Barry

We are going on the Carnival Spirit to St Martin, Barbados and Martinique in December and would like to dive at least once on our trip. The schedule looks best for St Martin i.e. 7 am/ 4 pm but the comments on this board re St Martin do not. We do not speak French, so I'm not sure about Martinique and we get in to Barbados at noon so we will not see much of the island, before dark, if we dive. We plan to dive in the Keys before the cruise, should we just stow our gear and forget diving on this cruise?

Paul Therault

Hi Barry,<BR><BR>If you are experienced divers and have done the Keys, such as Marathon, you will disappointed in St. Martin, Barbados and Martinique.<BR><BR>Paul

Barry

I had been diving at Marathon on days that you would swear that ice cubes were floating by and you couldn't see your dive buddy 10 feet away, surely St Martin is not worse than that?

Paul Therault

Hi Barry,<BR><BR>When you did the dive in Marathon and the water was obscure did they give the reason. Was there a storm offshore? Dredging? I am just curious. I never experienced that problem.<BR><BR>Paul<BR><BR>

Cari

Barry,<BR>I can't give advise on diving, but wanted to mention something else we did in Barbados. We swam with and fed the huge turtles. It was fabulous. My husband was dragging his feet, but then afterwards was the one who wouldn't stop talking about how cool it was. My pictures turned out Great!! There were 4 huge turtles the day we were there.The locals know where they are at, and will take you there.

Suzanne

Hi! We were in Barbados earlier this month. I highly recommend hightide watersports. Their website is hightide.com. They do a 2 tank dive which on Tuesdays includes Turtle Tagging with Marine Biologists. Unfortunately, the Tuesday that we were there, the marine biologists were on another island. It's about $100 per person for the two tank dive. Ours had 5 divers on it. Joseph is their divemaster. On land, he's sort of arrogant. Underwater, he is great--takes his time, points things out, doesn't rush the dive. Hightide comes and picks you up at the dock and then returns you either immediately after the dive or later in the afternoon (around 3:30). We stayed for a couple of hours at the beach at the hotel where hightide was (coral reef hotel???) and enjoyed a beautiful white sand beach all to ourselves. Highly recommend it.