jaybob217
Registered
My wife and I just returned from a week on Ambergris Caye, in San Pedro, staying at The Palms and diving with Ramon's Village.
First off, can't wait to go back. We've been to HI, St. Croix, MX (Cozumel, Playa, Cancun), Curacao, and dove at them all and really enjoyed this vacation. I wouldn't consider us "hard core" divers by any means. We usually dive every other day so we average about 6 dives a trip each. We like to shop, read, relax, and eat a lot of good food. We found this vacation to have pretty much everything we like all in one great little area.
Ambergris
First getting to Ambergris. We flew from Kansas City into Dallas then Dallas to Belize City via American Airlines. The Palms had already made our reservation for the domestic flight from Belize City via Tropic Air (a 15 minute flight via a prop plane) over to the air strip at Ambergris. We vacationed Sunday to Sunday this trip as it saved us about $700 on the total vacation as opposed to Sat - Sat. We traveled Mid October.
I had already done some research and discovered The Palms is walking distance from the air strip in San Pedro so once we landed we, we picked up our luggage, asked where The Palms was and hoofed it. Literally it's across the street and down a few blocks. Easy peasy.
One thing I would strongly suggest is to take lots of bug spray. We took a large can of 40% deet spray and used the entire can. The mosquitoes were pretty thick, at least that time of year and we got most of the bites on our feet and hands where we missed with the spray.
The Palms
After looking at a Belize vacation for years, we were always looking at Turneffe Island, Ramon's or Journey's End. Then somehow I came across the Palms and decided to give it a try when we found a deal through Expedia.
We had hoped for a second or third floor room but realized we were put in the ground floor condo #12. The only down side to this was (we figured) security as the beach is literally 30 feet away. We found security really isn't an issue as they have security staff 24 hours a day walking the grounds. The only down side of the ground floor is when you're sitting out on your patio reading or something, the locals find it tempting to stop at the fenced area and try to sell you something. The other down side is if you want to hang your gear out to dry on the patio, you need to be sitting there with it the entire time. Obviously that wouldn't be the case if you were on an upper floor.
However, The Palms does have an area for rinsing and hanging dive gear in the back where it's more out of the way and would work fine. But my wife and I dove with Ramon's Village next door and kept our dive equipment lockered there the whole week so that wasn't an issue. We just brought them back over our last day and hung them on the patio as we sat out to read most of the afternoon.
We had a king size bed, internet, and the AC worked great. In all, we would probably get room #12 again if we had the choice. Towards the end of the week as you get to know the locals selling stuff, it's sort of fun interacting with them more and it's nice to be able to walk off the patio and down to the ocean/beach anytime you want (without having to use the stairs, lock the door, and make a big event out of it). Room #12 is probably one of if not the closest to the ocean in that area of Ambergris. At least that I saw and I ran a few miles both ways down the beach on my morning runs; so I checked out a lot of other places.
One of the many small but nice touches about The Palms is they give you a complimentary 5 gallon jug of bottled water. Yes, 5 gallons! Normally at these places we've gotten maybe 6 small bottles or something for free. It was great, we had enough H20 for the entire week. And The Palms are condos so they have kitchens. There's a few super-markets around town (closest one is to the left when you come out of the air port) so you can purchase food and cook if you want. We always plan and think we're going to cook and save $ but rarely do. There's just too many great places to eat around there.
The Palms gives you a small laminated card that lists 6 or so local restaurants which give 10% off. That was nice and we tried a few on the the list. Although we ended up eating breakfast or lunch mostly at Estel's by the Sea and dinner over at Ramon's. Some days we only ate one big meal and snacked on protein bars, chips, and other things we always pack and bring on vaca. We like to hit Costco before we leave and take several large ziploc bags full of nuts, chips, etc. Works great on the plane and the morning we dive we usually just eat a protein or cliff bar before diving and then a big late lunch after that.
San Pedro
One of the best things about the location of The Palms is it's right on the Mid to South end of San Pedro. You can rent golf carts or use the complimentary bikes at the hotel, but we walked every where. Which I thought was great. Honestly I'm not sure why people rent carts unless they're staying way out South or North.
San Pedro has a little bit everything and we really enjoyed walking around and visiting all the shops, bakeries, and local eateries. The people were all really great, of course there is the usual people trying to sell you stuff and asking for money, but that's expected and honestly I didn't find them as annoying as in MX. A simple "no thank you" goes a long way.
