Dive Review of Scuba St. Lucia in
St. Lucia/Anse Chastenet

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Scuba St. Lucia, May, 2010, by Michael A Thompson, NV, US ( Reviewer 4 reports). Report 5495.
No photos available at this time
Ratings and Overall Comments 1 (worst) - 5 (best):
Accommodations		Food
Service and Attitude		Environmental Sensitivity
Dive Operation		Shore Diving
Snorkeling	N/A
Overall Rating
Value for $$
Beginners
Advanced
Comments	Starting with the road to the resort....thought I was going to get whiplash before we got there. What a wonderful first impression of the resort. This is supposed to be one of the 20 best??? We were shown to one of the bungalows and given instructions on how everything worked except the converters-took us forever to figure out how it was made to work. We requested two as we brought many battery chargers for cameras, lights etc. One of the converters had such a frayed cord that we did not use it for safety reasons. There were only two outlets in the entire room. Fortunately we had the brilliant idea of bringing power strips from previous trips. After three hours in the room, we figured out the refrigerator was running but nothing was even close to getting cold. We notified the front desk; two hours later nothing had been done. We went to the front desk again and said the refrigerator wasn't working. Fortunately a maintenance man was there and came back and agreed that the refrigerator wasn't working and it was traded out while we were at dinner. Paint was peeling from the ceiling. Ceiling fan was not adequate for the space of the room(there is no air conditioning). On the third day we happened to see a maintenance person with a floor fan on our way down to get more ice and asked how we could get one. We were told just a minute I'll get you one and we got one. No one told us that they were available. Made a HUGE difference in being able to sleep at night. The next day we went down for our orientation dive and met Callistos, our dive master(he is one in a million-one of the best dive guides ever). He told us the rules... no gloves, no knives. My wife needs to wear gloves because of severe eczema on her hands and that she is very careful and dives with her hands behind her back. DM called the manager and was given an ok for gloves. She offered to take the knife off the regulator and DM said don't bother. We had some nice dives on Friday. Saturday was DM's day off. While my wife was coming out of the water, she was verbally assaulted at high volume for wearing gloves and a knife by the crew. Tried to explain she had MGR permission and was told, when they finally heard her, that no she did not have his permission. She finally gave up saying she had permission and simply told them, "Fine, then I won't dive for the rest of the week". This stopped them immediately. When we got back to shore they apparently called MGR, found out that she did have permission. We did not go to the Jazz Fest (that is one of the reasons why went to St. Lucia) because no one told us that transportation to it was an additional $165.00/person and did not include admission to the Jazz Fest. St Lucia was already higher than most of the places we have been and we simply had not budgeted an extra $330+ for transportation. We were told by the other couple who went with us and stayed at Jade Mountain, that the Fest was so-so in the afternoon and good in the evening. We were invited by the other couple to their room @ Jade. It was lovely. But we can spend 2 weeks in Roatan & get better dives, three ceiling fans, floor fans and air conditioning for the price of 1 week @ Anse Chastenet not to mention Jade. We figured that there might be bugs so we brought our garlic pills, environmental bug spray and DEET. Nothing worked. We had welts the size of Oreos. We either dove or were prisoners of our room on the bed under the mosquito netting or in the shower trying to cool off. My wife gave up on looking nice for supper and wore socks with her water shoes and a jacket just to avoid some of the bugs. No one told us that water was the only beverage included in the all inclusive meal plan. Ice tea at Lunch was another unanticipated expense. We were disappointed in the diving for several reasons. Very regimented, especially on Saturday (when our DM had a day off). You will dive to 60 feet for 45 minutes, and do a 3 minute safety stop at 15'. There were only 12 dive sites, so we had to repeat some(which is not a bad thing). We could not do any diving on our own without a dive master. It was nice diving, but really nothing spectacular. I was led to believe that there were a lot of seahorses. There were two and we saw them twice. Loved the warm water. This was also a budget buster as we dove as often as the boat went out, just to stay away from the bugs and the heat but we were only scheduled 12 dives, so they were able to nickel and dime us again. On the last day we went down to the beach, packed the drying dive gear and were told that a porter would bring it to our room. We waited for an hour, but still no dive gear. So my wife went down, found the gear still down there and grabbed her bag. She was told she did not need to hike it up because a porter would bring it up. She explained (probably surely by now) that she had been waiting for over an hour for it to come up and needed it to finish packing bags as they had to be ready in less than an hour and hiked her gear up. Almost to reception a porter was coming down and tried to take the bag. She told him not to bother as there was another bag still down there. He was back up with my gear in 10 minutes. We just felt we were treated poorly by the resort, except by the Food Service people & Callistos (& dive mgr after the Saturday fiasco). They knew our names, greeted us warmly and made us feel welcome.
Websites	Scuba St. Lucia
Reporter and Travel
Dive Experience	Over 1000 dives
Where else diving	MA, RI, CA north & south, WA, NV, UT, HA, FL, AZ, TX, Cozumel, Grand Cayman, Bahamas, Barbados, St. Thomas, St John, St. Lucia, Aruba, Sea of Cortez, Baja, Roatan, Palau
Closest Airport		Getting There
Dive Conditions
Weather	sunny	Seas	calm
Water Temp	82-84°F / 28-29°C	Wetsuit Thickness	3
Water Visibility	60-80 Ft/ 18-24 M
Dive Policy
Dive own profile	no
Enforced diving restrictions	no gloves, no knife, 60 foot dive for 50 minutes including safety stop. No diving without a dive master shore or boat. Orientation shore dive required before boat dive.
Liveaboard?	no	Nitrox Available?	yes
What I Saw
Sharks	None	Mantas	None
Dolphins	None	Whale Sharks	None
Turtles	1 or 2	Whales	None
Ratings 1(worst) - 5 (best):
Corals		Tropical Fish
Small Critters		Large Fish	N/A
Large Pelagics	N/A
Underwater Photography 1 (worst) - 5 (best):
Subject Matter		Boat Facilities
Overall rating for UWP's		Shore Facilities
UW Photo Comments	Rinse bucket sometimes on the boat for cameras. No dedicated table, had to hold the camera on my lap, during short boat ride. There was no place on the boat to keep anything dry.

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Dive Review of Scuba St. Lucia in St. Lucia/Anse Chastenet

Scuba St. Lucia, May, 2010,

Ratings and Overall Comments 1 (worst) - 5 (best):

Overall Rating

Reporter and Travel

Dive Conditions

Dive Policy

What I Saw

Ratings 1(worst) - 5 (best):

Underwater Photography 1 (worst) - 5 (best):

Dive Review of Scuba St. Lucia in
St. Lucia/Anse Chastenet