Not long ago, I got back from a trip to St. Vincent and the Grenadines. Getting to the Grenadines from Dallas gave me an odd sense of replaying the old John Candy movie:  “Planes, Trains and Automobiles”. Only thing was, it was three planes, and a ferry to get to our starting point. That is, Dallas to Houston (an hour) Houston to Trinidad (almost 5 hours) Trinidad to St. Vincent (an hour) and a ferry from St. Vincent to Bequia where we picked up the sailboat  that we lived on for a week (1 hour). Dragging my camera and underwater housing along on the trip was a bit of a beast.  Thirty pounds of camera gear in my backpack, 45 pounds of underwater housing in a pelican case, and almost 50 pounds of suitcase filled mostly with dive gear, a couple of swim suits and a few tee shirts for surface time.

I will write more about the individual dive sites later. We had four divers on the trip, my wife, one of my daughters Megan, and cousin Dave who was going to experience his first “blue water dives”. Now Dave, while not having many dives under his weight belt, has to be considered a pretty committed diver. In order to get certified in time for the trip to the Grenadines, he did his check out dives in less than 37 degree water (2 degrees Celsius) and finished the week before we went on the trip. By the end of the trip to the Grenadines, Dave had gained  a lot of experience, 8 dives back to back can help you get better pretty quickly.

Of course, Chandre, the captain of our ship “Freedom” joined us on most dives. Chronologically, Chandre was the youngest person on the ship, but was mature and wise beyond his years.

In general the dive sites in the Grenadines were full of sea life. Vast schools of a variety of fish joined us on most dives. On some dives it was creole wrasses. Most dives there were what can best be described as clouds of brown Chromis. The sponges were numerous, colorful and ranged widely in variety, size and texture. The sponges were healthy and reminded me of some of the colorful dives we had in Dominica a few years ago. We saw relatively few lion fish, but the ones we did see were enormous. The real attractions on many of the dives were the little “critters”. The sea horses, the arrow crabs and such.  And, I do not remember ever seeing so many moray eels. So the short answer to the question of: is it worth going to the Grenadines, it is, and because it is, I will have to write more about it in the coming days.