Diving in Tahiti/Equipment Differences

[BBruton]

We were fortunate enough to get to go to Moorea and Bora Bora for two weeks last summer. If you travel often with a spouse (and you're the guy), then you know that the luggage space you get is directly proportional to the closet space you get at home. There are also some pretty draconian luggage restrictions on inter-island air travel, so leadiing up to the trip we were stressing a bit over what to take, what to leave, etc etc etc. Things I usually don't sweat about but to avoid getting accused of not listening like I should, I at least pay some attention to. Bottom line, I left my reg and BCD at home and decided to go with a rental when I got there. In retrospect I'd have paid the difference and took both and probably been happy taking a pair of shorts and flip flops instead of the usual stuff.

The main difference you'll find, at least in these two islands, is that the rental equipment is typically 'very' used and very basic. I did take my dive computer, but they use different connectors there and Top Dive said they would fix me up on the 'next dive' and the next one after that and so on, but never did. So I ended up with a pressure guage which read in BAR, and a depth guage that read in meters. Not a really big deal except the faces were so scratched on both that they were barely readable. It's not a big deal, but you just have to be mentally prepared for it. You don't want to be on a dive of a lifetime and have to spend a lot of time figuring out when you get to 1000 PSI (about 70 BAR to be safe) to start thinking about your safety stop or converting what 30 meters is in feet. It just isn't intuitive to an American who's not used to that type of measurements. I would've also liked to had those dives in my computer, just for posterity.

So, if you're going, my two cents would be to either pay for the extra baggage, which can get pretty spendy, or convince your spouse to give up on packing that many clothes. You don't need many clothes there anyway.

BKB

[azdiver]

Don't dare to compare all women to your spouse!

When we used to be able to take 2 carryons (boy were those the good days) I was able to travel for a 2 week dive trip with my 2 carryon pieces that included all my dive gear, photo gear and clothes!!

One carryon was your typical roll on 22" suitcase and the other a 26" dufflebag to fit my long fins! My male travel companion needed to check a large suitcase through and even then, he had to bring a bag on the plane.