Aug 20, 2007
Wanna go deep-water scuba-diving in America, at lodgings costs of $25 a night? I've got the place (North Carolina)!
It is beyond doubt the world's top underwater bargain. Olympus Dive Center of North Carolina (tel. 252/726-9432; www.olympusdiving.com) is a 2,000-square-foot facility (renting all the equipment you'll need and providing air and nitrox fills) in the midst of the docks at Morehead City, on the southernmost tip of the Outer Banks; out front, at a pier, are its two premier dive boats, the 65' Olympus and the 48' Midnight Express. And only two blocks away is the Olympus Divers' Lodge with 32 bunks in five separate rooms, for both men and women. The price, believe it or not: $25 a night per person. Each bunk has its own lockable storage area.
If you'd like a low-cost alternative to diving off the Caribbean island of Bonaire, or in the Red Sea, this is it. If you'd like low-cost training in scuba, this has it. Dives are conducted daily throughout the year, even in the (generally mild) winter.
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Labels: american south, diving
Aug 3, 2007
If you're an avid scuba-diver, the place is Roatan and the tour packager is Capricorn
Probably the world's cheapest top-quality scuba diving is off the English-speaking Bay Islands of Honduras in Central America, and especially at the island of Roatan, to which Delta Airlines flies non-stop from Atlanta in both directions on Saturday (go from any other city or on any other carrier or day of the week and you've got to fly from the U.S. to San Pedro Sula in Honduras, and then spend most of the day waiting for a connection to Roatan). And the top, moderately priced scuba diving "hotel" is Anthony's Key Resort (tel. 800/227-3483; www.anthonyskey.com), whose one-week package includes all the equipment (air tanks, belt weights) and scuba boat rides you'll need. Anthony's is not really a hotel but a collection of cottages in which there are two grades of rooms: "standard" (without air-conditioning) and "superior" (with air conditioning). The foremost tour operator to Roatan is the 30-year-old Capricorn Leisure (tel. 800/426-6544; www.capricorn.net), and over the next several months from after Labor Day until mid-December, it will be offering a non-stop Saturday flight on Delta from Atlanta to Roatan, seven nights in a "standard" room, all three meals each day (and they're good, copious meals), a complete weeklong dive package, and numerous extras, including round-trip airport-to-hotel transfers, a dolphin encounter, ecology lecture, tropical picnic, horseback riding, kayaking and canoeing -- for $1,699. For departures after the first of the year and throughout the winter, figure $100 to $200 more; and figure exactly $200 more for an upgrade to a "superior" room with that unnecessary air conditioning.
So what are you waiting for? If you can scare up $1,699, you can toss aside all those dull business routines and go flinging yourself into an under-the-sea adventure.
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Labels: central america, diving, honduras
Fifty years ago, 
Arthur Frommer is generally acknowledged to be the nation's foremost travel authority. He is the founder of the