Diving with Roman's Village
This was my wife and I's first trip with all our new gear so we were excited to say the least. We both got Atomic B2 regs and Aqua Lung BCD's. I got the Aqua Lung Balance and my wife got the Aqua Lung Pearl. I was using my new LavaCore full - which I love by the way; great warmth without the added buoyancy.
We can't stay enough good things about Roman's, we loved them. Our DM all week was Adolfo and he was great. Amazingly we even discovered he has a friend that lives in the same town as us, Lee's Summit, MO and has visited the area several times. Small world. Since it was the slow season, one day it was just my wife and I and on a few days a couple other people. The sites we dove were B&D, Mermaid, Cypress, Tres Coco, and Borderline. We didn't make to Hol Chan(sp?) but we'll get to that next time I'm sure. We liked just hitting all the close dive sites and literally none of them were more than a 8-10 boat ride. The viz was pretty horrible while were were there since there was a ton of rain the week before we arrive. Around 40-50 feet I think mostly, but honestly, I'm under water and I can see what's in front of me so no big deal for me.
We saw a lot of nurse sharks, watched Adolfo spear a few lion fish (check out the video) and feed them to the nurse sharks. That was pretty cool. There didn't seem to be as much heavy populations of smaller and mid sized fish as I seem to remember from other places like Curacao, St. Croix, but for me, as long as I'm under water there's cool stuff to look at. Really large coral heads though which are great for drifting along side and up and over. Great stuff! The dives were all pretty similar to drift dives although there really isn't that much current there. You follow the mooring line down then go off in a certain direction. The captain just follows the bubbles like drift diving. They were always right there as we finished up our safety stops. Also, all the boats we dove off were pretty good size (which I liked) and we back rolled in.
Roman's goes out at 9, 11 a.m. and then at 2 p.m. All surface intervals are done back at the dock which is especially nice. And being just next door at The Palms, that allowed us to get a bite to eat, go to the bathroom, etc.
The laid back atmosphere of the entire area and activities is great. We didn't schedule any dives but just showed up that morning if we felt like diving. I'm sure that has something to do with the fact we were there during the slow season, but it was nice. We also were able to use a locker at Roman's to store all our gear; that was great!
All and all we felt this was one of our favorite trips. We like to have everything we like to do in one little area. Great diving, good food, and plenty of stuff to do and check out around San Pedro. We would strongly recommend both The Palms as well as Roman's Village for diving.
First off, can't wait to go back. We've been to HI, St. Croix, MX (Cozumel, Playa, Cancun), Curacao, and dove at them all and really enjoyed this vacation. I wouldn't consider us "hard core" divers by any means. We usually dive every other day so we average about 6 dives a trip each. We like to shop, read, relax, and eat a lot of good food. We found this vacation to have pretty much everything we like all in one great little area.
Ambergris
First getting to Ambergris. We flew from Kansas City into Dallas then Dallas to Belize City via American Airlines. The Palms had already made our reservation for the domestic flight from Belize City via Tropic Air (a 15 minute flight via a prop plane) over to the air strip at Ambergris. We vacationed Sunday to Sunday this trip as it saved us about $700 on the total vacation as opposed to Sat - Sat. We traveled Mid October.
I had already done some research and discovered The Palms is walking distance from the air strip in San Pedro so once we landed we, we picked up our luggage, asked where The Palms was and hoofed it. Literally it's across the street and down a few blocks. Easy peasy.
One thing I would strongly suggest is to take lots of bug spray. We took a large can of 40% deet spray and used the entire can. The mosquitoes were pretty thick, at least that time of year and we got most of the bites on our feet and hands where we missed with the spray.
The Palms
After looking at a Belize vacation for years, we were always looking at Turneffe Island, Ramon's or Journey's End. Then somehow I came across the Palms and decided to give it a try when we found a deal through Expedia.
We had hoped for a second or third floor room but realized we were put in the ground floor condo #12. The only down side to this was (we figured) security as the beach is literally 30 feet away. We found security really isn't an issue as they have security staff 24 hours a day walking the grounds. The only down side of the ground floor is when you're sitting out on your patio reading or something, the locals find it tempting to stop at the fenced area and try to sell you something. The other down side is if you want to hang your gear out to dry on the patio, you need to be sitting there with it the entire time. Obviously that wouldn't be the case if you were on an upper floor.
However, The Palms does have an area for rinsing and hanging dive gear in the back where it's more out of the way and would work fine. But my wife and I dove with Ramon's Village next door and kept our dive equipment lockered there the whole week so that wasn't an issue. We just brought them back over our last day and hung them on the patio as we sat out to read most of the afternoon.
