Air Canada Vacations, Beach Club Colony Hotel, Resort Sports Ltd .
The resort was quite nice. It's on 7 Mile Beach, next door to the Hyatt Recency. It wasn't spectacular, but it was nice. Our room was pretty basic but it had a tv with that all important video input so I could look at my photos after each day of diving. While a tv is not as good as a computer for this, it's better than the camera display. We were on an all inclusive package. Breakfast was a buffet plus eggs cooked to order. On the Sunday, they had a Caribbean style breakfast which included scrambled eggs and fish, fried plantains, cooked bananas, and a few other things. I tried some of it, but didn't really like it. On some days lunch was dogs, burgers, or sandwiches, and on other days there was a buffet. Suppers were very good. Sometimes there was table service, sometimes it was a buffet.
The beach was nice - easy entry and no rocks. The resort also allowed cruise ship passengers to come in and use the facilities - for a small fee of course.
I have mixed emotions about the dive shop. They have several redeeeming qualities, and one very bad one.
The dive shop is one of the services offered by Resort Sports. They also rent out snorkelling gear and jet skis, and have some boat trips. Their customer base is guests at the hotel, the sister hotel (Spanish Bay), and cruise ship passengers. To a certain extent, we got to compare this shop to Red Sail Sports, which caters to guests of the Hyatt.
The routine was that a vehicle would pick us up and take us to a pier in the cruise ship area on the northern part of Georgetown harbour. We would two dives on the west side come back to the pier and get driven back to the hotel. From the time we left till the time we got back was usually 3.5 to 4 hours. Sometimes we dove with cruise ship passengers and sometimes it was just hotel guests. By comparison, Red Sail did beach pickups and drop-offs.
The boats were large and had marine heads, which occasionally got used. We were never crowded - the mamimum number of divers we had on the boat was 18. However, when asked, the crew said that they were prepared to take up to 35 divers. That would make it a cattle boat. All dives were guided, and had time limits. On all dives we had either two or three dive guides, so we could divide up into smaller groups.
The price list on the dive shop's website is accurate but incomplete. They also offered dive packages. A five day package would work out to $61 per day. This was much less expensive than Red Sail Sports.
Water was in the low 80s. There was little if any current. Visibility was good. Coral was in good shape. Fish population seemed a bit down from what I remember from my last Grand Cayman trip, but that was over 10 years ago so who knows. Quite a few lobster, usually out strolling about. Also saw a fair number of turtles. We also saw a new divemaster trick - eel gardening. One of the dm's dug a garden eel out of the sand and held it in hand for awhile. The rest of us gathered around and made sure a nearby snapper didn't swim in and eat it. After a minute or so, the dm let it go and the eel burrowed back down into the sand.
We had purchased a six day package so we should have dove every day. On the Friday we didn't, but lots of other people seemed to.
When diving was over for the day, the dive shop would moor their boats a couple of hundred yards off shore, right in from of the hotel. There were other boats there as well, as well as some on neighbouring resorts. On the Friday, when we got up for breakfast, there were no boats anywhere, so we knew something was up. But it was a nice sunny day so after breakfast we went for a walk along the beach. As we were getting back to the resort, we saw Red Sail loading up their passengers, so that part was normal. That was at 08:30. We were scheduled to leave 15 minutes later.
When we went to the dive shop to wait for the vehicle, we were told that the weather was about to turn bad and that the dive boats had been taken to the south side for protection and that there would be no diving. While it was nice out at the time, we just accepted this. If it was going to turn crappy that morning, we would just as soon not dive anyhow so that was ok. At the time, I thought that Red Sail had decided to take a risk that Resort Sports was unwilling to take, so that was fine
It stayed nice all day. In the evening, I met one of the dm's and asked him what he did all day. He said he went diving with a group of cruise ship passengers. I think he said something about this being an afternoon dive. When I mentioned that our dive was cancelled he said words to the effect that the other boat may have had trouble getting around from the south side due to rough water. So at this point, it appeared that maybe we were just unlucky.
On Saturday the weather was cloudy and windy, but we went diving with the other crew anyway. I asked one of the dm's what they had done the previous day. She said that they took a large group of cruise ship passengers out at 10:30 in the morning. While there is still an element of doubt, my current opinion is that the dive shop cancelled the dives for the hotel guests so they could make more money from the cruise ship passengers and then lied to us. Nothing else makes sense. They did refund our money for the day we didn't dive though.
Early December is not normally a busy travel time. This was reflected in the fact that our hotel seemed like it was only 30-40% full. One day, I asked our driver when the busy season was expected to start. His answer was that historically, it was always busy season but that the number of tourists seemed to fall dramatically after that crocodile guy got killed by the Sting Ray. He thinks people are reacting to that the same way they reacted when Jaws came out.
There were between 2 and 8 cruise ships in the harbour every day. When we dove with cruise ship passengers, I asked some of them how full their boats were. One person said their cruise was sold out. Another said that their ship could hold 2500 passengers, but only had 2000. While it's not something that appeals to me, the cruise ship industry seems to be doing better than the resort industry.
This was a pleasant trip, even with the Friday shenanigans. Also, despite the Friday thing, I think we were still better off with our dive shop than we would have been with Red Sail. They are way too expensive. And, while we are unlikely to return, we have no regrets about going.
| Trip Dates2006-12-03 to 2006-12-10 | Trip Report Index |