Hi all !!!!!!!!
I've just returned from a great trip to the Bahamas and I thought I would
give take a stab at giving a brief trip report.
As some of you may remember I was looking into diving some place not to far
from Nassau (because I had a meeting there later in the week). I had read
an article that Brett Gillium had written years ago that said he thought
the best diving in the Bahamas was in San Salvador. This is an Island that
is pretty far out in the Bahamas chain. It lies on the edge of the Atlantic
and because of that it has great walls. This is also the place that
Christopher Columbus is supposed to have made his first landfall as he went
west in 1492.
There are only 2 places (at the moment, a bonefish lodge is planned) to
stay on the island. One is “Club Med.”, I did not stay here and I wasn't
able to even get in the place to check out the operation. We did try and
get in one night but a security guard wanted 20 bucks from each of us and
the fellas that I was with decided that the guard was going to be keeping
the dollars for himself, so we spent the 20’s on beer instead.
I stayed at Riding Rock Inn (http://www.ridingrock.com/RidingRockHome.html)
where they have their own dive operation and marina.
The Hotel:
They are trying to upgrade this facility, and it is getting there…they took
a pretty bad hit from 2 hurricanes in the last 3 years and that has taken
them a while to get things back in order. The place looked good, but it is
not a beautiful full service resort in any sense. It has a pool and most of
the rooms are on the water. The marina is about a 4-minute walk down the
path. The rooms were clean and everything worked (AC, hot water, etc). Each
room came with a spray can of Raid, and it was used. I sprayed the screens
with it to keep the “no-see-ums” out and I also found it occasionally
necessary to spray other small intrusions into the room by the local insects.
The restaurant did a fine job, they had 2 meal choices for us at all
sittings. The meals were included in everyone’s dive package. They have to
bring in everything but the fish so that makes it harder for them to get
fancy, but we were all surprised a how great a job they did in that
kitchen. Right next to the dining room is the Driftwood Bar, it sees lots
of action if there are any boats in the area, or the hotel is fairly full.
As I was there during the off season we could only muster 10 people at a
time :). It was pretty dead the rest of the time. We took it upon ourselves
to liven it up.
The Diving:
The diving was great, the water temp was around 80-82 f on the surface.
There was a thermocline at around 40 feet, so I kept a 3 mill. wet suit on
for all my dives. They follow the usual dive resort system with 2 dives in
the morning and 1 in the afternoon. The wall that most of the diving is
done on is right in front of the hotel. In fact, on my last afternoon when
I couldn't dive because of an impending flight, a friend and I swam out to
the wall and did some free diving on it (to say goodbye!). When the weather
co-operates they will drive the boat further away and allow you to dive
some of the sites that are around the point.
The dive sites were all on the edge of the wall and because of that they
were all fairly deep. A typical dive stared with a swim through that would
pop you out in the middle of the wall somewhere around 130 feet (or above)
and then you would go right or left and do a rectangle profile, ending back
to the boat. Two of my favorite sites were Twin Caves (in French Bay), and
Cathedrals on the main wall.
We saw hammerheads, white tip reef sharks, lobsters, huge crabs, turtles,
many different rays, and morays. There were many reef fish of all varieties
as well, these include the usual things that you would see in abundance in
the Caribbean, things like, Grouper, Parrot fish, Barracuda, Jacks, etc.
On Tuesday night we did a night dive that was fun, we spent a bit of that
dive feeding the corral the red worms that were attracted by our lights.
When the worms hit the coral they explode.
Club Med. apparently has a pretty restrictive policy about the way that
they dive (I've heard this from many different sources), but from what I
saw in the marina they had very nice equipment and boats. They came and
went at weird times because they don't follow daylight savings time.
Because of this lack of day light savings time they run the whole place an
hour ahead of what the rest of the island runs at. That was pretty weird! I
wonder how many planes there guests miss because of that !
All in all it was a great trip…I went from there to the zoo known as The
Atlantis Hotel (http://www.atlantisresort.com/). This place is HUGE! It was
very sad to see all the above mentioned fish kept in huge tanks at this
hotel. They have the largest enclosed marine environment in the world at
this place. It would put many city aquariums to shame. Including one floor
to ceiling glass tank full of Lionfish.
It’s a very posh place but I've grown to hate going there….
Sorry for my brevity ! I've got to get back to work, and I am also dealing
with a small disaster from having my laptop computer stolen before I left
on this trip. I hope to get a new one soon !
Best to you all ! and to all in the US, Happy Turkey Day.
____
(_/\_)Shep Griswold
==@ Kirkland,Wa,USA
mailto:[log in to unmask]
If you throw a cat out a car window, does it become kitty litter?
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