditioning, so if that is important to you, make sure you pay a little more to get a room with AC. Note that the prices quoted by AKR usually don't include the 19% tax, so you have to add that to the total:
Anthony's Key Resort | Roatan Bungalows | Honduras | Bay Islands

Sunset House in Grand Cayman is offering a Single Diver Special, see the link below. Their packages include accommodations, boat and shore diving, and breakfast. Their quoted prices usually include the 13% tax:
Avoid Single Occupancy Supplements when Traveling Alone

If money is tight, consider a Blackbeard's liveaboard dive cruise. Only $1000 for a week and that includes your accommodations, food, and diving - and also beer, wine, and rum punch. The lodgings are a bit primitive, basically you have a berth with a curtain in a dormitory, but traveling without a dive buddy is not an issue on Blackbeards. The boats depart from Nassau and the water in the Bahamas is a bit chilly in the winter, but you are used to diving in the Midwest, so you should be fine! You are likely to see a lot of sharks on a Bahamas trip:
Blackbeard's Cruises Bahamas Dive Liveaboards - Official Website

 

[Centrals]

When everything has settled down and you still want to see really good coral reef then there is nothing better than the "coral triangle' in SE Asia. Flight is relatively expensive but diving is top notch and economical.

 

[diversteve]

For affprdable - Cozumel, Mostly boat, mostly drift diving. Some good resort options in/near town and lots of dive operators to choose from. Also sometimes you can save $100's by doing the bag-drag from Cancun - you take the bus to the ferry and back - other times it's almost as cheap to fly direct. From your area there might be a travel aggregator for the flights - there is one out of Chicago I'm aware of. See our Cozumel forum for details.

Roatan's West End will be more expensive to fly into but can be dirt cheap once there. 10 boat dives are about $350 now,, there;s a lot of very inexpensive housing options - including a decent hostel - Chillies which also has it's own dive operation - Native Sons. All due respect to KathyV but AKR is not a budget option. Plus it's isolated - about 10mins. drive from anything not located there to the West End. See our Bay Islands forum for more info.

There's lots of $40-50/nt. small apts - many with kitchens even at that price and local food can be everything from roadside stands to some of the nicer restaurants on the island.There's at least a dozen boat dive operators in the area - we used Coconut Tree Divers ,mostly - they also a a good genenral area info page on their website with options - #1 Roatan’s PADI scuba dive center on Trip Advisor | Coconut Tree Divers | Honduras

It will cost you $25 from the airport to the West End and from there you can literally walk to everything - we did all week except for a couple of excursions. The most I paid for a cab was $20 to go across the island to the south side - twice.

Also for a change, head over to West Bay Beach - aeguably the nicest one there. There's resorts/restaurants beachfront. It's a $2 water taxi ride over till a little past dark but take a cab back if you stay later as the road between the two has had some robberies in the past.Either area is tourist level safe though.

Assuming you'll be solo, somewhere like Bonaire makes less sense since most of the waterfront dive resorts have single supplements.Plus shore diving with a buddy(ies) is really the optimal setup there - they even rent 4dr. trucks in most dive pkgs.It is really excellent reef structure but mostly small stuff. See the Bonaire forum.

Lastly there's the Cayman Islands but it's very pricey there for everything. Flights in are probably competitive but rooms are high, food is high, boat dives are often over $100 for two dives and you'll need a car to access the shore dives as they're spread all over the island., It is really excellent deep wall pristine coral reef diving with about 400 named dive sites - you'll see just about everything there that lives in the region.www.cita.ky has info on all of it.

 

[KathyV]

For affprdable - Cozumel, Mostly boat, mostly drift diving. Some good resort options in/near town and lots of dive operators to choose from. Also sometimes you can save $100's by doing the bag-drag from Cancun - you take the bus to the ferry and back - other times it's almost as cheap to fly direct. From your area there might be a travel aggregator for the flights - there is one out of Chicago I'm aware of. See our Cozumel forum for details.

Roatan's West End will be more expensive to fly into but can be dirt cheap once there. 10 boat dives are about $350 now,, there;s a lot of very inexpensive housing options - including a decent hostel - Chillies which also has it's own dive operation - Native Sons. All due respect to KathyV but AKR is not a budget option. Plus it's isolated - about 10mins. drive from anything not located there to the West End. See our Bay Islands forum for more info.

