No comments about Caribbean Islands Handbook: The Definitive Pan-Caribbean Guide (Trade & Travel Handbooks).

No comments about Caribbean Islands Handbook: The Definitive Pan-Caribbean Guide (Travellers World).

No comments about Fodor's Exploring Caribbean, 4th Edition (Exploring Guides).

No comments about Guide To The Caribbean Basin Initiative 1994.

No comments about Cruising Around the Caribbean (Cruising Around...).

1 comments about Diving Guide to the Caribbean (Diving Guides).

1. This book does not reach the standards demanded by today's discerning Scuba Diver. It is also very difficult to see where this particular publisher is coming from with a title "Caribbean Diving Guide" on the cover of a book which does not include so many of the very best diving destinations from the Caribbean islands. In short, it is difficult to match that title with the content.
   
   A glance inside reveals a selection of 28 dive sites in 9 countries. Whilst I might view the choice of country as questionable, I did expect to find the very best diving from each chosen location but there are just not there.
   
   Not for the first time, this particular publisher appears to have cobbled together the work of several contributors to produce a disjointed book from whatever information and photography was available - rather than commissioning somebody to go out and produce something much better. In short, they have gone for the cheaper option and it shows.
   
   Beginning with a very disappointing selection from the Bahamas - where any mention whatsoever of the Blue Holes (for which the Bahamas are world-famous) is studiously avoided, we are then taken to the Florida Keys, neither of which are even "in" the Caribbean.
   
   After a trip to Cuba, where we are treated to 3 very low-grade sites with maximum depths of 20m, 15m and 10m respectively - and you begin to get the idea. These are followed by Cozumel (wrongly spelled Cotzumel) where, yet again, the best sites are avoided. Four sites from the Caymans - predictably including "Stingray City" (yawn.), are followed by three in Belize - where the Author attempts to rename the "Great Blue Hole" the "Giant Blue Hole." After visiting Honduras, we are suddenly treated to a 1,600 mile journey over to Guadeloupe and Martinique for 2 dives each before rounding off the diving in continued disappointing fashion with the last 2 underwater sojourns being a further 500 miles away in Curacao.
   
   Whilst claiming to be a guide to the "Caribbean," Aruba, Barbados, Bonaire, BVI, Cayman Brac, Grenada, the Grenadines, USVI (to name but 8.) are not mentioned at all.
   
   As always, Kurt Amsler's photographs are very good (and this earns the book its one Star) although a number of other images are under-exposed and not up to the standard expected in this day and age. The 24 pages of drawings of common fishes at the end is useful - and perhaps they should have concentrated on that particular theme instead of producing a book which is of little value to any serious diver.
   
   NM

No comments about A Little Journey to Puerto Rico.

No comments about Crusing Guide to Venezuela and Bonaire (Crusing Guides) (Crusing Guides).

No comments about Frommer's Caribbean '99.

No comments about Jamaica Insight Guide (Insight Guides).