St. Lucia - 2014


Introduction

In June of 2014 we made a scuba diving trip to St. Lucia.  St. Lucia is a sovereign country in the eastern Carribean Sea.  We went with the folks from Blue Meridian Dive Center in Owensboro, Kentucky.  We had a pretty big group, they made all the arrangements, and their planning was terrific.  We have dived with this group numerous times and always have a great time.  This was our first trip to St. Lucia, we were there for 7 days and the weather was excellent. The temperatures were generally in the low 90s during the day and low 80s during the evenings.

Land

We stayed at the Anse Chastanet Resort which is located on the western side of the island.  We had our own private villa with a king size bed and a fantastic view.  We also had a small deck which had a great view of the water.  The resort was very clean and well maintained and all of the villas were arranged to provide privacy from other villas.  With a few exceptions, all of the rooms had no phones, TV, Internet, or air conditioning - this was fine with us but not everyone was pleased with the lack of air conditioning.  They did have WiFi Internet access but only in the reception/restaurant complex.  One thing worth pointing out is that the villas were located high in the hills and there were a lot of stairs down to the beach and dive shop and then back up to the rooms again.  Linda counted 130 steps - a long slog by the end of the day.

We were on an all inclusive package so all meals were free and taken at the resort.  This was probably a good thing since it was two miles down a dirt and gravel road to the nearest town and I'm not sure that there were too many restaurants there anyway.   Although all of our meals, including a huge breakfast buffet, were free all drinks were extra unlike our package last year in Bonaire.  The menus changed every evening and always included a variety of vegetarian meals.

Sea


We dove with Scuba St. Lucia which was located right at the resort.  We had 23 divers and we had our own boat all week which included 6 days of two tank dives and one night dive.  We also had the same dive masters most of the week which, with one exception, worked out just fine.  The boat was well equipped with plenty of water, and drinks as well as lots of snacks and baked goodies.  They also had fresh towels every day and plenty of spare equipment in case of problems.  We always had full tanks with > 3000 psi.  Scuba St. Lucia picked up our equipment from our rooms the first morning and took care of it all week.  They set up our gear every morning, if we wanted them to, and rinsed and put it away at the end of each day.  At the end of the week they cleaned our gear and returned it back to our rooms.  They were awesome.

We found the diving to be good.  The visibility was good and there was an amazing array of corals and - to our untrained eyes - they appeared to be in good shape.  Although there was not quite the diversity of sea life we have seen on other trips, we still enjoyed the diving.  The resort also offered shore diving but every group that went out had to include a dive master from the dive shop.

Pictures


I took pictures on land and on the boat and have a link below.  Blue Meridian also has pictures on their Facebook page and I have included those below as well.  Our friend Rick always takes lots of underwater photos and we'll post those once we get the DVD.

My Land Pictures
Blue Meridian Facebook Pictures
Rick's Underwater Pictures


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