U.S. Dive Travel founder,
Gen'l Mgr John Hessburg.

Dear Dive Buddies Around the World:

Thank you for browsing through our website today. We hope we can be of service to you soon. Good news, sunseekers ! Just when you thought you'd seen it all in the world of tropical travel -- get ready to be surprised. There IS, after all, Something New Under the Sun.

It's the WorldWideWeb site of U.S. Dive Travel. ^TM   We are a family-owned agency that serves you with a touch of class, & a ton of TLC. We've revamped & amped up this Internet site to show you some winning ways to plan a dive vacation the best ways you can. Even by conservative measure, the U.S. Dive Travel website is now the largest & most text+photo-rich resource for scuba diving trips & snorkeling vacations on the Worldwide Web. We hope you enjoy your browsing; you are now in a Hassle-Free Zone, where easy humor along with safety consciousness prevail. U.S. Dive Travel is America's answer to scuba divers who are fed up with dive vacations as usual.

Here's our favorite beach on Earth:
Guess what islands these might be?

ARE YOU:

• Fed up with impersonal telephone service from some travel agents, who act like they're doing you a favor just lingering five minutes on your phone call?
• Fed up when those same travel "pros" know next to nothing about the dive destinations they are selling, then give you a royal song & dance, sometimes putting you on hold while they leaf frantically through the Hotel & Travel Index?
• Fed up with some big airlines & their bizarre price structures -- that bounce up & down like wapiti on high-test cappuccino?
• Fed up with the hoopla & hucksterism that some dive magazines swab all over their travel pages to toady up to their richest advertisers? Tired of reading the threadbare phrases "Tropical Paradise" & "World-Class Diving?"

Whom can you believe anymore, when some scuba diving periodicals slosh praises over a shopworn island & its L'Hotel Hovel, as if these passe' destinations were the next best thing to bliss? If you need a new friend in dive travel planning, you're in luck. Welcome to U.S. Dive Travel. Here is our fundamental promise. We'll do it right for you, right from the start. The formula is simple. This is YOUR dive vacation. You are in charge. We work for you. To prove we respect your intelligence & your consumer prerogatives, we'll tell you the straight story straight away, even if it isn't exactly what you expected to hear. We are your dive travel advocates. Your satisfaction is our success. That's why our dive vacation clients become good friends, not numbers on some windblown spreadsheet.

We sincerely thank you for considering a scuba vacation, a snorkeling trip, or a customized overseas adventure from U.S. Dive Travel. As a full-service agency, USDT offers you convenient "one-stop shopping." We'll combine air tickets, lodging & live-aboard diving, island dive operations -- or whatever cultural side tours you choose -- into one affordable streamlined dive package for you.

This Internet site was created to help dive travelers by showing you how to secure better discounts & better vacation value, plus safer trips all around. The U.S. Dive Travel website is the largest text + photo resource for dive vacations on the Internet. We serve scuba divers & snorkelers with equal enthusiasm. Our founders have more than 35 consecutive years of hands-on experience planning & guiding adventure tours & expeditions in many countries across Latin America & the greater Pacific Basin. Our many repeat clients in countries around the world, whom we connect with the 200+ dive resorts & 30+ live-aboards we represent in 30 countries, say they enjoy returning to USDT each year for their dive vacations. We work hard for you, & we hope to remain worthy of your confidence. We also hope to enjoy you as new clients soon. The world is your dive vacation oyster, & U.S. Dive Travel is the spoon. Before we continue, a little reminder --

OUR RESERVATIONS CENTER: U. S. Dive Travel Network PMB 307 -- Suite #116 15050 Cedar Ave. South St. Paul, MN, U.S.A. 55124-7047. Voice Mail: 952-953-4124. OUR INTERNET ADDRESS: www.usdivetravel.com E-mail: divetrip@bitstream.net

USDT founders Susan & John Hessburg, with sons Bo (left) & Jack.

