Diving in the Turks, St. Thomas, and/or Suan Juan

[JeremyB]

Hi folks, I'm going on a Caribbean cruise with my family in a few weeks which has stops at Grand Turk (for 7 hours), St. Thomas (for 9 hours), and San Juan, Puerto Rico (for 10 hours). I'm wondering if anyone has recommendations for any of these places.

- Any specific dive site I should see?
- Can you recommend a dive operator?
- If you've been to two or three of these places, can you recommend which one(s) to visit? (I can't get away with diving all of them!)

Thanks for any advice!

[Tom Nic]

I'm guessing the cruise line will have suggestions. If you book through them and something goes wrong you are typically guaranteed that they wait for you or get you back to the ship. I suggest you check on this.

I'm guessing grand Turkey or St. Thomas will have easier access and better diving than San Juan, though that's just a guess.

[Perry Cole]

If the cruise ship doesn't already have arrangements, I would try to get to a dive operation in Fajardo. I dove with them a couple of times and it was a good time. Fajardo is in the east; in the past few years the PR dive industry has really livened up and they have a number of operators in the west. PADI.com has a listing of the operators.

[RoxnDox]

I've only been to Puerto Rico, and it was before I did any diving (and it was the week Hurricane Earl came thru...), but if you have any history interest you'll want to wander the streets of Old San Juan and take a wander about in the old fortress Castillo San Felipe del Morro (see http://www.nps.gov/saju/index.htm).

Without a car you'd have a hard time seeing much else, and even with a car the traffic around the island was kinda wild...

Jim