April 2009    Download the Entire Issue (PDF)

Vol. 24, No. 4   What's this?

Riding Rock Inn, San Salvador, Bahamas

wall diving close to the U.S., but still far from crowds

from the April, 2009 issue of Undercurrent  

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Dear Fellow Diver:

With money tight for exotic dive trips, it’s good to know interesting wall diving and numerous shark sightings can be had just 360 miles southeast of Miami. Morning dives were the best part of my trip to San Salvador. On one morning dive, after a 35-minute boat trip to North Pole Cave at the island’s southern end, I passed a school of blue-striped and white grunts at the top of the reef, with chubs, schoolmasters and horse-eye jacks in the mix. Making like Santa Claus (the site name refers to his Christmas Eve descents), I entered a chimney at 60 feet, headed down to 110 feet, then into a crevice that exits into the blue at 135 feet. Curly wire corals grace the wall around the exit, along with big barrel sponges, one with three big spouts. One crack further on was loaded with a dozen black jacks. Yes, San Sal’s walls put it among the better dive destinations in the Caribbean/ Atlantic, offering up sharks on most dives.

The Bahamasair connector flight from Nassau to tiny San Salvador is a short hop but a world apart. I stepped off the plane into one of those delightful little airports where the luggage comes to you on a four-wheeled cart and shopping options are limited to rum or beer. Riding Rock’s van driver surprised me by saying that my partner and I comprised the entire Saturday group of divers. Maybe it’s the winter off season -- water is considerably cooler then -- or the economy that kept people away. The group on my planned dive-shop trip dissolved when the recession hit some of the divers hard, so my partner and I were the only ones that remained from that bunch. On the upside, we pretty much had the dive boat, the sharks, and sometimes the whole resort to ourselves....