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Grenada trip report – December ‘07-January ‘08
Grenada, the Spice Island, is beautiful, with warm, welcoming people and awesome diving!
We stayed at True Blue Bay Resort for two weeks. The first week, it was just my husband and me, and we stayed in a Bay View room. Perfect for the two of us. Clean, nicely furnished, well air-conditioned, with a beautiful view of the grounds and the sea, and across the bay, the community college. Oh, and the sunsets! The second week, we were joined by our nephew, so we switched to a two-bedroom villa. This was a 2-level unit, with the kitchen/dining room/living room/balcony upstairs, and the two bedrooms, each with ensuite bathroom, downstairs at ground level. The villa was nice looking, but the furniture in the living room was very uncomfortable. Fortunately, we spent most of our time under water or out exploring, so it wasn’t a big deal. The staff at True Blue are lovely, helpful, and do a great job maintaining the place. The restaurant, however, left a lot to be desired. Pricey food, and not very good, with very slow [even by “island time” standards]. We ate elsewhere when we could. The island has several very good restaurants, and we did not go hungry.
Diving with Aquanauts was fantastic. They are on site at True Blue Bay. They are very well run, and by the end of the first day, all of them knew us by name, as well as our preferences and needs. They went out of their way to accommodate us. There are three boats, and they distribute divers across the boats according to ability and interests, so we were never impeded by newbies, and as photographers were allowed to take our sweet time photographing the many critters and fish. I, who even with a 60ci tank always have air left after everyone else has gone up, was allowed to breathe down my tank, without pressure to hurry up and get going.
The reefs are healthy and filled with fish. Here are some of our notes from diving:
December 28th
Showed up for diving at 8:30 AM as planned. Viz was mediocre, maybe 50 feet. Today's dives were coral on almost flat bottom, looking like boulder after boulder. Many colorful structures & sponges and lots of fans rising about 4-5 feet from the bottom. But this means photographically, most pics are from above a fish, which is generally hard to frame to advantage. The reefs are very healthy and chock full of life. None of the bleached or broken coral that we've seen at many other places. Warm water ~ 84 degrees [mmmmmmm my kind of diving] So it was nice diving, but not as nice for photography despite the tons of fish life (mostly very small). We had one big (his back was maybe 2-2 1/2 feet long) turtle who hung out munching on coral and sponges and looking up to mug for the camera, unperturbed by our being only 3-5 feet from it. From a technical aspect, the diving was deeper than I would have liked, flirting with deco. My dive computer wagged its fingers at me, leading me to more shallow parts of the reef, but it didn't really get upset with me. there is no extra charge for nitrox, so we may go with that for the other dives – since the diving seems to be over 80 feet most of the time, it might behoove us to do it. We'll see. I have a dilemma: they have short tanks (63 Cubic feet of air), which I prefer [the longer ones (80 cu. ft.) keep hitting me in the butt], but no short Nitrox tanks (they use specially designated tanks for Nitrox). I use so little air, that I can use the short tanks and still have plenty of air left in my tank when Rob and most everyone else have blown thru all their air in a large tank.
We had eight divers, plus two guides, a leader and someone at the back of the pack to pick up strays. Nice guys (a guy and a gal). The boat could hold twenty, it is fairly large. But for getting out of the water, even eight is a pain in the rear. They throw out a long line, and everyone grabs ahold. Then as one person leaves the water, the rest of us pull ourselves closer to the boat. This is non-trivial if one has a camera in one hand and the rope in the other. There was a bit of wave action at the surface, making it a bit more of a challenge to be hanging out waiting your turn to get up on the boat, and since the boat captain didn't toss the rope very well, we had a bit of a surface swim to even catch the line. Both Rob and I felt like we had jelly legs for the rest of the day.
Monday's diving was great. It was sunny, calm and not too warm. The first dive, at Northern Exposure, was a "drift" dive, and I use the term loosely, as there was next to no current. We just dropped in, and slowly moved along, checking out the landscape and the life. The reef was teeming with life, and big deep-water sea fans. visibility was pretty good, too. And getting back on the boat was a snap, since we didn't have to battle with chop on the surface. The second dive was a little wreck, called Veronica, which was well-encrusted with sponges, corals, etc., and had lots of fishes living in, on and around it. Again, no current to speak of, but this time, the boat stayed moored.
Friday, January 4th
Nice dives: the Shakem wreck and Purple Rain. There were only 5 of us on the boat this day, in addition to the crew, much better than the previous day, when we were on the big boat with 14 total divers.The wreck had been transporting cement when it foundered on the reef and sank in about 90 feet of water. The bags of cement are still visible in the hold, along with the cargo tarpaulins that had covered them. The wreck is fully covered in corals and sponges, including big deep-water sea fans. Lots of fish making their homes on the wreck. You could still see the ropes coiled neatly, too. Kind of eerie, as if the crew just left it. A really nice dive, tho with it being so deep, we did a "planned deco dive", meaning that we stopped at 30 feet for two minutes and then again at 15 for three. For the curious, all of the three crew were rescued.
