Curacao Trip Report - March 2007 - Part I

[montychandler]

Curacao Trip Report
Habitat Curacao​

3/3/07- 3/10/07​

Saturday - March 3, 2007
A long day of travel which went fairly smoothly – except for the minor detail of our luggage not making the same flight to Curacao as we did. The good news is that it came on the next American flight out of Miami so it was only about 5 hours behind us. Since this is vacation, not to worry. Got the rental truck, went to the hotel and got checked in, went to the dive shop and registered – as well as seeing old friends – and then went to the grocery store to get set up for the week. By the time all this was accomplished it was time to go to the airport and meet our luggage. The guys there were very good. They brought the bags out to us since we couldn’t get back into customs. In fact they brought all the bags out to the truck.

Then it was back to Habitat to unpack and prepare for our first dive of the trip. There’s something special about the first dive being a night dive at 10PM.. And for those that have not been there, the Habitat house reef is one of the best dive sites on the island. It’s set up is second to known, except perhaps a live-aboard, in terms of convenience.

Water temp was 26c – Viz was excellent as usual. Full moon made the night dive very nice. So nice in fact that our first “incident” was my dive buddy’s torch going out – didn’t refresh the batteries – and the lighting was so good she didn’t use her backup for about 5 minutes as she navigated by the moonlight! Yes, she had a light stick attached to her BC so I could see her. The usual array of critters were out and about including the Green Morays, crabs, lobster and octopus. A very nice start to the trip…

Sunday - March 4, 2007
After a bit of a sleep-in, some coffee, and a breakfast of bacon, eggs, fruit and orange juice, we headed up to get our tanks for a day of diving. Habitat has an air-fill right next to the parking lot so you just back the truck up to the little shed and load ‘em up. First stop of the day was Playa Kalki. This spot is at the far west/south end of the island. It was about a 45 minute drive from Habitat – road goes up along the coast through a few little “towns”. A nice drive actually.

The Playa Kalki reef is beautiful. Lush coral and bountiful fish life. Lot's of macro life as well. Very nice bright blue lettuce sea slugs - other colors as well, but the blue were very nice. On this first dive we went right (North) along a lush coral reef teaming with various fish and multiple coral/sponges.

The facilities at the site are really two-fold. There is a small dive shop on the site with lockers (actually a cubby hole - but they lock the door), rinse shower, rinse tanks, camera rinse, a pier that makes entry and exit a breeze. They also have a black marker at the drop point which makes it even easier. The cost to use the dive shops facilities is US$2.00 - very reasonable..

So that's the dive site, but there's more. About 50 meters from the dive shop there's a nice little cabana area and a beach with lounge facilities. The cabana area has a decent little bar/diner area that served reasonable snack/bar food - burgers, chicken satay, sandwiches, etc. It was actually quite good. If you have a non-diver along on the trip this is a good site to bring him/her to for lounging on a nice beach.
As usual while diving these remote sites, don't leave any valuables in your car. This was a lesson we learned again on this trip - although not at this dive site. We did however see a couple who were not as fortunate at this site. Some of the local thieves had jacked up the right side of their rental car and stolen both wheels/tires. A major inconvenience for them and just plain stupid on the locals part - but poverty will drive stupid people to do even dumber things without regard to what it does to other people.. Remember - you are prey to the local thieves - Don't leave ANYTHING of value in your vehicle.. Follow that little golden rule along with the one that says don’t go to strange places alone and you’ll have a wonderful time going to the local dive sites. Each has something wonderful to be experienced.

We enjoyed Playa Kalki so much, we did two dives on this day at this site. On the second dive we went left (South). The other three divers in our little group liked the South dive better for diversity of coral formation primarily. Both directions were quite nice though. I highly recommend this site for ease of entry, beauty of the site, nice facilities and food/drinks availability.

After this we decided to head back to the Habitat and rest a little. Figured we do another night dive after dinner.

