Have Internet Will Travel Traveling the world, wherever there's WiFi. The adventures of two freelance digital nomads.

It’s pretty hard to describe the feeling that comes over you when you’re face to face with a 4m Tiger Shark. No cage… no chainmail… no spear gun…. “Awesome” is really the only word I can think of!

This was our second time doing a shark dive. The first was a year and a half earlier in Roatan, Honduras, however it’s a bit like comparing apples and oranges. The main difference? The sharks! In Roatan, the sharks are all Caribbean Reef Sharks, averaging about 2m in length — in Fiji, there are up to 8 different species of sharks, including Bulls and Tigers, which can get up to 3-4m long. Read More…

We had a rough idea of what we wanted to do in Fiji before we arrived, but apart from our first night’s accommodation we hadn’t actually booked anything when we landed. There are two main modes of transportation between Fiji’s 332 islands – flights & ferries. Mike hates small planes with a passion, and as a general rule, won’t fly in anything less than 16 rows, so that left us with the latter as our only real option for getting around. Unfortunately reliable information about Fiji’s ferry schedules is pretty hard to come by online, so we decided to wait until we arrived before making any solid plans.

We spent our first couple of nights just outside of Suva while we organized and booked our transport up to Taveuni. The hotel staff were quite perplexed when we told them we’d prefer to take the 14 hour overnight ferry, instead of the short 1 hour flight. They had to call around a bit to find out the actual schedule, as they didn’t have that information either. Much to our luck there is a new ferry service between Suva and Taveuni that leaves twice a week, and it was scheduled to leave the next day which meant we only had to spend one extra night in Suva. Read More…

As most of you know Mike and I are both experienced Divers. To preface this post and to be fair to Poseidon, I just wanted to remind everyone that we have traveled a lot and been to some pretty amazing dive destinations, so we have pretty high expectations. That being said our Great Barrier Reef experience as a whole, was a bit of a let down.

We did two trips with Poseidon and had two very different experiences. The first experience was not very good. Most of the staff were nice and friendly, however, I’m not sure if our dive guide was just having a bad day or what, but lets just say he didn’t really seem to be enjoying his job.

The visibility on the dives was pretty poor over all (nothing that Poseidon can do about that) but what made the experience pretty lackluster was that our dive guide didn’t really do anything. He just kind of hovered around watching over us, not pointing out fish or critters, or showing us anything in particular that was unique or special about the reef. He was more like a babysitter than a guide. Read More…

Merry Fishmas Scuba Fans! Check out my underwater themed Christmas cards and send them to all your ocean loving friends!

– Get them here at Divesnaps.com

Following up on Kellys post about the shark dive we did with Waihuka Dive Center, here’s a quick video I put together from the footage that day. Hope you enjoy!

At Cara a Cara, you descend a line to approximately 20-25 meters to a coral ridge that shelters you from the current. Thankfully, the day the 8 of us went there was no current, so we were able to swim freely with the sharks when they weren’t feeding. The dive master brings down a sealed bucket with a fish head in it. The sharks will swim around you until the bucket is opened at which point, they fight for the fish, then quickly disappear back into the blue. Total dive time was approximately 40 minutes and we saw somewhere between 10 and 14 (Caribbean) grey reef sharks..

One of the things we wanted to check off our to-do list before leaving Roatan, was the Shark Dive. It was something we wanted to do on our first trip, but somehow time slipped away from us, and we just never got around to it. When we were back this fall we made sure it was a priority.

Pretty much all of the dive shops or resorts on the island can book the Shark Dive for you, but if you’re short on time it might be a good idea to book this in advance, especially if you’re coming in high season, or on a cruise ship day. We purposely booked on a non-cruise ship day, and got really lucky as our group of 6 were the only ones scheduled for that day. Read More…

While in Mexico, we had the opportunity to do a number of different cenote dives. Frequently found on the Yucatan Peninsula, a cenote is a sinkhole leading to an underground body of water. Often the result of a collapsed cave ceiling, the water is usually freshwater and incredibly clear since it’s mostly rain water that has filtered through the ground. There are hundreds of kilometers of underwater passages beneath the Yucatan Peninsula, though only a handful of locations are actively guided and accessible without advanced cave diving certification. Unbelievably, we even found a house with a private cenote right in the middle of Playa del Carmen on 5th Ave. While we couldn’t dive that one, we did feed the pet turtle and catfish.

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When we first came to Roatan, people warned us about the Roatan vortex. Nearly everyone we met told us they had been coming to Roatan for years. Or had come once and never left. And after 3 amazing months on Roatan, it was the first time we were a little reluctant to be moving on. Well, we’re back after 4 months in Belize and Mexico and we’re pretty happy about it. It seems the vortex has sucked us in too.

The first day back, we were just sitting at the dive shop, watching what little traffic there is go by. Adapting back to ‘island time’ hasn’t been hard. It’s nice to be back among the familiar faces in the West End. We made a lot of friends the last time we were here and though many people have come and gone, there’s still a bunch of dive buddies and party pals we’ve reunited with over the last week.

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On our way up to Mexico for our friends’ wedding, we stopped off in Belize for 2 weeks to relax and do a little more diving. Having only dove Roatan in the Caribbean, we were looking forward to diving another location for comparison.

When we arrived in Placencia, we didn’t realize it was coming into low season and rainy season. For most of our 2 weeks, it’s rained a little on some days and a lot on others. We’re also often the only people in the beachfront resort hotel we’re staying in. So we’ve had a staff of 10+ taking care of us each day as we lounge by the pool when the weather cooperates.

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When we were planning out the Central American leg of our trip, visiting Roatan was high on the list of destinations. We’ve often heard what a haven for scuba divers it is, both due to the location (a quick 2 hour flight from Miami) and the cost. Roatan is one of the cheapest places to get dive certified in the world and the fun dive prices are also amongst some of the lowest.

When we arrived in Roatan, we found a range of dive shops. From small shore based dinghy operations and speed boats, up to large 20 person capacity boats that will do day trips all over the island. We decided to go with Coconut Tree Divers, one of the larger, central shops which was close to where we were staying. They’re the only shop in the West End that do 4 dives a day which fits well with our shifting schedules during busy work weeks. They’re a highly social bunch and we had many good stories and nights out with our dive masters and fellow divers. They really went out of their way to make sure we were well taken care of from gear to dive site selections.

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