We took ourselves off for a dive trip to Saint Vincent recently. The reefs are in better condition than a lot of Caribbean islands probably because it is only recently being opened up to tourism. We stayed at a very nice all inclusive resort. Particularly attractive was that the diving is included. We both did 26 dives in the three weeks that we were there, all included. We took all of our own equipment but the resort provides perfectly good Scubapro kit for no charge. I should say that this is only for certified divers. There are some drawbacks. Diving is in groups, but not more than eight to ten divers usually and frequently fewer. The guides say that they will end the dive when the first diver gets low on air, their definition is 1000 psi or 60 bar. However they usually put the more experienced divers together so we were not getting very short dives because we were diving with novices. The average dive time was over 55 minutes with the longest being 64 minutes. You also have little control over which dive sites you will be taken to. Not a problem for us. The crew seem to seek out the best dive sites available and we don’t mind going back to the same place as you can guarantee that the dive will be completely different.
The thing is that the resorts with diving included don’t seem to be more expensive than other resorts. I compared some prices for two weeks next April for a number of resorts in Jamaica. I chose Jamaica because there were plenty to choose from. Prices per person for all inclusive, including diving, for two weeks with air fares ranged from £2986 per person to £3716 depending on the resort. Similar resorts without diving included ranged from £3593 up to £5368. With two of us diving almost every day it seems like a bargain.
So to the frogfish of the Caribbean. I don’t think I have ever seen so many frogfish on a trip to the Caribbean. We have seen them in Saint Lucia and Grenada but not in the numbers that we saw them on this trip. There were also a few seahorses which are always nice to see. They do always seem to turn away from the camera but we try to get over that by approaching simultaneously from opposite sides. It is still nice to be able to find something we have never seen before. On this trip it was a scarlet striped cleaner shrimp. It seems they are only found in Saint Vincent. Another odd sight was a great mass of smallish hermit crabs all piling on top of each other. Not entirely sure what they were up to ! And a lot more.
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