Saturday, April 15, 2006

St Lucia

At St Lucia we first went into Rodney Bay Marina, rented a car and did some tourist travel around the island. We also shipped off a part of our generator for repair. That left us without the means to make water or fill scuba tanks.

Then by boat we went back to the south end of the island, Soufriere and the Pitons, where the best diving is. This area is a National Marine Park (Soufriere Marine Management Area - SMMA) and anchoring is banned; you have to use a mooring.

And unlike St Vincent, St Lucia does not permit independent diving – you must go with a local dive guide. The Marine Park Rangers hooked us up with a guide who came with us in our dinghy. It made diving more expensive but it was convenient and much like our normal style of diving. We don’t find it so easy to fit in with how dive resorts want to do things! The Park Rangers also filled our tanks every other day so the whole thing worked out well.

We did 6 dives around Soufiere like this. The St Lucia diving was pretty good, but frankly, we thought St Vincent diving was better.