7 Caribbean classics

Up From the Underground
Riviera Maya
Among scuba divers, the Riviera Maya — that part of Mexico that stretches from Punta Bete in the state of Quintana Roo all the way down to the border with Belize in the south — has long been known for cenotes and cave diving. The reputation is well deserved; the Nohoch Na Chich cave system, in the heart of the Riviera Maya, is arguably Mexico’s most spectacular cave, with stalactites, stalagmites and flowstone galore, and Nohoch is also one of the largest underwater cave systems in the world.

But to concentrate exclusively on the Mayan Riviera’s cenotes is to ignore entirely the area’s most obvious asset — the beautiful and often wild Caribbean coastline, and the 600 miles of the Great Maya Reef (a barrier reef that extends all the way south past Belize and Guatemala to Honduras).

The Riviera Maya’s coastal waters offer diveskin or rashie-friendly temperatures, spectacular blue water with Caribbean-quality visibility, and all the coral-encrusted, turtle-populated, tropical-variety diversity you could yearn for, served up with beautiful white-sand beaches that, in many cases, are still wild and deserted.

Not that you’ll be the first one here. In Tulum, you’ll find Mayan ruins in an amazingly beautiful seaside setting, and evidence of the area’s earlier civilization is everywhere, from carved stelae standing in the middle of the jungle to the ancient names that some of the area’s towns still bear.

And yes, when it comes to sheer natural beauty, the Riviera Maya is still the cenote- and cave-diving capital of the known universe. Open-water and cavern divers can experience water so clear that diving in literally like finning and floating in air: an experience that some have compared to flying in water. For those who adventurous enough to be cave certified — or those who come here for world-class training — the more than 70 cave systems of the Riviera Maya offer mile after mile of amazing passage, most in learner-friendly, low-flow environments. For those who want to walk the cutting edge, new passage is being mapped and explored every day, much of it by certified Full Cave divers who are volunteering vacation time.

But whether you’re kicking long with the turtles on the reefs, taking in the stupefying clarity in the cenotes or just walking on the sort of beach that screams “postcard,” it’s easy to understand why the ancient Mayans considered this coast the garden center of the universe. A visit to the Riviera Maya definitely takes beauty to the spiritual level.

Bottom Time in the Blue Hole
Ambergris Caye, Belize
It’s the kind of underwater geology that inspires speculation about aliens creating geometrically perfect anomalies.

The truth is more prosaic. The Belize Blue Hole is a sink — a place where, deep in the prehistoric past, what is now the bottom of the sea literally fell away, exposing a then-dry cave system. A thousand feet in diameter, almost exactly circular, and some 400 feet deep, the Blue Hole exacts different reactions from different divers. Novices kick unconsciously with all that watery nothing underneath them and check their depth gauges every 10 seconds, hoping Archimedes was right about the whole displacement and buoyancy thing. More adventurous divers will peek into cave tunnels that branch off in triple-digit depths.

Ty Sawyer / Sport Diver The Belize Blue Hole.

Nobody’s sure if Belize’s ancient people, the classical Mayans, were the first to say, “@#$&%! I just dropped my knife in that hole.” But they certainly made their mark on the nearby mainland. And that’s why it’s so appropriate that, on Ambergris Caye, Ramon’s Village Resort has looked to Belize’s Mayan heritage for its inspiration. Sixty-one authentic thatched-roof cabanas set the perfect patch-of-paradise theme. “Rey Ramon,” a 12-foot carved rock outcropping, sets a Mayan-mask theme next to the pool. The menu includes local cuisine. Host Ramon Nunez was born in nearby San Pedro and places local authenticity right next to hospitality on his must-do list.

For divers, a major plus is that the largest barrier reef system in the northern hemisphere is just off the beach. Hol Chan marine preserve and the world-famous Shark Ray Alley are also easily dived from Ambergris Caye. And for that last-day-of-the-trip shore day, nearby San Pedro offers shopping and dining in a historic Belizean fishing village, just a five-minute stroll up the beach from Ramon’s.

Just Right
British Virgin Islands
Goldilocks may not have been open-water certified, but she had a diver’s mentality.

Ask traveling divers to describe their ideal Caribbean destination, and they’ll probably have a host of things that they want to find “just right”— a tropical location (less than 25 degrees north of the Equator) for burgeoning coral and fish life, a country where English is spoken without a phrasebook and dollars are accepted at par, seas with low tidal flow for gentle currents, a place where the best dive sites are shallow enough to allow ample bottom time, where the visibility is impressive, the water is blue and the landscape postcard-beautiful, and where it’s still possible to find a deserted beach for a picnic lunch.

Oh — and shipwrecks. They’ll probably want shipwrecks.

Discerning divers will find every single one of those requirements satisfied to “just right” proportions in the British Virgin Islands.

“This tends to be easy but interesting diving,” says Duncan Muirhead, owner of the luxury live-aboard sailing trimaran Cuan Law. “We have divers who began diving with us when they were just newly certified and are still coming back now that they are extremely experienced. I think that speaks volumes about the quality of the diving here.”

Probably the best-known of BVI dive sites is the wreck of the Royal Mail Steamship Rhone, sunk by a hurricane off Salt Island in 1867 and resting today in two main sections near Black Rock. It’s still impressively recognizable as a coral-encrusted ship after almost 140 years underwater; the Rhone’s bow was used to film underwater portions of the feature film The Deep. Divers looking for the giant man-eating green moray from that film will be disappointed (it was a latex puppet, and now resides in a museum in Bermuda), but they may find themselves puppy-dogged by “Fang,” the wreck’s resident barracuda.

“The Rhone was 310 feet long and had more than 300 passenger cabins. It’s such a huge wreck that the many visitors spend one entire day diving it — a first dive on the bow, which is deeper, followed by a dive on the stern and then a night dive.”

Nearly as impressive is the wreck of the Korean refrigerator vessel Chikuzen, which burned and sank 7.5 miles northwest of Tortola. Resting today in 75 feet of water, the 246-foot wreck is a homing beacon of sorts for sharks and rays, and a whale shark has even been encountered at this site.

In a word — or two words — just right.

And who knows? With a destination like this, Goldilocks just might get her Open Water certification.

It’s that sort of place.

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