Diving The Crab, situated in 4 hotel bases in Diani Beach, runs both PADI and SSI courses.

Ralph Winter, Operations Manager, runs a very tight ship from the Headquarters at Nomads Beach Hotel. All the dive bases are run equally efficiently. Equipment is immaculate and well maintained. Professionalism and service are certainly words that spring to mind when you walk into any of the dive centres. The Crab has also set up as a fully operational Nitrox centre - the only one in Kenya at present.

Personal Dive Guides: You will be given personal dive guides for each buddy pair/dive group. If you choose to dive with The Crab, we highly recommend Salim, one of the most experienced dive guides of the area. Apart from his ability to spot octopus eyes from over 15metres away, we would also recommend him because of his respect for the reef, for his divers and their needs.

Diving here costs more than elsewhere in Kenya - $46 each at the time of our visit.

Diving The Crab, with an impressive array of boats, covers all diving around Tiwi and Diani Beach. They also offer day trips to Wasini Island and longer trips to Pemba, Tanzania.

Barracuda
Tiwi Beach

We also dived with Michael from Barracuda for the Tiwi stretch of reef. This area is accessible from Diani Beach.

Barracuda is a small, friendly, laid-back concern in Tiwi - a franchise of the German run chain of dive centres set up throughout Kenya in the 1980's. Located at the Travellers Inn in Tiwi, Barracuda, like The Crab, caters mainly for the hotel guests not for visitors on a specific diving holiday. The diving from the Barracuda boat concentrates on the local reef so no boat ride takes more than 20 minutes. The dives themselves are shallow ie. 20metres max, very easy with no dependence on tides. If you want a chilled out beach holiday with a couple of chilled out dives then Tiwi would appeal.

Nuli Reef , Pink Reef - Wasini Island

Tiwi (also diveable from Tiwi Beach), Kinondo, Galu, - Diani Beach

(Celcius) 28 degrees. Visibility affected by Kaskazi wind which usually lasts no more than a week or so. As Dive The Dream's luck would have it, the wind stayed for entire month! Most sites best dived on an incoming or slack tide.

Comments on the dives:

A day out from Diani or Shimoni will take you to Wasini Island and its surrounding reefs. Either by traditional dhow (left) or fast boat - the options vary in price but both include a wonderful lunch of Lobsters and Crab and other delicious tasting fare on Wasini Island itself.

Diving Nuli Reef on a runout spring tide was not the cleverest way to start the day's diving but thankfully once past the 25 metre mark as we neared the reef itself, we were able to unclamp our whitened knuckles from the buoy line and get on with the dive. The reef begins at 27 metres and after descending through dark blue water thinking nothing was below, a busy coral city appears out of the depths. Yellow and Blue striped Snapper, Barracuda, suddenly surround you in their hundreds and it is hard to know where to look first. Soft corals, Gorgonian Fans, outcrops of coral delicately laced with white and purple whispy anemones swaying with the surge. An exciting reef housing hundreds of chromis and other tiny fish life. Almost immediately after reaching the reef, Ralph spotted a banded Pipe Fish hidden amongst some algae hanging from the reef.

We were diving on a 36% Oxygen mix to enable a longer dive and were limited to a safe 28metres. Activity below us, above us, around us. All Ralph could hear for the first few minutes were our excited grunts and squeals through the regulators as we tried to alert each other to look at this school of Snappers or that school of Trevally.

As always on an awesome dive, Charlie was very hazy and dreamy throughout, Mark, like a little kid with a new toy had wide eyes stretching round the circumference of his head and the shutter just kept clicking. Several shots taken of Charlie surrounded by Snappers but the wall of yellow and blue was too solid to actually see through to the other side!

The visibility on this dive was apparently the worst Ralph had seen it - approx 10 metres. This was probably due, not just to the Kaskazi wind which hadn't fully died down, but also to the tide movement at that time of day. An unfortunate method of dive planning has been forced upon the dive bases in hotels along this coastline. Many centres tend to plan the diving around Hotel meal schedules which sometimes results in missing the best opportunity of the day to view the reef. This is a crazy notion to avid divers as usually one would expect that the day is planned to ensure the best diving possible on each reef. Regardless, a wonderful, wonderful dive.

Pink Reef was the second shallower dive of the day on the Wasini Island trip - Nuli was the first. As its name sounds, the whole reef is covered in beautiful, pink, purple, blue, lavender, burgandy soft corals. Multitudes of glass fish amongst the plush royal carpets. Oranges and Golds of the Anthias so bright against the soft pink-blue hazy backdrop. Mark's ear was playing up so I (Charlie) got to play with the camera!

Warm, soft and fluffy descriptives spring to mind when trying to conjure up a written image of this reef. I'll stop there shall I?!

In our eyes, Pink Reef is by far the 'prettiest' reef in Kenya.

Kinondo, Galu and Tiwi Reefs are less dramatic but still very beautiful and coral is in good condition. Kinondo Reef had us giggling like idiots as it was us against the Red Tooth Triggerfish who kept wiggling their tails at us and nipping our fins when we weren't looking. The macro lens was on the camera and the visibility was around 10metres. Otherwise, there could have been some interesting Triggerfish silhouette shots against the surface. There were hundreds of them, all vying for their individual territories. Why they are in such proliferation on this particular reef, we can only guess - mass mating spree? - answers on an e-postcard please. Salim, our superb dive-guide spotted 5 different coloured leaf fish in the space of 1 minute - Black, yellow, white, purple and green - we could not believe it. Tiwi Reef is the prettiest dive on the Tiwi Beach stretch but visibility can often be affected by the outflow of the river as it is situated in the channel.

Accomodation on South Coast

Tiwi Beach

Diani Beach

Accomodation all along the south coast varies considerably. Being on a budget and diving from different locations, we tried several places out. When diving with Barracuda in Tiwi Beach, we first camped at Twiga Lodge for 400KSh (£4) per night. This was nicely situated under coconut palms and right on the beach but the staff were most unwelcoming and we constantly felt as if we were under constant scrutiny from hopeful thieves. Several thefts were reported during our stay........

....So we moved next door to Coral Cove Cottages - a selection of simple bandas (huts) 600KSh (£6) per night and more expensive cottages 1500KSh (£15) with electricity, personal house boys, kitchens and en-suite bathrooms. Cosy situation, nestled amongst trees, secure from passing beach sellers, calm and quiet. We wouldn't recommend the bandas as they were hot, stuffy, and outside toilet facilities were less than desirable but the cottages are comfortable and are highly recommended for a quiet week by the sea - several honeymooners have chosen this as their quiet idyll. Just keep your food away from the troops of cute and cheeky vervet monkeys that tend to appear every time your back is turned. Kerstin Handleman, who runs Coral Cove, is also one of the dedicated individuals involved in TurtleWatch Project along the Kenyan Coast.

It is even harder to find anywhere decent to camp along this busy tourist stretch. Diani Beach is jammed with a good range of beachfront Hotels, Guesthouses, and Bandas accomodation from 1,000 to 50,000Tsh per night. Their is one cheap campsite at......... that has seen better days, but due to proximity to our diving centre, we camped at Nomads Beach Hotel, for 500KSh (£5) per person per night inclusive of huge breakfast. Yes, it hurt, but that breakfast was worth it.