Key Largo is a leisurely drive from Miami and given that Miami is a large airport, it is the perfect destination for any travel to the Florida Keys. We flew into Miami, rented a car for the week and made our way to Key Largo. The Florida Keys are a long stretch of islands that are connected by countless bridges. It is totally possible to drive the entire stretch of Key Largo to Key West and back in a single day, with a few stops along the way. There are other scuba diving locations along the chain of islands, however most of the diving is done out of Key Largo.
None of the cities along the chain of islands are particularly large, so pretty much any hotel or AirBnB in Key Largo will work just fine. The hotels are fairly expensive given the quality / age of the accommodations, so if you have a group of divers...an AirBnB may actually be competitive or cheaper.
If you stay at the Courtyard Marriott, you can actually walk to the boat docks that house Sea Dwellers and Rainbow Reef. Sea Dwellers is a substantially smaller diving operation than Rainbow Reef, with Rainbow Reef being the largest...and thus many divers prefer not to use Rainbow Reef given the "cattle boat" nature of the diving. Sea Dwellers did a fine job, nothing special and nothing strange.
The dock area has plenty of parking and a couple of eating establishments along the walk way. Several fishing charter boats also use the dock as do a couple pleasure cruises. Nothing particularly special about it, but it was fun to walk along and see some of the boats.
The harbor itself is just outside the reef and diving locations so the travel time to/from the diving location is under an hour. Space permitting, the boat is a combined snorkel and scuba platform so you will have a mix of divers. On my boat we had a handful of snorkelers, myself an Open Water checkout diver, a couple doing Advanced Open Water, 3 ladies in full "tech diver" gear and a newly minted open water diver who ended up getting sea sick and never hit the water. We also had several instructors as well as the divemaster and captain.
The boat is what you would imagine. It had a main covered area with tanks and benches for the divers. A small up front "galley" area as well as a top "sun" deck and a forward bow deck where most of the snorkelers hung out. For those diving Nitrox, tests were conducted at the dock with a log sheet that was signed.
The boat ran a standard "2 tank dive" before lunch and then another "2 tank dive" after lunch. Each morning I did the "2 tank dive" before lunch so that my wife (non diver) and I could do some tourist stuff. It worked out exceptionally well. She would have a sleep in, tool around in the rental car, and then be back to pick me up around Noon. I would then shower and hang my gear in the hotel and off we would go for a late lunch and tourist stuff.
We purposely planned for 2 "extra" days after my diving to head down to Key West. That morning we got up, jumped in the car and then took a slow drive down to Key West. We particularly enjoyed stopping in Islamorada and checking out some of the artist shops.
We purposely planned for 2 "extra" days after my diving to head down to Key West. That morning we got up, jumped in the car and then took a slow drive down to Key West. We particularly enjoyed stopping in Islamorada and checking out some of the artist shops.
We purposely planned to have dinner in Key West and catch the sunset at the "farthest point south" for the United States. Lots of folks had the same idea, so get there a few minutes early. Key West is certainly a tourist place, but walking around the neighborhoods off the beaten path was enjoyable.
