Damselfish
Contributor
In Curacao, there are a variety of places to stay downtown, where you can walk to lots of shopping, restaurants, casinos, sightseeing - but none with shore diving on site. If I were to stay downtown my choice would probably be Hotel Kura Hulanda. (Like most downtown hotels no beach, but they will shuttle you to their beach club, don't think there's diving there though.) Your wife might find enough to do between the beach club and the hotel property to allow you to head elsewhere for a few dives - the hotel is really a semi-enclosed bit of downtown that was restored with pools, gardens, shops, museums, restaurants, quite unique. She may even feel ok with leaving the hotel to explore parts of downtown herself from there.fishoutawater:
There's a few places with shore diving of various quality that are pretty close to town, but not walking distance. Marriott, Breezes, Lion's Dive come to mind first but there's a few others. I would choose the Marriott out of these. (I've not stayed there but visited a number of times, nice resort and from most reports a decent shore dive and dive op. The Hilton is nearby but I think the Marriott is much nicer.) On the other side of town, I've stayed at Lion's Dive and didn't like the shore diving there, but at least it's an option. But if you stay at Lions Dive, Breezes, or the Seaquarium Resort (timeshare) you can walk between them, the Aquarium, and a few restaurants in the area, it's definitely not isolated, lots of activity.
The taxi fares should not be bad from these near-town places (especially in the grand scheme of the cost of a whole trip.) I think some places may have some sort of shuttle. Renting a car would be useful though, so you can go downtown when you want, see the island, visit remote beaches, whatever. It's generally a pretty decent place to drive once you get your bearings and fun to explore, just watch out for the usual Carribean hazards like potholes and goats.
The places with the best shore diving on site (and access to the best boat diving) such as Habitat or Sunset, and possibly Lodge Kura Hulanda, are a distance away from town. You'd probably want to rent a car, you definitely don't want to cab it from out there. AFAIK they do all have shuttles of some sort to downtown but they may not always be at the best times for you. I haven't gone to Lodge Kura Hulanda which is relatively new and way out towards the west end. But they are a sister property to Hotel Kura Hulanda downtown. This might be something for you to look into, split the trip between the 2 places and dive mostly when you are at the Lodge.
