Dive Review of
Anchorage Whale Watch and Dive Center in
Dominica

 Through out the Caribbean, Atlantic, US. 

Dive Conditions

No restrictions once the dive master knew your abilities.  

[None]  

Overall Rating

First the Good.  The island is drop dead gorgeous.  From the moment your
plane makes the approach to the landing strip you think you are on some
sort of King Kong movie set, flying through lush mountain passes. I've not
been on a more beautiful island in the caribbean.  We ran into a couple on
vacation who live in St. Croix, says a lot for an island like Dominica when
other islanders come here for a vacation.  The people are very friendly,
honest, and really understand what a special island they have.  Our cab
driver stopped many times along the way to show us cashew trees, nutmeg,
banana, lemon grass, you name it. The diving was great too.  We had the
boat to ourselves up to the last couple of days so our small group of 5
divers and 1 snorkeler had our pick of dive sites.  Paul the captain and
Richard the DM were top notch.  We never touched our gear, it was always
rinsed and hanging up for us if we wanted to shore dive and on the boat
every morning ready to go.  Richard and Paul were very entertaining and
made a lot of good suggestions on what to do and where to eat.  As far as
dive restrictions...forget about it.  When other divers were done with
their dive Richard would take me and a few others off and do some exploring
to burn up our air.  Where was the last place you dived and that happens? 
Usually the DMs are banging on their tanks telling me its time to go.  Tons
of eels, jaw fish, tropicals, lobster,sea horses, schools of squid, etc. 
Swiss Cheese (a dive site) is in my top 5 of all dives, a real must.  We
rented the whale watching boat, a large motorized cat to snorkel with sperm
whales.  We were out less than 20 minutes and were in the water with 2
females and a calf.  Having these huge animals dive right if front of me
and roll on their side to take a look at me was heart stopping.  With an
indigenous population of sperm whales you can see these big boys year
around.  The Anchorage hotel is OK, Castle Comfort was nicer but they gave
away my reservations so they are not high on my list although I would stay
there if the dive operation hires Richard and Paul!  Evergreen was also
nice.  Have a meal at both these places but make reservations at Castle
Comfort because the restaurant is very small.  Another plus is the exchange
rate $1 equals $2.40 Eastern Carib.  The only bad experiance I had was in
setting up a trip to water falls.  The driver wanted to change the price
after we agreed on the amount.  In the future I will avoid dealing with
Earl the cabbie.  The only other bad part is getting there.  At the time we
visited Dominica you had to overnight in San Juan.  I hear there is now a
direct flight on Continental.  This has to be the only reason this island
isn't the top dive destination in this part of the world but it is worth
the time to get here.  If you are tired of cattle boats, unappreciative
dive operations, and the same same you need to get yourself to Dominica. 
You wont see casinos and big resorts, heck only 1 cruise ship docks here,
but you will experiance the reason most of us got into diving to begin
with, a chance to visit unexplored tropical paradise.


 

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