Moderate lodging St Croix?

[momliz]

Hi - we are planning a spring break trip, DH, me, and two teenage sons. We are thinking about St Croix for a week. It seems that some of the best diving is on the North shore, over by Cane Bay. So, I have a few questions:


Do we really need to stay near there? How hard is it to get around? Fredericksted also looks nice with good diving round the pier, so we could stay in either the Frederiksted area or the north shore. We will be renting a car.


My main question though is, any suggestions on moderately priced, < $200 a night, lodgings? I have stayed at dive resorts before, and the convenience is wonderful, but with a captive audience, they can sometimes skimp on food and lodging. So I am open to any thoughts.


Right now my researches have me leaning towards diving with N2 the Blue, for their small boats, and what seems to be personalized service (we are newer divers), and maybe staying at Northside Valley for the price and because it looks pretty nice. But the kids may object to a lack of TV.


Any suggestions would be welcome. Thanks in advance for your help!

 

[stcroixscuba]

St. Croix really isn't that hard to navigate around once you get used to driving on the left (which isn't that hard). If you happen to have a Garmin Nuvi GPS they actually work pretty well here. Others might too but I know the Garmin does.

There is a lot of great diving along the north and west shores of the island. The north shore has a wall that runs all along it with varying degrees of steepness. There's also the second longest barrier reef in the Caribbean which happens to be the reef that protects the town of Christiansted and its harbor.

The west end of the island has some great shipwrecks (5 of them within 100 yards of each other), some gorgeous reefs, and as you mentioned, the Frederiksted Pier which is awesome by day and absolutely fantastic at night.

If your kids can handle the lack of TV then Northside Villas is a very good choice as its quite convenient to the west end diving.

You might also want to consider being a bit closer to Christiansted. When you're not diving there are a lot of other things to see and do around the island and a lot of it is centered closer to Christiansted.

Some Christiansted considerations:
There are three hotels located right on the water but not on a beach. There's a Boardwalk that runs along the harbor and these hotels are all on the Boardwalk. The Boardwalk is the heart of the restaurant/shopping area. Our main dive boat departs right off of the Boardwalk as does most of the Buck Island snorkel boats. There's also jet skis and other watersports nearby.

Hotel Caravelle, Holger Danske, and Club Comanche are the three hotels on the Boardwalk. The nearest beach hotel to Christiansted is Hotel on the Cay which is located on its own small island right in Christiansted Harbor. It has the advantage of having a beach and also being very convenient to the restaurants and shopping of Christiansted. The hotel is a 45 second ferry ride from the Boardwalk.

Also very convenient to Christiansted but not "in town" is the Palms at Pelican Cove, Chenay Bay Beach Resort, Tamarind Reef Hotel, and the Buccaneer Hotel. These are all very nice beach hotels within 10 minutes of town.

Most of the hotels mentioned above should be less than $200/night with the exception of the Buccaneer.

Now for the shameless plug for our shop. As I mentioned, our main dive boat departs from right off of the Boardwalk and dives the north shore walls and reefs. We also operate a west shore boat that departs from the Frederiksted Pier and dives the wrecks, reefs, and the Pier. We're actually the only shop that dives all of the moored dive sites on the island. Though our boats are larger, we restrict the number of divers to about half of the number of passengers the USCG says we can take (no more than 14 on the north shore boat and 12 on the west end). When the number of divers exceeds 6 or so we add an extra Divemaster. Our dive crew is always first into and last out of the water and conduct fully guided tours. We specialize in personalized service as evidenced by our over 50 very positive reviews in Trip Advisor.

If you have any specific questions about the hotels, diving here, or the island in general don't hesitate to let me know here or via email. I've lived here over 25 years so I can pretty much answer just about any questions about the island you may have.

Regardless of whom you choose to dive with, you'll have a blast exploring the world class scuba diving found right here under the U.S. flag on St. Croix.