The greenhouse is a nice bar/restaurant to go to. I enjoyed eating dinner while watching the cruise ships leave the port. Cuzzins is located downtime as well and has great food as well. Every local I asked for "island food" told me to go here. I enjoyed both locations.

I believe she's asking about STX. Our local hangout is Full Moon Bar on the north shore. They have a great view and music on the weekends.

For local fare I suggest either Kim's in C'sted or the La Reine Chicken Shack off of Centerline Road in La Reine. Neither are much to look at, but the foods great at both.

Have fun.

Divemasters are not certified to do intro courses (Discover Dives and SCUBA Diver or Open Water Diver certification courses). They can take certified divers on orientation dives if that is what you meant.

For Discover Dives and certification courses you need a fully certified Instructor. The Divemaster is the Instructor's helper and has received a lot of training... but has not yet gone through the Instructor course.

N2TheBlue is a great operation to go diving with on STX. You will get lots of personal attention. The Cane Bay Dive Shop also does lots of small group diving right from the beach at Cane Bay. Neither of these operations tends to use a swimming pool for your first orientation to the dive gear. Jumping right into the ocean can be a problem for inexperienced first-timers if the waves and surge are up. If the water is calm, then it can be nearly as easy as in a pool.

I'm a PADI certified SCUBA Instructor. When I take out first-timers on Discover Dives, we don't use a swimming pool, we head straight for the reef and the cool stuff, staying close enough together that I can help them with operating their gear if they need help. Then again, we don't go at all if the waves are high and there are likely to be complications too difficult for someone who has never used the gear before.

For Open Water certification courses there are so many skills to practice with the gear that I most often hold the first session in a swimming pool. It's much easier and quicker to get through the "learning" part of the course that way so you can then go out and DIVE.

If you are certified divers, then you already know this, but other people reading these posts may not.

If this is your very first dive experience, then you should also know that an Instructor can only take TWO non-certified people at a time on first Discover Dives. This is a very important safety precaution as one instructor can only handle so many problems at once should multiple new divers have simultaneous problems and perhaps have scattered so far apart that the instructor can't effectively attend to all of them. When Instructors have Divemaster assistants on dives and/or if the new divers are students in an Open Water Diver course, they are allowed to take larger numbers at one time. There is no limit on the number of certified divers who can go out at one time with an Instructor. They are already certified and are responsible for themselves.

Try 2 plus 2 nightclub, La Grande Princesse - 340-773-3710. Leave your credit card at home, it's low tech but highly good eatin'!

STX Realtor:

Thank you for the clarifications. We aren't certified divers. I did assume that a dive master was "a master of diving"--the highest level" that one could obtain. It is much appreciated that you straightened me out of my ignorance. I didn't understand the difference. Thanks again for the explanation!

Liz

Linda:

Thank you for sharing! We know a great deal about St. John, but this will be our first time on St. Croix.

We can't wait!!! Only a few weeks to go. Any other tips you've got would be appreciated.

We're set for villa and rental vehicle. Sadly, we paid too much for airfare, but. . .didn't want to wait any longer.

Just contacted Derrick at N2B to schedule an intro dive on Cane Bay.

JoAnne has been kind enough to share many great tips and ideas for our upcoming trip.

Liz

Liz - You're very welcome. What's sometimes even more confusing to new divers (I was confused by it for a while when just starting out) is that there are both "Divemasters" and "Master Divers". The difference is that a "Master Diver" is the highest non-professional rating PADI makes available and a "Divemaster" is the lowest professional level of certification through PADI.

A Master Diver has gotten a lot of experience as a recreational diver and taken assorted courses, including the Rescue Diver course and at least 5 specialty certifications in addition to being an Advanced Open Water Diver. They have not yet pursued diving instruction as a profession.

A Divemaster is in effect an Instructor in training. They also have completed the Advanced Open Water Diver course, the Rescue Diver Course, and then a very intensive and time consuming Divemaster course in which they participate in training new SCUBA divers by assisting the Instructors. They may have taken assorted specialty courses, but this is not required. Most Divemasters are highly competent divers and are pretty good at taking care of new divers. An Instructor would be lost without a Divemaster to assist with group classes of more than about 4-6 divers. Divemasters can lead certified divers on orientation dives to explore new dive sites and often lead the dives from boats for excursion companies.