I had been on a snorkeling trip with another charter (many years ago) and was SO excited to experience it with my boyfriend. The price was very reasonable, unfortunately the experience was barely ok. First of all, there were about 100 people on the boat which made it hard to get a good seat and to snorkel when people kept running into each other. There were several people who couldn't swim well enough to go out to the reef and I understand that safety is the first priority, but the captain was unnecessarily rude to them and abrasive with anyone who wasn't moving fast enough. The equipment was old and not in very good condition. I brought my own, but my boyfriend's mask leaked the whole time. The catamaran stopped at least a 10 minute swim (taking the waves into account) away from the reef, and although the captain said he couldn't take the boat any closer, I was much closer the last time I went snorkeling. The swim out was absolutely exhausting and the swim back was even worse. We were given a short lecture on the way out to the reef about our equipment, the reef, and important hand signals, but they failed to even mention the HUGE number of small jellyfish we saw. I was terrified that we'd get stung when I noticed them.
Obviously they weren't dangerous because neither one of us was stung despite many of them brushing past, but I think it would've been nice to know that before getting into the water. Also, the directions they gave everyone about where to swim were very vague and we had to deal with a lot of yelling and pointing from the crew on the boat. We still never ended up at a good part of the reef - we were on the outskirts the entire time. There was absolutely no organization in getting back on the boat, so we ended up treading water and bumping into people for more than 10 mins. It just could've been so much better.
