Dive Review of
Mistral in
Galapagos Islands

2nd trip to Galapagos.  Caribean locations, Hawaii, Fiji, British Columbia

Dive Conditions

Asked to dive strick buddy system, hard to do in these conditions.  
Limited dive times and attempted pick up areas, again hard to do in these
conditions.  

The boat could barely accomodate our gear.  Useless fresh water rinse
"tank" could barely accomodate the smallest of our housings.  Not
enthusiastic to be cautious with gear.  One expensive dome port was
scratched badly.  Small dingies could not hold gear and divers well.  

Overall Rating

Sorry, Mistral, this was a bad experience.  There is no way this boat
should accomodate 12 divers despite it's 6 small double cabin
accomodations.  The toilet and sewage system was horrid, and all the cabins
stunk like a cess pool.  The air conditioning was inadequate and could not
be run while the air compressor was being run to fill tanks.  And on a
Galapagos trip, the hope is they will have to fill a lot of tanks.  Only
one tank per diver available and some 6 extras and after adequate surface
intervals tanks were usually still not refilled, interfering with our dive
schedule and costing several dive opportunities to be passed on.  Our
itinery was for several days at Darwin and Wolf, but due to a DCS affected
diver, we returned to Baltra early, and the boat is overly slow and it took
29 hours to get back south despite relatively calm seas.  Our diver's fault
entirely, but also note no dive master in the water the dive with the
injury.  No real pride in the cleanliness of the cabin and there is now way
that 12 divers can sit at the single dinner table for meals.  AV equipment
is of poor quality.  What more can I say. Expensive and long to travel to
Galapagos to have this poor a dive operation.  Sorry for the crew that
tried their best.  This is not worth the savings over other operators. This
diver's opinion at least!  

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