USDT has good news for scuba divers, & snorkelers too, who are shopping for good value in a tropical trip. We offer you four dive vacation plans:

• "Do-it-yourself" dive vacation trips to quality Pacific & Caribbean dive resorts; or on deluxe live-aboard dive vessels in the Pacific, Caribbean & the Indian Ocean. Most of our tropical island destinations are ideal for scuba divers & snorkelers alike, so couples & families can play together.
  
  
• Guided scuba diving & back-country cultural tours of Fiji in the South Pacific, & the Bay Islands of Honduras, with emphasis on exploration of virgin reefs & classic historic sites such as the Copan Ruins in Honduras. We'll be adding new scuba diving destinations year by year as clients call for them.
  
  
• Customized group tours for dive clubs, families, or independent groups of diving buddies -- with or without a professional divemaster escorting you, as you wish. If we don't already have a discount dive resort contract in the country of your choice, we'll work to negotiate one for you, customized 2 D Max, to meet your needs.
  
  
• Customized adventure vacations anywhere you wish, when you want to blend any favorite sport -- mountain climbing, trekking, sailing, sea kayaking, deep-sea fishing or windsurfing -- with scuba diving. We generally complete the planning work for these customized overseas vacations between the months of May & October, when the high season crunch is NOT in full swing.
  
  

We are a full service adventure travel center, offering you some of America's best bargains on all facets of your scuba vacation from lodging to watersports to air tickets. All of our guided dive tours are run by an independent affiliate agency called Wild Island Expeditions -- also based in the Twin Cities, Minnesota, USA. But whenever your dive vacation choice is a "do-it-yourself" trip to any Caribbean or Pacific dive resort, or aboard any of the live-aboard yachts we represent, then you are a client of U.S. Dive Travel.

We are trained & experienced adventure travel professionals. John Hessburg, general manager of U.S. Dive Travel Network, is a PADI divemaster as well as a longtime adventure-travel consultant, with professional mountaineering experience. Operations manager Susan Hessburg is also a PADI-trained diver, a dive travel associate, & an experienced trekker & mountaineer. John & Susan know & love the sports of scuba diving, snorkeling, rock climbing, alpine mountaineering & trekking. They truly enjoy helping adventure travelers with a yen for exotica & economy to plan memorable vacations on......

Wild Islands, or in Wild Highlands, well off the beaten path.

To serve you better, we have mastered the art of low-cost high adventure during more than 36 years of world travel to many countries throughout Latin America & the Pacific Rim. Our owners normally are overseas for several months each year on business travel, so economizing is more than a passing interest for us. Our company's dive travel associates have learned many special techniques to trim our own costs overseas, while still ensuring full safety & comfort. And we use all these techniques to help you, too. When you book a scuba diving trip with U.S. DIVE TRAVEL you always get the "Family Deal." The way we extend special courtesies & perks to our immediate family when they ask us to plan their tropical travel -- that's the same up-front, TLC treatment all USDT clients get, all seasons.

At U.S. Dive Travel we know that we are nothing without you, our valued clients. That's why we never forget our prime responsibility -- to serve you with patience, flexibility, humor & painstaking attention to accuracy.

While we are an independent dive-travel wholesale agency, back in 1991, to strengthen our customer service we negotiated an exclusive contract to represent a major Pacific Northwest air-travel wholesaler. This firm ranks among the nation's largest & most respected wholesalers of air tickets to the Central American countries of Mexico, Belize, Honduras, Costa Rica, Guatemala & Panama.

As an associate agency of this two-decade firm, we now tap directly into their network of "sweetheart contracts" with major international airlines, to obtain airfares that save you far more than any conventional travel agency can do. We buy airline seats at a serious discount & then pass these savings along to you, sometimes $70 - $250 per ticket below the best retail price available. For example, our air tickets from LAX to anywhere in Micronesia (Yap, Palau, Truk Kosrae) will run about $200 - $250 per client below the lowest discount published fare.

U.S. Dive Travel is one of few adventure travel wholesalers
in North America who can offer you all of these Five Special Services:

1. We meet any & all local clients who so request, in person, at your home or office, if the group is 20 committed clients or larger. All meetings are by advance appointment only, & are based on time slot-availability during high season (November through April). For groups of 20 or more committed clients, we'll even give you a private slide show & video presentation, with Q & A, at your home or workplace.

