Key Largo, 1999, Amy Slates
Author: Don

Posted by Don on August 17, 1999 at 07:37:27:

I was very leary about Amy Slates with all the complaints about their resort in Key Largo. But I went anyway.

I found a very nice and relaxing resort, great staff and as good shallow dives as you could find. We stayed 10 days and did 25 dives with Amoray Divers. And also did a couple of dives with Aqua Nuts at Kelly's. The first few days we went to the same locations a couple of times. We spoke to Mike, the captain, and from there on we dove different sites or areas on each dive. Night dives on the Benwood were also great with an abundance of variations on fish, lobster and crabs. The Duane was great too, believe it or not we experienced absolutely no current what so ever, the day before they had to change location from it to another because of the extreamly swift current. I know they run a cattle boat but this was not like any other experiences that I have had with a large number of divers. At one time we had 28 divers on board but with 5 entry areas it was a breeze. They also had two boarding areas and at the longest had to wait on the tag line for only one minute. Vis was between 45 - 60 feet with water temps between 89 - 91. Saw several nurse sharks, reef sharks, ells, parriot fish, squirlfish, jewfish, large groupers, on and on and on. Perhaps one of the most unusual sites was off one of the patches, litterly 10's on thousands of minows tightly packed. You could put your hand into them and it would disapear into them. Rather interesting seeing divers emerge from them.

Also got to see a nurse shark strike on a snorkeler from our dive boat. Even Mike said that he has never ever seen a nurse shark come to the surface. The snorkelers was not injured but scared almost to death. It just bolted upto the surface from the splashing and just ran into the snorkelers fin then retreated back to the bottom.

We enjoyed Amy Slates however we did have a couple of problems. We had a group of 8 and we were never givin more than 5 towels without having to go to the office and request additional ones. Also they don't like to change the sheets daily, they say them change them every other day however we found that after 3 days they were not changed and registered our concern, from there on they were changed every day.

The dives were not as expensive as I have had in the past at other locations. We paid $40.00 per dive.

All in all I am glad we stayed with Amy. On the board we got several opinions, many of them very negative however those came from others who have never stayed there. It was because of the personal emails that I received that we decided to book them.

We will go back to Key Largo some day and will also stay again with Amy.

Last edited on June 29, 2002