Night dives on the habitat reef are always cool. This dive was no different. We headed in a generally north direction, as we had the previous night. On this dive I saw the largest Green Moray Eel I have ever seen – and I’ve seen some very large eels. We were about 20 minutes into the dive at a depth of about 15 meters just lazily toodling along the wall when my light hit upon a huge Eel out hunting along the wall about 2 meters from my right shoulder. All I could say, think or do was mouth “oh my god” as the size of this Eel registered in my mind. I know all about fish stories, but no joke – this was one exceedingly large Eel. That’s about all I could think about as we hit our halfway point and went shallower for our return the our entry point (the rope @ habitat – talk about easy navigation).
A great concluding dive to the day!

Monday - March 5, 2007
After realizing on Sunday afternoon that I had forgotten my 50mm Macro lens at home, I skipped the morning dive and headed into Willemstad to see if I could procure a macro lens. After all I had brought the port. Yes – I’m a blonde, and I’m still a little upset with myself for such a boneheaded mistake. After all what I do when I dive is photography.. Anyway, save yourself some time if you’re ever in my spot. Nowhere on this island will you find a 50mm or 100mm macro lens for a Canon EOS system.. But I did have a nice breakfast in town at a little café up from the local Boolchand’s.
When I got back to the Habitat, the others had enjoyed their morning dive at the Habitat house reef and where ready to head out for the day. Again we loaded our tanks into the truck and headed off on our days adventure.

First dive sight for today – for me at least – was Kleine Knip. Kleine Knip has a longer swim out to the drop area over the reef. My dive buddy got a bit tired going out - and so did I to an extent. Had a bit of a rest before submerging just to be sure I had caught my breath and was not panting as I went under water. That's about the only bad thing I would say about this dive. The site is a remote site without facilities, but the entry and exit were easy enough. The coral was similar to other dive sites and there was a lot of marine life. It’s hard to describe the beauty and I did not sit and take notes right after our dives about what I saw. Two weeks later it’s a bit hard to do, but once you’ve been to Curacao you’ll understand what I mean by all the sites are beautiful!

Second dive site of this outing was Playa Jeremi. This is a very pretty little cove type beach. It is a remote site without facilities. It’s just outside of Jeremi, where we stopped into a little snack shop for a bottle of water, chips and Ice cream – remember it’s 90 degrees F outside. The Ice Cream was welcome  .. So, remember all my ranting earlier about “Don’t bring ANYTHING of value with you to these remote dive sites”? We’ll as a result of going into town earlier and not wanting to hold everyone up any longer than I already had, I forgot to put all my stuff away in the safe before heading out today. That little blunder cost me at Playa Jeremi. Actually it cost me US$5 and about two hours of my time – as luck would have it, the local thieves found entry into our truck and made off with my wallet, the US$5 it contained, and my son’s sunglasses.. The two hours of my time was the amount of time I spent on the phone cancelling credit cards. Fortunately my card numbers are different than my wife’s so we were not left without resources to pay our bills etc for our stay. Not to mention that I was at least smart enough to not be carrying our cash around in my wallet. But it did cost me $120 as my room keys were in the little pouch that was grabbed – and since they got our room key, we changed rooms when we got back to the Habitat as well. They were very good about everything – and accommodating.
But I digress – Playa Jeremi is a little remote site, a very good dive, with an easy entry/exit. I recommend it too – despite my further blunder in not following my own advice, as mentioned above.

After a bit of rest, numerous chats with banking officials, and a nice dinner, we headed out for our next night dive at about 10:30. This time we headed South at a very leisurely pace. Saw the normal crabs, nocturnal fish and eels. Towards the end of the dive we did happen upon an octopus that was out feeding. We watch this lovely creature go from patch coral head to patch coral head feeding. It would gracefully land on a coral head, expand its tentacles all around it for a couple of minutes, then swim to another coral head. We watched it do this for 5 – 10 minutes before heading off, not wanting to disturb this magnificent animal. What a way to end a day!

