Utopia Village/ U Dive

★ 5 · Grant Sinclair · 2009-07-09

Utopia Lodge is excellent. It provides a unique combination of seclusion, small group diving, high end accommodations, and excellent food. It is not in town (you take a boat to get to the lodge), so if you’re interested in a wild night life, this is not for you (unless you bring your own group, in which case you could certainly create your own at their bar). However, if you would like to be someplace that is quiet, relatively secluded, and provides excellent Caribbean diving for all levels of experience, it is. The lodge is beautiful, the staff is friendly and accommodating, and the dive sites are relatively close (5 to 20 minutes), variable (each dive was unique) and abundant (we never hit the same site twice). Plus they have an absolutely beautiful section of reef at the resort that provides for great shore dives. D.M.s Antonio and Oscar were filling in for some dive staff who were on vacation. They were very energetic, enthusiastic and friendly. They took great care of us and our equipment. Boat captain Leonard went out of his way to find dolphins (we swam with wild dolphins twice – they were incredible!) and whale sharks (didn’t find these, but it was late in the season, so we weren’t surprised). We have done 270+ dives in the Caribbean, and this was as good a dive team/experience as we have ever had. The chef while we were there was John. He is new (it was his first week) to Utopia and he is superb. The food was consistently marvelous, as were the desserts. He really works hard to make sure the meals are delicious and unique (nothing remotely close to the standard meals found throughout the Caribbean – and we’ve been to many resorts). The only two downs (as you will read in other reviews) are the sand fleas and the local air travel. But the fleas can be controlled with DEET (we used a 35% cream that worked fine) and the air travel wasn’t really different from any other puddle jumper experiences we have had. Neither would prevent us from going back again. We will return to Utopia and recommend it to all. It was wonderful!