Hello everyone! I've just found this site. My husband and I are hoping to take a trip to either Bonaire or Curacao around Feb-Mar 08. I've researched Bonaire and shore diving seems to be pretty much on your own. A brief look at Curacao seems to show guided shore diving only. Is this true? Do you need to rent a car/truck to get around or is there public transportation?
Not true, we spent a week there last April diving on our own. You will need a vehicle though as the divesites are in most cases miles apart. And while there is a bus, I can only think of two divesites where you'd reasonably want to carry your gear from the main road/bus stop. Most Curacao sites are several hundred yards to more than a mile or two from the main road on secondary roads. One of the diveops advertises that they're on the bus route, but they don't tell you that their location is a mile or two from the water on the main road.
I suppose if you wanted to just dive the West End resorts, Sunset Waters, Habitat, Kura Hulanda, etc. you could do it on the bus but I wouldn't want to. At Sunset Waters it's about an 1/8 mile carry downhill to the water/diveshop from where the bus would leave you - assuming it drops there and not on the main road a mile away in the local town.
In Willemsted it's slightly better, there are some sites that are along the main ocean roads, the DiveBus site, maybe Lions Dive, and some of the other resort sites might be walkable from the bus stop, but what a hassle. I never saw the bus in town so I don't know if it drops onsite at the Marriott or the other sites or if it drops on the main road outside the resorts in that area. At the Marriott, it's probably an 1/8 of a mile to the water from their entrance.
On Curacao you really need a car to function.
Unless you just want to stay onsite at one of the resorts and do all your diving off their beach or on their boats.
I loved the idea of renting an apt. on Bonaire and not having to eat all meals in a restaurant - this doesn't seem to be as popular on Curacao. If given a choice - Bonaire or Curacao - which would you pick? Our 90% interest is in diving. We're not into night life, and I'm not much of a shopper - sounds boring, huh? Anyway, just gathering info at this point.
Bonaire in a
heartbeat. The diving is almost exactly the same, the reefs are significantly better on Bonaire. The difference being that you have the pressure of 150K people on Curacao vs. 16K people on Bonaire. As an example, we dove the Tugboat on Curacao one day, while there a cruise operator dropped over 100 snorkelers on top of my friends (it's only 20' deep so attracts a lot of snorkelers)
You never see that on Bonaire, I'm not even sure any of the cruise ships do a dive there. Also everytime we were in town in Curacao there were several cruise ships in the harbor, on Bonaire I've only seen a smaller one tied up at Town Pier.
One other consideration is that most rentals on Bonaire are within 10mins. of downtown and Cultimara, the food store downtown. There's also at least one wholesale food store just slightly east of town.
On Curacao all the markets are in different areas of Willemsted. Except for one tiny market just past Lagun in the West End. From West Punt to Willemsted is better than 1/2 hr. each way.
We actually stopped a regular supermarket in West Willemsted upon landing on Curacao before we drove out to our apt. in Lagun. And our apts. only had a small hotplate, which is somewhat typical in both locations. If you plan to cook a lot, make sure that you understand what full kitchen means. At our condo on Bonaire (BelMar) that meant a 4 burner cooktop, a microwave and a refrigerator, as I recall there was no conventional oven though. (I could be wrong about this..)
Also, the entire reef around Bonaire is the Bonaire Marine Park vs. only certain areas on Curacao. And for some strange reason, although the best diving is on the West End, most (all?) of the protected areas are on the East side....
And there's a lot of junk is offshore of Curacao. The CarPile wrecks, the Hilton Reef etc... At two sites we saw engine blocks in the shallows, the only thing we can figure is that they're used as fishing boat moorings.
You never see anything manmade off Bonaire except for the Hooker and the small wrecks off Eden Beach/Harbour Village.
I've been to both in the last 3 years, Bonaire gets my vote...and since you're not interested in diving/nightlife it would seem to be a much better fit for you.
One other thing to mention: Although thefts on Bonaire seem to get a lot of play here in reality at our place in Curacao we lived in a compound, eight foot high steel fence, thick steel bars and double bars on all the doors/windows. The owners even told us not to dry gear overnite on the porch. And this was in Lagun, one of the vacation house areas for locals. Every resort we visited had some sort of guard house/gated security. And when we later moved into town and stayed in the Piscadera Bay resort area, our property was fully fenced and guarded 24/7.
At BelMar on Bonaire security consists of a very amiable fellow named Butchie. All the dive resorts we went to on Bonaire we just drove onto the property. I think Plaza has a guard at the gate, but if you drive a few hundred yards west, you can walk onto the property by the 18 Palms divesite.
Should you want a guide on either island, they are available. Most DM's on Bonaire freelance, the Dive Bus is an option on Curacao for shore diving. My friends G/F is an instructor who also private guides on Curacao, if interested contact me for her info.
hth,