 

[montychandler]

Tuesday - March 6, 2007
As one of our party is leaving tomorrow we left the selection of dive site to him – and he made an excellent selection. This morning we headed off to Porto Marie. Porto Marie is a privately managed beach with a dive shop on site, an excellent beach for lounging, showers, rinse tanks (which are a bit on the unusable side due to the rinse water being less than desirable), a nice shower, lockers and a very nice outdoor eatery. You can easily spend a day here and it is great place to go if you have a non-diver in your party. That’s the scoop on the above water scene. The true beauty of this place is the reef itself. It is a double reef site. There’s a map of the site near the bar which you should have a look at before diving the site so you can see the myriad of different ways to dive the site. I like the back wall of the second reef best as you will see very interesting sights there. On this dive we sat and watched some jacks feeding on a bait ball. They rounded up the bait fish and then began attacking. It was an incredible site. We generally see larger fish off this wall. You definitely want to keep an eye out for movement in the blue water. The reef is lush with lots of beautiful coral, sponges, macro life and various fish. Watch your time and air as it’s easy to get caught up in the beauty and forget that you have a 20 minute trek back to your entry point. Hopefully I’m not unique in my observations and lost in time quality while immersed in the beauty of this site. Probably my first or second favorite dive site on the island – so far.

After our second dive, we decided to hang out as a family and go into town (Willemstad) for an evening of shopping and dining – and a few beers. Knowing I had to get up early the following morning to take our departing friend to the airport, the festivities did not run too long into the evening. I’ll just say that Willemstad is a nice little town after the cruise ships leave and the locals have called it a day and begin to enjoy their city. Very nice indeed.

Wednesday – March 7, 2007
After going to the airport in the morning and having a nice breakfast, we decided we'd do one dive down to the end of the rope at Habitat reef. This was a fun dive. Not much at the bottom. Just a little patch coral and mostly sand past 30 meters. So we decided we'd head to the left (South) and see what was there at depth. We did run across a large green moray that was fully exposed. Got a few pictures of him which came out quite nice. From there we just did a gradual ascent till it was time to turn around and head back. A relaxing dive for the day.

After the dive we just relaxed around the villa and later went and did some grocery shopping for the last few days supplies. I’m glad we remembered we were on vacation and took a little time to just do nothing!


Thursday – March 8, 2007
For the first dive of the day, we headed off to Playa Lagun. This is a site we had not been to before. We found that it has a fairly long swim out to the reef. Further than it looks actually. The site really has little to no facilities. There is a dive shop at the site - across the street from the beach - but we did not go look at it so I don't know much about it. I did see some tables so it looked like you could at least get a cold drink there if you wanted one. Other than that it's a beach in a small cove - which means a fairly narrow entrance out to the open ocean. This means that you really need to know where you entered because you don't want to miss the entrance on your return. We use a marker to mark our entrance - and there is a marker in the form of a 2 liter bottle mounted on a rod which serves as a marker too. On this day there was a little current flowing from North to South, so we headed off into the current at the beginning of the dive. With my big camera this proved to be a little bit of a deterrent for me. The return was much like a drift dive back to our marker though. Nice dive and pretty coral with lots of fish, etc.. Been there done that - probably wouldn't put this site high on my list for returning to though... Not a bad site mind you – I don’t want to mis-represent it. It’s just that after you’ve dove it and a number of other sites in Curacao you might not put it on the “A” list.

For our second dive we headed down to Cos Abao. At the entrance you do pay a very small entry fee on a per vehicle basis. I think it was like US$3-4. It’s a private facility – but the small amount you pay is well worth it. I had forgotten just how nice this dive site is. We had a light lunch and some water during our surface interval here. Very relaxing. Afterwards the three of us got our gear on and headed into the water for our second dive of the day. This was very relaxing - nice entrance/exit on the beach. It’s a beautiful beach to look at as your swimming out to the reef. The reef here is gorgeous with lots of critters and fish swimming about. I will come back here on my next visit.

