Visit Date: January 2010

During my holidays in the Dominican Republic, I decided to learn how to scuba dive. From the very beginning the people were very helpful, funny and simply fantastic!! They made the course very fun, and enjoyable. After having completed the PADI Open Water course, we dived at in the reefs. I was simply amazing.

Visit Date: December 2008

I spent a week's diving in Punta Cana with Dressel Divers. We stayed at the Iberostar Punta Cana (next door to the Iberostar Bavaro where Dressel Divers are based). So the dive school was only a 5 minute walk along the beach!

This hotel is based on the Atlantic side of the waters, so remember it will be a lot colder and there's more current (and a choppy boat ride!) then the calmer, Caribbean waters.

The Hotel:

The Iberostar was a fantastic hotel, friendly staff, amazing food and cocktails! and I just couldn't fault it. I think there's no decent evening entertainment though to be honest but the hotel itself is beautiful. A nice, large pool with great poolside restaurant and amazing ice cream! There's always sun loungers available and a beautiful long beach that you can spend hours walking along. The beach is amazing, beautiful crisp, white sand and bright blue water. My only dissappointment is that there is no snorkelling, not a fish to be seen and the water was a bit choppy! A perfect place to stay if you are not bothered about snorkelling or diving!

The dive school were great, the dive masters were very safe concious and always paired me up with a buddie who had a similar ability to myself. I never felt out of my depth and they truly looked after me when I was scared of the scary 10 minute boat ride (I'm not good with choppy water!) but you soon get used to it. All dive sites are around 10 minutes or so away from the hotel which is perfect and there's always morning/afternoon dives.

To be honest, the marine life is not great at all! Hardly any fish - but beautiful fan coral and a great wreck and cave dive on offer. I was dissappointed in the lack of marine life, as i have previously dove in Egypt which is amazing. The dive masters make up for it though and take you on some interesting dives and they are so friendly!

1. There was always enough staff on the boat but the boats are quite small, just enough to take the divers and you can't have snorkellers go out with you on the same boat trip - not good if you travel with someone who doesn't dive. You do have to walk your equipment to the boat on the shore as well and in the heat that can be quite tricky.

2. Punta Cana was beautiful - the hotel was amazing and the beach really gorgeous, lovely if you just want to sit, eat, relax and drink fantastic cocktails.

3. Coral was extremly healthy and lots of beautiful fan coral and colours. Distinct lack of marine life so not great for photography. I would have been bored if I had 2 weeks of diving here so 1 week was plenty enough with 6 dives.

4. No shore diving available unfortunatley

5. I didn't experience any problems and all equipment I hired was in very good condition (compared to Egypt). They don't have dive computers to hire though, so I recommend you bring/buy your own.

6. The boat was a little small to be honest only big enough for the divers and equipment. There's no sunbathing areas and only a small toilet. Thank goodness the dive sites are only 10 minutes away!

7. I wouldn't say there were any 'must see's apparently they organise a trip to Solna (on the carribbean side of the Dominican Republic) which has better Marine life but we didn't do it as it was a very long day from 07.00hrs - 18.00hrs and it was pretty expensive.

Dive staff and masters were fantastic, all really friendly and hot on safety/equipment/briefings etc. As I was diving alone they also really helped me out with getting my equipment off/on the boat, etc.

8. I would certainly recommend the hotel, which was lovely but apart from that I probably wouldn't dive in Punta Cana, The Dominican Republic again as there just wasn't enough marine life for an avid underwater photographer!

hope this helps! :)