Hotel: True Blue Bay Resort
Dive Operator: Aquanauts (on site at True Blue)
Diving: Boat diving
I just got back a couple of weeks ago from a week of diving in Grenada along with some friends. The divers in this group are an experienced bunch with half a dozen instructors and many of the individuals in group have logged more 500 dives. We have been travelling as a group for about 13 years and have been to many of the diving hot spots around the world. So in short, been there, done that. The bar is set pretty high.
Let me start from the end and provide my conclusion first: the trip was fantastic. The diving was excellent and exceeded our expectations in terms of the variety and quantity of marine life we encountered. The folks at True Blue and Aquanauts went out of their way make us comfortable.
The Resort
This is clearly not a 5 star resort, but then we usually don’t like those on our dive trips anyway. By the dive resort standards, I would give it a 4 out of 5. Nice setting on True Blue Bay, clean comfortable rooms, attentive staff, and decent food. The rooms ranged from standard rooms, to rooms with a small kitchen and a private balcony, and some cottages. The views were mixed between the ocean, the swimming pool, or the gardens. All rooms are in quite surroundings. All rooms were air conditioned, maid service daily, and included cable TV with US cable service and some European channels. Some rooms has iPod docs. The hotel provide free WIFI service to all guests. The network was spotty the first couple of days but then worked well with decent network speed for the rest of the week. The food was decent (we had better food in town), the food service was good as well. The resort is undergoing a facelift and there is some construction and renovation going on. It was not an issue for us at all as we could pretty much stay away from the construction as we went about the property for the week. The resort provide free transportation to and from the airport, daily breakfast, buffet style, was also included. The hotel a about a 5-minute cab ride away from the town of Grand Anse and the airport, and about a 15-minute cab ride from the main town of St. Georges. I would not recommend driving: like many other Caribbean nations they drive on left, traffic signs are treated merely as suggestions, and it could get pretty crowded in St'. Georges and you really need to know where you’re going since there aren’t a lot of clearly marked signs or directions.
The Dive Operator
The dive operation was “efficient”: no fancy gift shop, although there a basic one, no fancy facilities either. The focus is on the diving and the divers, so they have a good crew and 3 nice dive boats and they don’t cram the divers.
There was plenty of room for our gear, a dry bag area, and more then enough room for us to spread out and get comfortable. The access to the dock was pretty easy and quick from the rooms. They provided us with mesh bags for our gear which they used at the end of everyday to take the gear off the boat, rinse it, and hang it to dry for the next day. They also provided free Nitrox for those that wanted it. We were at the boat around 8:30 every morning, and were off to the dive site 15 minutes later. By the time we got to the boat in the morning, the crew had loaded our gear onto the boat and set it up our first dive. Most dive sites were 15-25 minutes away. A few, on the Atlantic side, were about 5 minutes away. At the beginning of the day and ahead of every dive, the dive leader, Paul (great DM), explained what kind of marine life we expect to see and asked if we’re looking for something specific and usually tried and succeeded in finding it for us. We had quite a few photographers in the group so he organized the dive sites in a way that made it easy on us to plan e.g. macro dive, wide dive, etc. He told us each day what to expect so we can bring the right photo equipment on the boat with us. They had dedicated, large camera rinse tubs on the boat. The dive briefs were pretty good with maps of the dive sites. The entry was a typical giant stride entry and the exit was using 2 ladders off the stern of the boat. After our last dive of the week they gave us a nice tour of the coast around St. George’s (the main town) which was a very nice and unexpected touch!
The Diving
We did 2 dives in the morning, came back for lunch, and then optionally went out for a 3rd dive in the afternoon. They also organized a night dive for us. We were there during the wet season so visibility wasn’t the greatest (by tropical standard), usually around 50 to 70 feet. Water temp was around 84 degrees Fahrenheit. Many of the dives were drift dives, although that time of the year the current is not very strong. On drift dives, the boat drifted topside and picked us up in buddy groups as we surfaced. On dives where there is a mooring, we did the typical out and back dive. It is highly recommended that at least one person in each buddy group carry an SMB or some other type of surface signaling device. We all had to use it almost every day as we surfaced away from the boat due to the current. Not to worry, the crew has the routine down and were very efficient in spotting and picking everyone up. We dive a variety to dive sites including some shallow and deep wrecks, large reefs, the reef fingers and islands in sandy areas. Marine like was abundant. In fact we were all pretty surprised at how rich the marine life was. In addition to the typical Caribbean marine life that you’d expect to see (rays, turtles, eels, schooling snappers, sharks, angelfish, etc), we found a large number of critters that we had not seen in the Caribbean before. At least not as abundantly e.g. we saw sea horses every single day and 3 of the five days we saw more than one on multiple dives, we also encountered frogfish everyday including a couple of striated (hairy) frogfish. The only other places we’ve those were in Indonesia and the Philippines. We were also pleasantly surprised by the number of small critters that were great macro subjects: shrimps, nudibranchs, crabs, whip coral lobsters, clams, and more. We probably could have made a macro dive out of every dive with the exception of the deep wreck. On the night dive, the group encountered a school of arrowhead squid, there were thousands of them feeding right in front of the divers!
Topside
During our gas-off day most of us explored the island. We didn’t find anything breathtaking. Visiting the rainforest was a nice change of pace. The island is known for its spices and chocolate and there are a number of tours that will take you to estates where spices and cocoa are grown and processed. There are also a few rum distilleries that offer tours. For a longer trip you can visit a few waterfalls. Also the summer is sea turtle egg laying season on the north side of the island (6-hour trip). We found that the best way to explore the island is to hire a cab (a small van) by the hour to take you where you want to go rather than being stuck with a group with a fixed tour plan. If you have 4 or more people, it will cost less as well to hire the private cab. Most cab drivers are also tour guides! We did explore the local restaurants and found a few good ones. I highly recommend The Coconut Beach House, The Aquarium, and The Beach House. We also had some excellent street food (and no one got sick): I highly recommends that you try the Roti (stewed meat and vegetables wrapped in a flat bread). You can find Roti everywhere, like burgers in the US, but you should ask the hotel or your driver for a well know local Roti vendor as they usually have the best ones and are usually available only at meal time for lunch and dinner. You should also try and hit some small local bakeries and sample the pastries they make: great coconut filled pastries, sweet breads, and some savory options as well such as cheese and salami parties. One word of caution: bring insect repellant! When it’s hot a humid the bugs will bite!
In summary, I highly recommend that you put Grenada on your list of dive destinations.
Happy Diving!
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