Friday – March 9, 2007
Alas our departure date in tomorrow morning and this will be our last dive of the trip. In keeping with our belief that the nicest reef to dive in Curacao - and certainly the most accessible for us – is the Habitat house reef, we decided to dive here this morning. We got up early so we could be in the water just as the sun was rising so we could witness the transition from night to day. This is just about as cool as going on a twilight dive and seeing the reverse transition. Lots of critters about including eels, crabs, and other nocturnal fish as well as the daytime fish beginning to swim about. After this dive we gave our gear a thorough rinsing/soak. Went back up to the villa and cooked my favorite meal of the day – breakfast!! Hot coffee, bacon, eggs, fruit and fresh squeezed orange juice sure hit the spot. After cleaning up a bit, we went down and got our gear so we could let it dry during the day. It’s really nice at Habitat. Nice to be able to thoroughly soak your gear there and not have to worry about doing it all after you get home. Gear is all ready to make another trip!

We did a little sight-seeing the rest of the day and went back into Willemstad to do a little shopping. Early to bed due to the 8am flight the next morning.
Another vacation to Curacao ended, another week of fun in the sun and some wonderful diving. Now I have 400 photo’s to look through and see if there are those few quality shots that’s help pay for the trip!

Cheers,
Monty

 

[PinkTank]

Monty, can you tell me what dive shop you made plans with? We'll be there at the end of May. After reading raving reviews about the Dive Bus, I realy wanted to set up dives with them. However, Ocean Encounters is right next door to where we're staying and I like their schedule better considering what dives I wanted to make. Turns out the week we're there is the dive festival and everyone's schedule is a little different that particular week.

 

[montychandler]

Not sure what you mean by "made plans with". We used the dive shop at the Habitat for all of our tank fills if that's what you mean. It's one of the reasons we stay at the Habitat - "All the shore diving you want" includes tanks to go. A major draw for us is the fact that we can build our own plan to dive whatever sites we want to - whenever we want to. As there are only a couple of dive sites that require a boat to get to, I've never actually gotten on a boat while in Curacao.

 

[irie1029]

Great report. Thanks.

 

[CUunderH2O]

Sound like a nice trip, except for the theft issue. Looking forward to seeing some photos.

 

[PinkTank]

Well, Monty, my husband doesn't dive, so I don't have a regular buddy. Thus, the getting-tanks-filled-and-driving somewhere-and-diving-from-shore thing isn't really an option for me. I make plans with dive companies so I'll have someone to dive with.

 

[montychandler]

Well, Monty, my husband doesn't dive, so I don't have a regular buddy. Thus, the getting-tanks-filled-and-driving somewhere-and-diving-from-shore thing isn't really an option for me. I make plans with dive companies so I'll have someone to dive with.

Sorry about that. I had read your use of the "we" as an implication there was more than one diver. As I said, I can't personally speak about many dive shops but I would offer a thought. At Habitat, Anne-Marie runs the dive shop.. Not only do they do boat dives, but I'd bet she would hook you up with other divers who are staying at the resort. I've seen three-somes going out on their house reef on more than one occasion. In fact a lot of the time I and my family are there diving, we are a group of three going out. Might be a consideration for you - which might very well allow for doing shore dives along the coast.. That's the upside potential. The worst case is that they also do boat dives and it is certain that there are divers diving the house reef whom you could go out with..

Hope you have a great trip.

Cheers,

 

[montychandler]

Sound like a nice trip, except for the theft issue. Looking forward to seeing some photos.

I did finally get around to posting a few of the photo's - some are at the bottom of this link -

http://www.montychandler.com/Underwater.htm

Another link which also has some above water photos is:

http://www.montychandler.com/Caribbean.htm at the bottom is a link to the Curacao photo's

 

[Divedoggie]

Monty!

Your report and pics have my acting like Pavlov's dogs!
Thanks!

We are heading there in a couple weeks!