recommendations please

[kypatriot]

I'm now less than a year from getting my MD, and I'm considering a dive trip as a graduation present to myself.

While my resources will indeed be limited, I'm still probably going to spend a couple grand on the whole thing (my wife will be coming as well).

My current thoughts are Belize, Fiji - possibly stopping in Maui a couple days (we've dove there before), Caymans.

Anybody have any good suggestions for awesome dive sites I could use to reward myself for all this work, and my wife for putting up with this ridiculous lifestyle?

 

[fppf]

Little Cayman Beach Resort.
Get there, stay there as long as you can, DIVE!

 

[kypatriot]

Update to thread: Our (now 2nd) Maui trip is scheduled for May 18-23.

When we were there before we did 1st Cathedral, Fish Rock, Molokini, and some shallow wreck.

Anybody have any recommendations on boat dives we should look into? I really liked the folks at Extended Horizons & will probably do 1 day with them, looking for options for another day.

We'd like to see plenty of coral (now that we know what we're looking at, didn't before).

Also, is there a relatively cheap way to get/use an underwater camera? If I could rent one, or even buy/rent a camera housing, that would be great. I'd be slow to buy one, because we may not be able to dive again for 5 years.

 

[ezcompany]

If you can, try the Philippines.
English speaking country, very friendly people, very cheap but world class quality dives around the Batangas area. If you have the money go to Palawan, a long island to the bottom left of the islands, absolutely breath taking scenery and pristine coral reefs.

 

[kypatriot]

Sorry I wasn't very clear with my thread update.

The trip will end up being just to Maui, from May 18 to the 23rd. The other, more exotic places will just have to wait until we actually have money. (we're going to Maui with frequent flier miles and have booked the tickets)

So, what I'm looking for is good dives in/around Maui with lots of corals. We've only been diving outside of a quarry once before, so I don't know if we're up to par for the Molokini back wall.

I'm pretty sure we'll dive one day with Extended Horizons, and I'm looking for a second day's dives. We went with Ed Robinson last time, which was OK but not as good as Extended Horizons.

I've read mixed reviews of Mike Severns (both glowing and not very good - extremes), as well as Lahaina Divers. We'll be staying up around Lahaina, so that might be convenient, but it's certainly not important to us.

 

[kypatriot]

Oh yeah, I saw on Severns site (and others) that there are options for renting a camera, so ignore that part of my post.