Purple Rain is named for the schools of Creole Wrasse that throng the place. It was a really pretty site, with good viz and lots of cool fish. it was on this site that we found the frogfish, which ranks as the picture of the trip. Plenty of colorful sponges and corals and almost no current, just a gentle glide across the reef.
Sunday January 6th
Weekends are when tourists generally arrive and depart, so our dive boat (the entire dive op) had only the three of us and a novice [In contrast, on Thursday, the dive op filled all three boats, ours had 14 divers on it!]. The novice, Maria, was nice enough, but had ear-clearing problems. And the seas were roiled by wind today. We all jumped in together, the three of us went down, seeing Paul [dive master] with Marie slowly descending. The viz was maybe 35 feet, the bottom was 60 feet deep, so we lost sight of them. We surfaced, and Bugsy, the skipper, told the three of us to just go as a unit and let the current drift us along. Which we sort of did. It was surge, so the current would move us 6' forward, and 3' back on and on and on. Lots of junk in the water, lousy for especially wide angle photography. The current wanted us to move off the reef to the sand (boring), so I led us next to the side of the reef. Next to the reef, the current was weak. Dan was to our left, the reef to our right, so over the sand he was fighting current, and was pretty exhausted by the end of the dive, and we surface early, with plenty of air left because we joined Dan finally and got bored. Lousy dive day, it would appear, I took only one or two pictures and I fear that they will look like things in a snow globe. And the water was so choppy on the surface, that I had a hard time handling my camera while taking off my fins, holding onto the drag line, etc.
So I decided not to bother dragging my camera on the second dive, where the surface appeared to be even choppier, after all, why be impeded, when there would be nothing to photograph, right? WRONG!!! oh, my God, what a wonderful dive -- one of the best ever, and that's saying a lot! Shark Reef was the best over-all dive of the trip, even if it didn't yield great photos. Lots of stuff! As soon as we dropped into the water, we found ourselves in the middle of a school of Southern Senets, must have been hundreds of them, swarming around us, glittering in the sun. That was the first of several times that I kicked myself for not taking my camera. The shots that got away... Three nurse sharks (they are docile, and seem to sleep more than pussy cats). One had its head into a hole in a coral head, with the back half of its body lying in the sand -- sort of ostrich-like. Then there were two snuggled into a hold under another coral head snoozing away. Several spotted morays, swimming free out of their holes. With Rob’s macro he couldn't get a full three foot long moray as a whole, took some pics, mostly too far from them for the strobes. There was one territorial battle where one moray wanted the hidey hole of another one, and they duked it out a bit. A pair of French Grunts also did a great territorial display -- facing off, opening their mouths wide trying to scare each other with their mightiness. And an old turtle, with several barnacles on its back cruised all around us, checking us out. Again, more pics that got away. Also the usual reef denizens: Spanish hogfish, surgeonfish, lots of trunk fish, cowfish, rock beauties, lobsters, trumpetfish etc. Great dive! Pics don't do it justice.
We ate well. Some of our favorite restaurants are [in no particular order]:
Aquarium [great seafood, on the beach under thatched roofs, with good service, nice wine list and a friendly cat who’s happy to share your meal;
Rhodes in the Calabash hotel. Very upscale, formal service, expensive but worth it for a special meal. Gourmet island food with a great wine list. And guests of True Blue Bay Resort get a free bottle of house wine with dinner, which is quite good.
Patrick’s. A funky place in a house, and you just sit down and Patrick feeds you about 20 different courses, from soup to nuts, and all kinds of stuff in between. Very inexpensive, and a huge amount of food. Go for dinner and skip lunch before- hand.
Mona Lisa. An Italian restaurant up the hill, a long dark road. You sit on a terraced veranda, and have a leisurely dinner, presided over by a jolly, warm matron. The pasta is home made, and they call their octopus “sea cat”. Good and moderately priced.
French Creole. A casual restaurant on the beach (with a choice, we selected tables outside with our feet in the sand), so we got to watch the tourists play on the beach, ride the banana boat, and water ski while eating.
The island is beautiful and HUGE. Rent a car and spend several days or afternoons exploring. There are waterfalls, a cool market, beautiful beaches, rainforest, mountains, cute little villages, and everywhere friendly people. The roads are not well-maintained, so keep and eye out for potholes. Tourist maps are approximate, making finding a particular destination a bit of an adventure.
