Diving with Caribstu - again
Posted: Mon Mar 12, 2007 8:00 pm
After last year's great experience with Stuart Sampson's Dive Service "Caribstu" (http://www.caribstu.com) we - my son Paul, aged 14, and I - decided to go for a few very good dives with Stuart again. This time we went to Tobago not "just for fun", but Paul was supposed to do his PADI junior advanced course this year. The planning of the course was done with Stuart's help a few weeks before we left and with "Adventures in Diving" in our carry-over we headed for Tobago in late December.
It turned out that Stuart is not only an excellent diving instructor and organizer, but also a very experienced teacher. The five dives of the AOW course where part of our daily dives, the course briefing was very good and efficient and the dives themselves pure fun, also for Paul who was worried a bit about his knowledge of the 372 pages of the course manual. So he successfully finished his course and proudly received his temporary AOW card at the end of our holidays.
Unlike last year at Blue Waters Inn we stayed on Stuart's recommendation in Charlotteville (where Stuart lives) at Rainer Tichai's nice guesthouse - but this is another story (see review on Top River Pearl). Speysiders may forgive me, but Charlotteville is the much nicer village to spend holidays. Stuart picked us up at the guesthouse every morning and drove us a short 10 minutes drive to Speyside, where we his boatcaptain Smithy expected us.
Though - or maybe because - the sea was a bit rough on some days, we saw the incredible number of 17 (yes, seventeen) sharks, lots of barracudas and turtles. But even it was high season we didn't see another diver except the three of us under water for the 2 weeks of our holidays.
Stuart's dive service is highly recommendable and I'm sure - we'll do it again!
It turned out that Stuart is not only an excellent diving instructor and organizer, but also a very experienced teacher. The five dives of the AOW course where part of our daily dives, the course briefing was very good and efficient and the dives themselves pure fun, also for Paul who was worried a bit about his knowledge of the 372 pages of the course manual. So he successfully finished his course and proudly received his temporary AOW card at the end of our holidays.
Unlike last year at Blue Waters Inn we stayed on Stuart's recommendation in Charlotteville (where Stuart lives) at Rainer Tichai's nice guesthouse - but this is another story (see review on Top River Pearl). Speysiders may forgive me, but Charlotteville is the much nicer village to spend holidays. Stuart picked us up at the guesthouse every morning and drove us a short 10 minutes drive to Speyside, where we his boatcaptain Smithy expected us.
Though - or maybe because - the sea was a bit rough on some days, we saw the incredible number of 17 (yes, seventeen) sharks, lots of barracudas and turtles. But even it was high season we didn't see another diver except the three of us under water for the 2 weeks of our holidays.
Stuart's dive service is highly recommendable and I'm sure - we'll do it again!