2. We offer qualified price protection on air tickets, wherever we hold a wholesale air contract to your destination. Once you commit to our best price quote & pay us for your air tickets, if we were not able to secure wholesale seats for you right then, because they'd sold out for your chosen dates, we may be able to wait-list you until about four weeks before you depart. Then we'll alert you if these discount seats re-appear. For example, an out-of-state dive travel competitor might suddenly release a large block of seats they've been holding for weeks, because a dive tour group canceled. These seats pop up in our computer system & we alert you immediately. If you give us the OK, we'll charge you the minimum required change fee, take your old tickets back, re-issue your new tickets & your net savings are likely to be considerable.

3. If you need to update your scuba diving gear, we'll help connect you to reputable experts who frequently can secure the rock-bottom lowest prices in the nation for quality brands. By the rules of our travel partnership, U.S. Dive Travel takes zero commissions for these gear referrals. We do it for you. We're glad to take the time to help you secure new gear that will enhance your safety & enjoyment. All we ask is: tell a friend about us.

4. We take care to hone even the smallest details for you. For example, we'll give you impeccably organized pre-trip checklists to help you plan what scuba gear & peripherals to take, what shots to get, whom to call for visa questions, & how to find the best deals in travel insurance. Nothing is left to chance. Well nothing except the weather & bugs.

5. Many regard us as one of the West Coast's leading experts on resort-based scuba diving, & shore diving in the Hawaiian Islands. After several dozen dive tours since 1990 to the islands of Niihau, Kauai, Oahu, Maui, Molokai, Lanai & Hawaii (The Big Island), we know scores of secret spots the guidebooks missed -- from the best hide-away beaches, to the best shore diving coves, to the best-value hotels & dive operations.

There's another way we try to put respect for our dive travel clients before unvarnished profit.

Consider this question -- do you really need travel insurance? In some cases itís a very good idea. We'll take the time to give you solid advice & a list of America's top travel insurance firms, including their 1-800 numbers so you can save a buck on your call. Though most of our dive travel competitors sell cancellation insurance, we at U.S. Dive Travel do not feel comfortable doing so.

The way we see it: here you are about to spend a lot of money on a dive trip that by its very nature is riskier than beach basking in Cancun. Therefore, you already know there's a small risk to scuba diving. So for us to drub a sense of mishap anxiety into you before your dive trip, then try to sell you something to assuage that anxiety, seems like snake oil salesmanship. We just want to improve the security of your dive vacation. Our goal is to earn your respect, your friendship & your trust, so that down the line we may be blessed with your repeat dive travel business. With years of successful dive travel experience behind us, we can guarantee you fast & friendly service, expert advice, extremely competitive prices & even more.

Our TOP PRIORITIES at U.S. Dive Travel are:

• First, your uncompromised safety & enjoyment overseas. We emphasize your safety above all else & provide all dive vacation clients with thorough safe-diving checklists before departure.
  
  
• Second, protection of the sensitive wilderness reefs where we dive. We know, as you do, the right way to "Take a Dive on the Wild Side." Take nothing from the reefs but photos & memories, leave nothing but bubble trails & friendships.
  
  
• Third, respecting the ancient cultures & generous people of our host countries. Our scuba vacation guides work hard to dispel any lingering echoes of the old cliche' -- "Ugly American" -- that used to dog U.S. adventure travelers abroad.
  
  

So who are the people who manage U.S. DIVE TRAVEL?

General manager of the dive travel service, John Hessburg is trained in land & ocean rescue, & is fluent in Spanish & Portuguese, conversant in German. A native of St. Paul, Minnesota, John moved to Seattle in '82, then back to St. Paul in June '99 after his father suffered a serious heart problem. With wife, Susan, he fell in love with the Pacific & founded Wild Island Expeditions & later U.S. Dive Travel in April '91.