There's lots of $40-50/nt. small apts - many with kitchens even at that price and local food can be everything from roadside stands to some of the nicer restaurants on the island.There's at least a dozen boat dive operators in the area - we used Coconut Tree Divers ,mostly - they also a a good genenral area info page on their website with options - #1 Roatan’s PADI scuba dive center on Trip Advisor | Coconut Tree Divers | Honduras

It will cost you $25 from the airport to the West End and from there you can literally walk to everything - we did all week except for a couple of excursions. The most I paid for a cab was $20 to go across the island to the south side - twice.

Also for a change, head over to West Bay Beach - aeguably the nicest one there. There's resorts/restaurants beachfront. It's a $2 water taxi ride over till a little past dark but take a cab back if you stay later as the road between the two has had some robberies in the past.Either area is tourist level safe though.

Assuming you'll be solo, somewhere like Bonaire makes less sense since most of the waterfront dive resorts have single supplements.Plus shore diving with a buddy(ies) is really the optimal setup there - they even rent 4dr. trucks in most dive pkgs.It is really excellent reef structure but mostly small stuff. See the Bonaire forum.

Lastly there's the Cayman Islands but it's very pricey there for everything. Flights in are probably competitive but rooms are high, food is high, boat dives are often over $100 for two dives and you'll need a car to access the shore dives as they're spread all over the island., It is really excellent deep wall pristine coral reef diving with about 400 named dive sites - you'll see just about everything there that lives in the region.www.cita.ky has info on all of it.

I think that Anthony's is a good deal because it is all-inclusive and there is no single supplement; you get meals, diving, accommodations, transfers, and more. You get a lot for the price IMO, see below:
Dive Package | Anthony's Key Resort | Roatan | Honduras | Bay Islands

The OP has never done ocean diving and AKR seems (to me) like an easy way to gain familiarity with Caribbean diving and a chance to get comfortable in that environment. Plus he's going through some headaches right now, so something "turnkey" at a reasonable price without any hassles might be appealing - but of course that's up to him.

But the OP has done all his diving in the Midwest so he probably hasn't done much drift diving, and I'm not sure that Cozumel would be the best first choice for ocean diving, even though it is cheap and good diving. This is just my 2 cents but I think it would be better to look for an easy first dive trip, especially when traveling solo, before doing the bag drag from Cancun and negotiating lodgings, diving, food, and everything else separately in a foreign country - but maybe not, it's up to him.

Cayman is pricey, but you can often find good prices on airfare, and there are less expensive options that are easy and offer good diving. The Cobalt Coast all-inclusive dive resort on Grand Cayman is a reasonably-priced alternative that includes lodgings, food, diving, and transfers, but I don't know if they charge a single supplement: Grand Cayman Dive Packages | Cobalt Coast

And @scubadada recently did a solo trip to the all-inclusive Cayman Brac Beach dive resort and thought that it was good and he only paid a 20% single supplement which isn't bad, I have seen prices as high as a 60% upcharge quoted for single supplements for some liveaboards and resort venues:
Cayman Brac Beach Resort/Reef Divers Oct 23-30, 2017

When my husband and I were young and had just started diving, we were broke and price was of paramount importance. We started by driving to Florida to dive, Jamaica was our first international dive trip, our first liveaboard was Blackbeards, then we discovered Cozumel, and Roatan, and Bonaire, and more. We didn't like Cayman at first because it was too expensive - but we later discovered that there is a wide range of pricing options available in the Caymans.

I definitely understand the appeal of a cheap dive vacation, but I have come to recognize that "sometimes you get what you pay for" and if you can find good diving at a decent price without a lot of hassle - it might just be a bargain!

 

[bvbellomo]

Thanks everyone so far.

I am not so much broke as unaware what my finances will be. I am well paid and have a lot, but don't know what the lawyers and ex will take.

I don't see much value in accommodations or luxury, especially traveling alone. I don't want to spend time in my room. Air conditioning is not needed, really anything keeping me from being picked up for vagrancy or robbed in my sleep is fine.

