Karpata is a nice dive site, but if memory recalls, its accessed via
the one-way road loop, which means that the return trip is the "long
way" through Rincon, which can burn a lot of time for someone on a
cruise ship day excursion with a firm "be back by" time.

Perhaps something like the first dive on the reef near the Hilma Hooker
to the south, then use your SI to drive up someplace else (probably
across town to the north) for a 2nd dive.  The real question comes down
to how much time you have to work with during your port of call.

-hh

You may be the only person in the world who had been to 4 of those
5 but never been to St Thomas.

Got this from Peter Hughes Fleet this morning:

When the Wind Dancer has that kind of discount (and even when
the discount is less) it's usually the prelude to taking the boat
elsewhere, as it did in the Bay Islands and then Tobago.  (I
had been on BOTH those Wind Dancer locations,   Wonderful
boat, terrible diving.

But the $945 for the week is unheard of, even 10 years ago.

The only time I ever dived St Kitts was when the liveaboard in
Saba (the Caribbean Explorer) had to find some excuses to go
somewhere just so it can tell the land based divers at Saba
that they couldn't swim to St Kitts.   Otherwise, Saba is much
better dived from land than from a liveaboard because no dive
site is more than 10 minutes from land, and the liveaboard
boats often couldn't moor at some of the best locations (such
as the Eye of the Needle) because of current conditions (as
was the case the week I was there).

My impression of St Kitts was that it was almost a toss up
between diving somewhere and diving nowhere.   Yes, I dived
those crummy planes you dived there too.  :-)

I think for most divers, Bonaire would be a first choice (one that
I had never been! -- because it was the place the dive shops
always took their newbies right after cert;  and I did ALL of my
dives after cert, for nearly a year, in Cozumel), and never went
to Bonaire since.    The $200 roundtrip ATL to CZM (in 5 hours)
back those days vs $BIG roundtrip on KLM (in long hours) or
whatever contributed even to my NOT diving Bonaire today,
compared to CZM.    The new direct flights on CO from EWR
to Bonaire (to start next year) cost $833 roundtrip from EWR and
slightly more ($860) from ATL, compared to the my ATL/CZM
trip two weeks ago ($308 !!).

I would think St Thomas would be most people's second choice,
and would be mine.   Between poor vis and cold water and poor
viz and warm water, I take St Thomas over Aruba any day.

-- Bob.

I dove St Thomas it was decent - one of the dives was a WWII army/navy
barracks that was on a barge - vis was good - I dove with Blue Island -
it was me and the DM in the water - dolphins, sharks, and turtles

"Peter" <peterlee@shaw.ca> pounded away at his keyboard resulting in:

Our bus tour of Grenada was pretty cool.  The southern half of the
island is a desert and the northern part is a rain forest.   The most
impressive part was the farms.  I have no idea how people can work on
such steep slopes.  I'd fall down.

Dan Bracuk
If we don't succeed, we run the risk of failure.