Diving San Andres Island

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Dusty Rhodes - 21 Jan 2006 14:21 GMT

Going to San Andres Island (belongs to Columbia but is off Central
America)in March. Looks nice but never been there before. Any
suggestions on dive shops, dive sites, things to do, things to see or
things NOT to do? Thanks.

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ben bradlee - 21 Jan 2006 15:13 GMT

> Going to San Andres Island (belongs to Columbia but is off Central
> America)in March. Looks nice but never been there before. Any
> suggestions on dive shops, dive sites, things to do, things to see or
> things NOT to do? Thanks.

You need to learn how to spell Colombia before you visit the country. There
was a report a few years ago that is below. I've wanted to go for some
years now but have yet to visit. There is supposed to be information on Big
Juices San Andres. You can check San-Andres.Com and similar web sites for
information. San Andreas is not discussed much in this group.

\

> We published this article in Undercurrent several months ago. You may

find it

> interesting and a new place to dive. Charter are now running from

Florida,

> making it much easier to reach
>
> San Andres, Caribbean
>
> Ninety miles off the coast of Nicaragua, in the southwestern Caribbean,

lies

> an island about sixteen square miles -- less than one-fifth the size of

Bonaire

> -- yet it sports upwards of 60,000 people, six times the population of

Bonaire.

> The island, San Andres, is a highly developed international tourist
> destination. Were it part of Nicaragua it would no doubt be populated with
> American tourists. However, while Nicaragua lays claim to it, it is

Columbia's

> territory. English is widely spoken, about 15,000 students attend college
> there, the streets are safe and seemingly drug-free, and tourists from

Europe,

> Canada, and South America play on its beaches and dive its waters. And to

find

> an American is nigh impossible.
>
> Except for myself (though most everyone thought I was German; it didn't

occur

> that an American would be visiting), during late February. And from

several

> standpoints it was surely worth the trip, though it took nearly a month

for my

> travel agent to organize the journey, thanks to a combination of "manana"

and

> "island time" attitudes from the tourist industry there. It's not easy to

reach

> from the U.S. Direct charter flights depart from Toronto and Avianca flies

from

> Bogota. I departed from San Jose, Costa Rica, but not without a hassle. At

the

> Costa Rica airport, West Caribbean Airways had no tickets for me, though I

had

> prepaid and was supposed to pick them up. I paid a second time: $248. At

San

> Andres' Hotel Decameron Aquarium, there was no record of my reservation or
> prepayment. I pulled out my credit card. The dive operator had no record

of my

> prepaid reservations. Again, I pulled out my credit card. While I could

have

> gone ballistic, I exercise patience in foreign lands. It was just the

thing to

> do. Soon the hotel manager and the Gema Tours manager tracked me down,
> apologized profusely for temporarily losing my advance payments, saw to it

> would get my airline refund, and arranged a complimentary dinner for me at

> excellent restaurant. The folks I encountered elsewhere on the island were

just

> as pleasant.
>
> The Diver's Dream office is in the hotel lobby, while the dive shack

itself is

> at the end of 300-foot pier, along which sun worshipers recline under
> umbrellas. One can rentget plenty of water toys at the watersports shop,

get a

> meal at El Bruja, the seafood restaurant, or a drink at the bar. The

two-room

> dive shop building houses the compressors, tanks, and a place to stow dive
> gear. The dive company runs at least three unshaded eighteen-foot skiffs,

with

> twin Yamaha outboards. The boat holds twenty aluminum 80s, which they pump

> 3100+ psi. The boat driver and divemaster put your tanks with BC in the

boat

> and the rest is up to you.
>
> The first morning, I arrived forty-five minutes before the 9:00 A.M.

shove-off

> time, but the morning boat had already pulled out! Seasoned travel that I

> - it might not seem like it by now --I had failed to realize that San

Andres

> is on Colombian time (EST) rather than Costa Rican time (CST). I was an

hour

> late. I took a walk, read a book, and watched a fuzzy CNN in my hotel room
> before taking an afternoon boat dive with a couple taking an intro class.

Our

> divemaster was a zero-body-fat young guy with a blond pony tail named
> Sebastian. Like all Diver's Dream staff, he spoke adequate English. A

shallow

> site called La Piramide (the pyramids) two minutes east of the hotel is a

group

> of small coral reefs surrounded by sand at thirty feet. In the 81-degree

water

> (it stayed the same at all depths), hordes of yellowtail snappers and

sergeant

> majors surrounded me. The visibility ran eighty feet, as it did just about
> every dive. I found wrasse cleaning stations, Spanish hogfish, a

goldentail

> moray, schools of spotted and yellow goatfish, and large schools of Cesar
> grunts and Creole wrasse. A southern sting ray allowed me in close for

photos.