I don't mind finding a stranger as a dive partner if someone is in the same boat. Is there a place on this forum?

I don't mind a reasonably challenging first ocean dive. I am not a navy seal, dropping 40 feet backwards off a boat in a bad storm, or cave diving while pushing the limits of my body and air supply. But I am reasonably intelligent, in great shape, have time to prepare and am not overly risk adverse.

 

[KathyV]

Thanks everyone so far.

I am not so much broke as unaware what my finances will be. I am well paid and have a lot, but don't know what the lawyers and ex will take.

I don't see much value in accommodations or luxury, especially traveling alone. I don't want to spend time in my room. Air conditioning is not needed, really anything keeping me from being picked up for vagrancy or robbed in my sleep is fine.

I don't mind finding a stranger as a dive partner if someone is in the same boat. Is there a place on this forum?

I don't mind a reasonably challenging first ocean dive. I am not a navy seal, dropping 40 feet backwards off a boat in a bad storm, or cave diving while pushing the limits of my body and air supply. But I am reasonably intelligent, in great shape, have time to prepare and am not overly risk adverse.

That's good to know, so there will be lots of options open to you. One word about AC, the mosquitos and biting insects can be very bad in the tropics, so the ability to shut your doors and windows at night and sleep comfortably can be worth a lot more then just staying cool! The bugs can also be noisy at night. We stayed in a place with just an overhead fan and shutters on Saba, but the fan was noisy and the local crickets and tree frogs made an awful racket all night long.

One time we tried opening the patio doors at night in Cozumel, and bats flew into the room and fluttered around - so we shooed them out and shut the doors and turned on the AC!

And once we stayed in a nice place with AC on Ambergris Caye in Belize, but the entire island lost power one night and it was terribly hot. We tried opening the doors and windows to catch a breeze, but we had to shut them quickly because the mosquitoes were so bad. So sometimes having a few extra comforts is really worth it, IMO, especially if you like to get some sleep while on vacation.

The travel web site below has been around for a long time so I'm pretty sure that they are legit. They offer trips for single divers and will match up people of the same gender and similar interests. They are NOT a dating site, they are for people that want to take dive trips and don't have a buddy - take a look and you might find something of interest.
SingleDivers.com - Home

Scubaboard also hosts various trips during the year, search for references to "surges" and "invasions" - and I believe that they will also facilitate shared accommodations for single divers. Right now they are planning trips to Cozumel, Curacao, and Fiji; @ROXANNE can give you more information.

Most liveaboards will let single divers book half of a cabin for the double occupancy price, with the understanding that they can still sell the other bunk(s) to another single diver(s) of the same gender. If they don't sell the entire cabin then you can have to room to yourself at the discounted price. If they do sell it then you will be sharing with a stranger, but you may not be spending that much time in the cabin anyway; so it usually works out okay. At least that's what I've been told, @drrich2 has done some LOB trips as a single diver so he can give you more info.

 

[robint]

Thanks everyone so far.

I am not so much broke as unaware what my finances will be. I am well paid and have a lot, but don't know what the lawyers and ex will take.

I don't see much value in accommodations or luxury, especially traveling alone. I don't want to spend time in my room. Air conditioning is not needed, really anything keeping me from being picked up for vagrancy or robbed in my sleep is fine.

I don't mind finding a stranger as a dive partner if someone is in the same boat. Is there a place on this forum?

I don't mind a reasonably challenging first ocean dive. I am not a navy seal, dropping 40 feet backwards off a boat in a bad storm, or cave diving while pushing the limits of my body and air supply. But I am reasonably intelligent, in great shape, have time to prepare and am not overly risk adverse.

Here is the perfect fit for you: www.scubaclubcozumel.com
Inexpensive, all-inclusive except for drinks. They have a singles option, as well as when they put you on a boat, you will be adopted by the group and have someone to eat and dive with all week. It is like a family atmosphere, without the kids. Rooms are no frills, no tv, etc. Its like a Mexican hacienda, not a hotel. It is all about the diving and hanging out with other divers.

You should be able to get a cheaper flight to Cozumel also. And the coral there is amazing. I have zillions of photos and videos on my website, it is our favorite place in the Caribbean.

robin