Provo, 1999
Author: Lynn

Hi everyone! I usually dont post here but I used this message board to get so much valuble information in the past that I thought I would share... My husband and I just returned from a week long stay at Beaches Resort in Provo. Despitex all the negative things we had heard about the dive shop at the resort we chose to go anyway figuring that the diving was free and if we hated it we would just dive with someone else the rest of the trip. The resort itself is quite lovely, the food is good to great (depending on the meal) and overall the staff was incredibly accomodating.OK on to the diving. The club requires you to do a check out before you can dive ( no big deal just jump in the pool and do some stupid human tricks). We were able to get checked out within an hour of our arrival and were ready to dive the next day. There are three regularly scheduled dives each day ( you can sign up for 2) and were able to dive every day no problem (despite the fact that they were minus 1 boat). Generally the dives were one tank dives (meaning local dive spots) but every 2 days they did a 2 tank dive and went either to the Northwest point or West Caicos. The dive masters were extremely professional and personable however the dive profiles were very conservative (80-90 ft on first dive for 30-40 mins)(60ft max on second dive for 30-40 mins). The boats were generally a little to crowded for my taste (15-25) people but the dive boat was large. The diving itself was pretty good although not as good as Cozumel in my opinion. The vis was about 50ft on average (apparently that is common this time of year?) and the water temp was about 85. The marine life was fairly abundant and the coral was healthy (the largest thing we saw was a 7 ft nurse shark). We did a total of 11 dives with beaches and chose to dive our last day with Provo Turtle divers.In comparison to Beaches the dive boat was empty (10 divers) which felt luxurious after the crowded dives at Beaches. We went to West Caicos a long and exciting boat ride. The dive sites were amazing (dramatic walls that started at 60ft)The dive company will not let you dive alone without a computer so we followed a dive master on both dives. The first dive was 15 mins at 100 ft and 15 mins at 60ft (total bottom time = 30mins) and the second dive was 60ft for 30 mins. Quite frankly I was hoping to be able to get more bottom time than this and was a little disappointed but otherwise enjoyed the dives. Overall we had a wonderful trip - The island and beaches are beautiful and the diving was good. In summary I dont think the diving at Beaches is as bad as we were lead to believe (considering that you pay nothing extra its actually great) but I have definately enjoyed other dive outfits more. I should note that if you are advanced certified Beaches will let you do your own thing on the dives. I think if we went bach to Turks/Caicos we would go to Grand Turk instead - But for now we will go back to Cozumel which has far better diving.

Last edited on June 29, 2002