I'm back! I did a total of 10 dives. I'll start by saying that Turks and Caicos Islands (TCI) took a real beating from hurricanes Ike and Hanna. One of the islands was completely destroyed. The reef really suffered and many of the dive masters were diving for the first time since the hurricane and were amazed by the poor condition of the reef.
We stayed at Beachs Turks and Caicos. The hotel advertised all inclusive diving and they did not disappoint. A brief word about the hotel - it caters exclusively to familys and children. We would have been bored to tears had the diving not worked out. There is literally nothing to do at this hotel that isn't sesame street related. The vast majority of guests were families with small children. There was no adults only area and getting away from the screaming children was a huge challenge. There wasn't even an evening show for adults - just the Elmo and Friends show at 6pm. We ended up in our hotel room every night in bed by 9.
The hotel makes you do a mandatory "dive orientation" before you are allowed to dive with them, which severly limits the diving on your first day. The orientation was basically a review course on land and in the pool. Annoying for sure. The hotel also takes safety to a whole new level and to the point of annonance. They have a 60ft limit for open water certified divers (they claim PADI recommends that OW divers don't go below 60ft). Well, the walls all start at 60ft, so they don't let you go down along the wall at all unless you have your advanced open water. definitely annoying! Our last day we had a more relaxed divemaster that allowed us to go down to 75ft so we could actually see the wall rather than just looking down on it from the top. The equipment was good and we felt safe the entire time. They do a 2 tank dive every day leaving at 8:30, a 1 talk dive leaving at 9:30 (but this is cancelled if they have to leave from teh south side of the island which happened during most of the week). They do the resort course divers, junior divers and those doing their OW course in an afternoon dive. They have 2 dive boats - the recently purchased brand new dive boat sunk in September during the hurricane and there are no plans to replace it.
The first day after our mandatory orientation we went on a 1 tank dive on the reef just in front of the hotel. The visibility was good, but the reef was in horrible condition and mostly dead. Saw some lionfish, stingrays and lots of small fish. The second day we went on the 2 tank dive. The water was rough in front of the hotel with an approaching storm so we went to the northwest point. The wind continued to build with huge swells, people vomiting etc. The diving was crap with 10ft visibility - didn't see much at all. A decision was made that it wasn't safe to return the dive boat to the beach hotel, so they drove us around to the south side of the island and sent us back to the hotel by cab. The third day - the storm was in full force with crazy wind. the beach at the hotel was closed. We were told that it would be calmer on the other side of the island and the dive was still on. 10 brave divers went out - the boat ride was insane with huge swells, brisk wind. We were all soaked and freezing when we got to West Caicos island. ONe of the divemasters jumped into the water and reported extremely poor visibility. We took a vote a decided to try the other side of west caicos. Another hour later and we got to the spot. The visibility was equally bad here, but after so long on the boat we all decided we should try a dive. Horrible visibility and we couldn't find the wall. We all decided to skip the second dive that day and got back to the hotel around 3pm. The next day we figured it would be cancelled but got to the dive shop and were told it was a go. Since there was nothing else to do we decided to brave it. We went to west caicos again, leaving from the south of the island. This day was the best day! There were so many sharks! At one point we had 3 different sharks circling around us looking very hungry (grey reef sharks, but about 6ft long and bigger than me). The last few days were mostly the same; diving west caicos which had the calmest water during the storm on the wall with lots of reef sharks checking us out.
Overall, I wouldn't rate it as one of the best dive sites in the world as it's been severely destroyed by the recent hurricanes. If you have a family and want to leave them at the resort and do some diving Beaches would be a great spot. There are opening a new section in January that caters exclusively to familys with all 2 bedroom family suites, so the children situation will only get worse for adult-onlys like us! Also, the hotel was only at 30% capacity the whole week and even with the crappy weather there was a waiting list to go diving every day. I would think when the hotel is full that getting out every day might be more of a challenge.