We had a king size bed, internet, and the AC worked great. In all, we would probably get room #12 again if we had the choice. Towards the end of the week as you get to know the locals selling stuff, it's sort of fun interacting with them more and it's nice to be able to walk off the patio and down to the ocean/beach anytime you want (without having to use the stairs, lock the door, and make a big event out of it). Room #12 is probably one of if not the closest to the ocean in that area of Ambergris. At least that I saw and I ran a few miles both ways down the beach on my morning runs; so I checked out a lot of other places.
One of the many small but nice touches about The Palms is they give you a complimentary 5 gallon jug of bottled water. Yes, 5 gallons! Normally at these places we've gotten maybe 6 small bottles or something for free. It was great, we had enough H20 for the entire week. And The Palms are condos so they have kitchens. There's a few super-markets around town (closest one is to the left when you come out of the air port) so you can purchase food and cook if you want. We always plan and think we're going to cook and save $ but rarely do. There's just too many great places to eat around there.
The Palms gives you a small laminated card that lists 6 or so local restaurants which give 10% off. That was nice and we tried a few on the the list. Although we ended up eating breakfast or lunch mostly at Estel's by the Sea and dinner over at Ramon's. Some days we only ate one big meal and snacked on protein bars, chips, and other things we always pack and bring on vaca. We like to hit Costco before we leave and take several large ziploc bags full of nuts, chips, etc. Works great on the plane and the morning we dive we usually just eat a protein or cliff bar before diving and then a big late lunch after that.
San Pedro
One of the best things about the location of The Palms is it's right on the Mid to South end of San Pedro. You can rent golf carts or use the complimentary bikes at the hotel, but we walked every where. Which I thought was great. Honestly I'm not sure why people rent carts unless they're staying way out South or North.
San Pedro has a little bit everything and we really enjoyed walking around and visiting all the shops, bakeries, and local eateries. The people were all really great, of course there is the usual people trying to sell you stuff and asking for money, but that's expected and honestly I didn't find them as annoying as in MX. A simple "no thank you" goes a long way.
Diving with Roman's Village
This was my wife and I's first trip with all our new gear so we were excited to say the least. We both got Atomic B2 regs and Aqua Lung BCD's. I got the Aqua Lung Balance and my wife got the Aqua Lung Pearl. I was using my new LavaCore full - which I love by the way; great warmth without the added buoyancy.
We can't stay enough good things about Roman's, we loved them. Our DM all week was Adolfo and he was great. Amazingly we even discovered he has a friend that lives in the same town as us, Lee's Summit, MO and has visited the area several times. Small world. Since it was the slow season, one day it was just my wife and I and on a few days a couple other people. The sites we dove were B&D, Mermaid, Cypress, Tres Coco, and Borderline. We didn't make to Hol Chan(sp?) but we'll get to that next time I'm sure. We liked just hitting all the close dive sites and literally none of them were more than a 8-10 boat ride. The viz was pretty horrible while were were there since there was a ton of rain the week before we arrive. Around 40-50 feet I think mostly, but honestly, I'm under water and I can see what's in front of me so no big deal for me.
We saw a lot of nurse sharks, watched Adolfo spear a few lion fish (check out the video) and feed them to the nurse sharks. That was pretty cool. There didn't seem to be as much heavy populations of smaller and mid sized fish as I seem to remember from other places like Curacao, St. Croix, but for me, as long as I'm under water there's cool stuff to look at. Really large coral heads though which are great for drifting along side and up and over. Great stuff! The dives were all pretty similar to drift dives although there really isn't that much current there. You follow the mooring line down then go off in a certain direction. The captain just follows the bubbles like drift diving. They were always right there as we finished up our safety stops. Also, all the boats we dove off were pretty good size (which I liked) and we back rolled in.
Roman's goes out at 9, 11 a.m. and then at 2 p.m. All surface intervals are done back at the dock which is especially nice. And being just next door at The Palms, that allowed us to get a bite to eat, go to the bathroom, etc.
The laid back atmosphere of the entire area and activities is great. We didn't schedule any dives but just showed up that morning if we felt like diving. I'm sure that has something to do with the fact we were there during the slow season, but it was nice. We also were able to use a locker at Roman's to store all our gear; that was great!
All and all we felt this was one of our favorite trips. We like to have everything we like to do in one little area. Great diving, good food, and plenty of stuff to do and check out around San Pedro. We would strongly recommend both The Palms as well as Roman's Village for diving.