John has led dozens of land-based expeditions & tours abroad for more than 36 years. These include more than 33 dive trips to various Hawaiian Islands, 7 dive trips to the South Pacific, one to the Arabian Peninsula, many to Mexico & the Western Caribbean, three mountaineering expeditions to remote sectors in the Argentine & Bolivian Andes, several trekking & photo trips throughout South America, two whitewater & voyageur canoe expeditions in the wilderness of Ontario, two long-distance bike tours of Canada & California, plus scores of rock & ice climbs in the Colorado & Canadian Rockies & the Cascades. John also has completed 19 cross-country ski marathons (50-55 kilometers) back in MN & WI since 1977.

A native of windward Oahu in Hawaii, Susan Hessburg is a PADI-certified diver, who with John has made many adventure trips back to the Hawaiian Islands since 1990. Susan has climbed three of the tallest glaciated peaks in the Cascade Range & a number of smaller ones. While keeping the company books & computer system on track, Susan & John also are raising two livewire boys: "L.J. the 4th" & Robert Marcus.

Between dive tours, John is perpetually re-writing his first book, a politically incorrect look at the spirit & humor of adventure travel in some of the world's most fascinating & off-beat cultures. Before founding U. S. Dive Travel, John Hessburg graduated summa cum laude & Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Minnesota School of Journalism in Minneapolis, then worked for 15 years as an investigative reporter & news writer for several magazines & daily newspapers across the USA. That first career spanned nearly nine years as a staff writer at the metro daily, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. John also served as a Pacific Northwest correspondent for Reuters, the British international news agency, during those 9 years at the Post. In the 1980s, he was twice nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, one time solo for a feature piece about the Vietnam years, & once as member of a team analyzing a Mt. Hood climbing tragedy that claimed several young students. John won about a dozen state & regional reporting awards in Minnesota & Washington states, including the Frank Premack Award for Investigative Journalism in Minnesota.

One series of about 25 stories in the Seattle morning newspaper, published in the late 1980s, exposed rampant timber theft on U.S. Forest Service lands in Washington, Oregon & Alaska, which for decades had cost American taxpayers millions of dollars a year. Prodded by those stories, & public outcry over Forest Service malfeasance, Congress eventually passed strict new laws regulating timber sale accountability. Now logging in America's national forests falls under far tighter law enforcement scrutiny, to protect vulnerable public resources from a corrupt old-boys network of timber pirates that used to prey at will on the Pacific Northwest.

In a lighter vein, U.S. Dive Travel's co-director Susan Hessburg, whose hobbies include gourmet Asian & Mediterranean cooking, back-country skiing & old-country cross-stitching, worked more than seven years as senior sales coordinator for a successful manufacturer's rep firm in Seattle. She is our accounting & software maven; & can juggle 4 several key tasks at once with accuracy & aplomb. (Raising two testosterone-driven boys is good practice for any office manager!)

John Hessburg & Susan Hessburg are backed by members of their immediate family, including one web-tech & agent in Hawaii, & another pro duo in Minneapolis, MN. In addition, U.S. Dive Travel has two senior business partners, & another air-ticket specialist in Seattle, two senior partners in Vancouver, BC, & two more in Texas, plus important contract associates in the Denver & Miami areas. This compact, efficient network is linked to scores of travel agencies & dive centers all across the USA, Canada & Europe. Our USDT planning team has several veteran travel agents in metro cities across the USA who specialize in securing discount international air tickets for our clients. In addition, U.S. Dive Travel has built a skilled & experienced network of divemasters & instructors around the world, who lead group trips to Pacific & Caribbean islands for USDT on a contract basis each year.

So when you book a dive trip -- whether dive resort or live-aboard -- or any custom overseas adventure, with the friendly folks at U.S. Dive Travel, you'll have experienced advocates who know how to cut quickly through red tape, working hard as your personal dive travel consultants. Thank you again for your time & interest. Looking forward to hearing from you. Good Health & Good Humor for a Bon Voyage!

John Hessburg & Susan Hessburg
& the USDT Partners.

U. S. DIVE TRAVEL