I don't know about everyone else, but I have a hard time justifying paying $100 or more for a pair of sunglasses. Since lenses tend to scratch easily, even the ones that supposedly have anti-scratch coatings, after a while you just can't see anything any more.
So while I usually walk right by the $10 sunglass racks at CVS, I can find decent sunglasses for $20 or so at JC Penney or similar stores. I finally decided that I wanted a pair of polarized glasses to cut down on the glare, but the only problem is that it's hard to find a good pair of polarized glasses in the "cheap sunglasses" price range, until now.
Last year Barbara and I were shopping for snorkelling gear to take on our honeymoon, so we stopped by a local dive shop (called, appropriately, The Dive Shop) and I noticed a rack of polarized sunglasses on the wall called Dive Shades. Their prices were very reasonable at around $30, and I liked their Mediterranean model so I bought a pair. They were so good that after a couple of days I pretty much retired all of my remaining old sunglasses. So if you're looking for a very good pair of polarized sunglasses at a very reasonable price, check out
Dive Shades or one of their resellers.
The remaining issue is whether you can actually take these shades kayaking. For sea kayaking, the answer is a definite yes because the sunglasses will help protect your eyes from wave reflections and will cut down on glare. For whitewater, the answer is mixed. The problem I've always had with wearing sunglasses with whitewater is that they tend to fog up really easily after a couple of rolls, especially if you have warm air with colder water. I've tried everything I could think of and whatever anyone else suggested: spit, toothpaste, dive mask defogger, and so on. It just washes away. At this point I've just stopped wearing sunglasses for whitewater activities because I like to be able to see what I'm doing, but a good solution to the fogging problem would certainly be welcome.