> While the dive was to last forty-five minutes, Sebastian had such a good

time

> interacting with the fish that he and I stayed down for eighty minutes.

Overall

> a typical first Caribbean dive, no doubt where fish are fed and tyros tune

up.

> The next day, the professional and helpful Jorge Gomez led us to El
> Pargocillo, where a bottomless wall begins at sixty feet. We had to pull
> ourselves down the anchor line through a strong surface current, which

lasted

> to 100 feet100 ft. . I spent much of the dive hanging onto any dead coral

> could find, unable to photograph the hordes of midnight parrotfish and

Rainbow

> parrotfish. Like most of the reefs, it was covered with very lush

gorgonions.

> Still, it was a bum dive because it should have been a drift--as most were

for

> the rest of my stay. I guess the decision whether to anchor or drift rests

with

> the day's leaders.
>
> Coral View is a beautiful and accessible bottomless wall starting at

thirty

> feet. The coral and large, remarkable-looking sponges were healthy, even

down

> to 160 feet. At 130 feet a trumpetfish closely shadowed a big tiger

grouper.

> Like most sites there were lots of clusters of pretty pillar coral, all

covered

> with fuzzy tentacles even during the day. A scheduled afternoon dive was
> scratched, because one of the two Yamahas on the one available boat was

down.

> I did the two morning dives with Nelson Ramos, an instructor whose

specialty

> seems to be puns that left everyone groaning. At West Point, a

twenty-minute

> boat ride, we drifted in mild current along a mini-wall at sixty-five

feet,

> then dropped to the real wall at 130 feetft.. Between dives, we motored to

> small oceanside café for fruit drinks. Then off to Bajo Bonita for an easy
> drift along coral bommies extending up from the fifty-foot sand bottom,

where a

> six-foot green moray came out of his hole to check us out. That afternoon,
> David Guggenheim, a younger version of Sebastian, took us to Nirvana,

where the

> variety of animals and the diverse shape and variety of the corals made it

the

> best dive that I had on the trip. There is a sunken fishing boat on the

sand at

> fifty feet that can be penetrated. At 100 feet I found a three-inch long
> snouted butterflyfish, a critter only found deep.
>
> The Aquarium is the largest of four Decameron hotels on San Andres. A

gated

> community with guards at all of the entrances, it has a nice private

beach. My

> package--room, all drinks, including booze, and meals -- ran $95/day (and

there

> are cheaper packages). The 270 rooms are in fifteen three-story towers (no
> elevators) with six rooms on a floor. Each trapezoidal room has an outer

wall

> of glass with a covered twenty-foot-wide balcony directly over the lagoon.

From

> one side of my balcony, I looked over the Caribbean and from the other

side I

> faced three large seawater pools. The towers are built in the lagoon, so

you

> can even snorkel around them. The hotel offers small sailboats,

paragliding,

> windsurfing, kayaking, jetskis, snorkeling, and swimming trips to

surrounding

> cays to keep you busy. In several protected lagoons people played water
> volleyball, snorkeled, sailed, and windsurfed. Stretching over the ocean

were

> hundreds of feet of walkways, where sun lovers -- many topless -- soaked

> rays and socialized.
>
> La Barracuda, the large indoor air-conditioned restaurant, has a covered
> outdoor building with breezes, ocean views, and an open area of tables

under

> many palm trees,. It, El Bruja on the dock, and an Italian restaurant

above the

> lobby served mediocre dinners, but breakfast and lunch were fine. I walked

> half mile to La Regatta, along an irregular sidewalk, past modern

high-rises

> and small business complexes intermixed with the weed-choked remains of

old

> buildings that were incompletely torn down and a plethora of shops, bars,

and

> restaurants to serve the tourists and pleasure seekers. Built over the

ocean,

> La Regatta had plenty of tables filled with fun-loving European tourists.

