Dear TTOL friends,
We returned on Friday from 11 days in the British Virgin Islands, where we stayed 4 nights on Jost Van Dyke and 7 on Virgin Gorda. We honeymooned on Virgin Gorda in 1980, and it was an incredible joy to share our 30th anniversary in the BVI with our children and 2 dear friends.
11 of 13 of us in my extended family learned how to scuba dive on VG in 2003 with Dive BVI
http://www.divebvi.com/, and we cannot say enough good things about this dive operation. Under the exceptional management of Jeff & Casey McNutt, Dive BVI continues its reputation as the best dive shop in the Caribbean, in our opinion, with large, safe, comfortable boats with plenty of shade, a head, and an excellent, knowledgeable and very customer friendly staff, including new staff, Andrew and Samantha from U VA, WaHOOwah! The visibility was excellent on nearly every dive, including the Wreck of the Rhone, which had the best visibility I have ever seen there in 12 dives, due to some current (I’ll post some videos of the wreck of the Rhone later). On all of the dives, the coral was colorful and healthy, and there were lots of fish on nearly every dive from silversides to tarpon and all types of reef fish in between, as well as lobsters, turtles, and macro life.
The link below is at a dive site called “the Chimney,” one of the most colorful dive sites in the Caribbean, and one of my all time favorite dive sites. It is also purported to have been Jacques Cousteau’s favorite site in the BVI, because of the colorful sponges, including the unusual white encrusted sponges, and cup corals that adorn the walls of “the chimney.” On the west side of Great Dog Island, just off the island of Virgin Gorda, you enter the chimney through a coral encrusted archway which leads to a narrower crack in the bedrock. The crack is not enclosed on the top, so some sunlight comes through, exposing the colorful sponges and cup coral on both sides of the chimney. Once you swim through the chimney, you enter a large canyon with numerous colorful coral heads and schools of fish. We also saw a spotted eagle ray on this dive. I dove this site with Chris Blackwell, a highly regarding Dive Instructor, and I make a cameo appearance in the video (:>)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kMHwZXFc20gOnce you dive through the chimney, there are a number of large coral heads on the way back to the dive boat. This colorful coral head provides shelter to schools of small fish:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6qypKMSmbqUEnjoy, honeymoon2
http://honeymoon2.smugmug.com/