For

> my free meal, which otherwise would have cost about $40, I ordered a

superb

> shrimp cocktail, crab soup, salad, rare medallions of beef, which were
> perfectly prepared, coffee, and dessert. Back at the hotel, I sat in the
> shadows to watch the night club entertainment provided alongside the pool

until

> 11:00 P.M. One can watch or participate in activities far more salacious

than

> would be found in a tourist hotel in most other places. A game like

"Weakest

> Link" and other opportunities provided ample opportunities for people to

have a

> great time or get loaded and make fools of themselves, depending how you

view

> these things. One watering hole, El Plunge, had barstools both in the

adult

> pool and alongside.
>
> But of course I was here for the underwater scene. As a longtime diver, I
> relished the feeling of "diving in the 1980s," when no one required buddy
> diving, set maximum depth limits, or forbid reverse profile dives. If you

had a

> beer or glass of wine with your lunch, no one would know or care. No one

asked

> my maximum depth, much less whether I had gone into deco. They made no

effort

> to keep me with divers undergoing certification and, with one exception, I
> dived alone; I could have been accompanied by a divemaster had I asked.

They

> did set bottom times at forty-five to fifty-five minutes, especially for

the

> second morning dive so we could be back at the hotel for lunch. However,

the

> actual bottom times always ended up ten to twenty minutes longer. (San

Andres

> has a recompression chamber with a trained technician). They asked me to

sign a

> waiver printed in Spanish, which I signed without asking for a
> translation--don't sign, don't dive. One negative about going back in time

was

> seeing the divemaster inflate balloonfish for my amusement. They seemed to
> think it was fun to force morays and octopi out of their holes. I tried to
> explain to them that harassing and stressing critters was no longer

considered

> kosher.
>
> To be clear about the fish life, there were lots of friendly queen and

gray

> angels, as well as shy French angels and rock beauties. There were

four-eye and

> striped butterflyfish, a couple of nurse sharks, large green morays, and a
> couple of goldentail morays. There were plentiful trumpetfish, scrawled
> filefish, yellowfin and tiger groupers, barjacks, schoolmasters, schools

> Bermuda chub, and of course grunts. Large midnight parrotfish, big rainbow
> parrotfish, sometimes in schools, and gangs of juvenile princess parrots.

> balloonfish than usual. Lots of cowfish and trunkfish. No Nassau groupers,
> horse-eyed jacks, rainbow runners, hogfish, big snappers, or queen

triggers. No

> great barracuda but small schools of southern sennet. I would rate the

reefs

> superior to Roatan, and similar in quality to the best reefs in Belize

(though

> San Andres had more bottomless walls and was prettier at 130). Also, the

soft

> corals were much denser than in Belize. The sponges were among the best

that I

> have seen in the Caribbean since I visited Little Cayman a decade ago. It

also

> offers healthy shallow coral mounds (less than thirty feet deep) with no

sign

> of any storm damage. San Andres is reportedly out of the hurricane belt

and the

> pristine staghorn coral reflects that. Like the reefs of Los Roques in
> Venezuela, the reefs around San Andres resemble a rainforest with their

dense

> covering of bushy seawhips, sea plumes, and many other gorgonions.
>
> Who should dive San Andres? My guess is folks who have been everywhere in

the

> Caribbean and want to keep moving. People looking for an extension from

Costa

> Rica after a live-aboard trip. Divers who want a calm, urban,

international

> dive experience. Those who want to visit a Spanish-speaking country.

Beyond

> that, who knows? But I enjoyed it, a jaded fellow with a thousand-plus

dives

> worldwide. And if you're among the group I mentioned, you will too.
>
> Divers Compass: Flights from Costa Rica cover 240 miles and take

sixty-five

> minutes. The planes are fifty-passenger twin turboprops. At Migracion, ask

for

> a free visa extension, which will reduce your exit tax from $50 to $26. I

used

> Reef and Rainforest in Sausalito, CA (800-794-9797 or

www.reefrainforest.com)

> to put my trips together. Gema Tours, a Colombian travel agency
> (www.cartagenadeindias.org.co/gematours) can handle things as well. The

airport

> runway crosses the island a mile from the east end of San Andres Town

(called

> El Centro), the location of most hotels. I paid $75 for two dives a day,

but an

> Undercurrent reader reports he got a package of sixd dives for $124; (they

say

> Nitrox is coming). Night dives required some minimum numbers. Find Diver's
> Dream at www.diversdream.com. The island has half a dozen other diver
> operators, including Buzos del Caribe (www.buzosdelcaribe.com), which is
> associated with several less expensive hotels. The San Andres divemasters
> claimed there is more fish life and better diving at nearby Providencia, a

> minute flight, which is less dominated by tourism. Jorge Gomez, a

divemaster

> with Diver's Dream, says he can arrange diving and lodging there:
> geormez@yahoo.com or jormez@hotmail.com.

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