Habitat Curacao Resort.
We just returned from a 7 night stay at the Habitat Curacao Resort. I will summarize this way: One evening a local wine merchant hosted a wine tasting that was patronized primarily by locals. We happened to meet a woman who claimed to be an ÅÊnvestor in the property. She confided that the resort obviously needed a lot of work and recommended that we patronize restaurants on the island other than the one located on the property. She offered that the ÅÊnvestors were hoping to undertake the much needed renovations sometime in the next year or so and ask that we not judge the property too harshly.
I try to be objective in my reviews and so I wonÃÕ claim that the resort was grossly below our expectationsÍØe had read the trip advisor reviews prior to booking the trip. We were aware of the relatively modest price. But, we were hoping for something more akin to Buddy Dive or Sand Dollar on Bonaire which are the most similar resorts we have visited. Habitat Curacao is at least one or two notches beneath those two properties.
Check-in
Check-in was smooth, actually much smoother than our check-in earlier this year at Buddy Dive. Although in fairness to Buddy Dive, our group arrived in mass and rented vehicles through the resort, so there was much more of a sudden administrative surge. In Curacao, we rented cars at the airport and the group arrived more gradually.
There were a couple of minor annoyances in the form of ÅÓules and extra charges.ÆûSPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>The extra charge for a lost room key was $60; the extra charge for opening your safe if you forgot the code was $30; in order to get a beach towel, you had to post a deposit of $20 which would be refunded on your last day. Fortunately, no one in our group was saddled with any of these charges, but that sort of ÅÓules attitude still aggravates me (I thought the hotel business was part of the ÅÔervice industry?.
Rooms
One the positive side, the air conditioning in the rooms was quite adequate. The units manage to cool the rooms despite the fact that many of the windows were wooden jalousie slats.
The tile floors were dirty. Again, though in fairness, divers can be hard on a roomÍÅragging gear in and out possible covered with sand from shore divesÍÂnd no doubt it would be tough for the housekeeping staff to keep up with that on a daily basis at a lodging in this price range.
Grounds
It did not appear that any landscape maintenance had been done in years. The planted shrubbery was overgrown and the primary ground cover was of the species ÅØeed (and not the colloquial kind).
Pool
The pool and pool deck were more or less clean with one gigantic exception. The deck chairs were a bit moldyÍÂgain something to be expected at a hotel in this price range. The gigantic exception? Well there was a little wooden bridge over the pool. On the little wooden bridge were two large piles of, umm, how to say politely, POOP. The aforesaid POOP remained on the bridge for several days despite one member of our group attempting to nudge the management politely.
Diving
The dive operation was the best managed of the hotel facilities. We did one two-tank boat dive daily. Without exception, the captains and dive masters were excellent. The briefings were well done and our dives were without any major incident. A dive master was in the water on every dive and you were free to follow him/her at your pleasure. A couple of us mentioned to the dive master that we were thinking about doing a little deeper dive one day and she offered that the first site of that day would be a good candidate. When my buddy and I reached our planned depth of 110 feet, I realized why she thought it would make a good site, the reef ended at about 114 feet at a sandy plateau and the gradual slope of the reef made for a very easy gradual assent back to the top of the reef. That struck me as good diver management with a bunch of unknown tourists.
The resortÃÔ web site oversells the quality of the house reef. (Actually the web site oversells everything.) The house reef is very beat up without a great deal of wild life (although I heard rumors of an octopus sighting on one night dive).
Our only irritation with the dive operation was their nitrox offerings. In my opinion (and since it is mine, it has to be right) a resort that offers any sort of a high number of dives, ought to also encourage nitrox use through its pricing and facilities. Habitat Curacao charged a $10 up-charge for each nitrox tank (my opinion is that price is too steep and based on the overall nitrox usage we observed at the resort, most people agreed). They did not have a membrane and apparently hand blended each tank using an oxygen cylinder. Their blends were quite unreliable with the ?2% blends ranging from 29% to 31.2%. Moreover, the nitrox tanks were under filled. The resort had a mechanical pressure gauge at the nitrox fill station which was miscalibrated. The resortÃÔ mechanical pressure gauge would read 3000 to 3200. But both my wifeÃÔ and my pressure gauges read between 2800 and 2950 on those same tanks. We never once found a nitrox tank that was actually 32% or 3000 pounds. (And just as a reference point, our pressure gauges read between 3000 and 3200 on the eight air tanks we used over the week.)
We saw the usual suspects under water:
Parrott fish
Trumpet fish
Trunk fish
Cow fish
Porcupine Fish
Burrfish
Balloon Fish
Spotted Eels
Green Eels
Slipper lobster
1 Spiny lobster
nine squid (all in a row)
a very few rays
a very few turtles
We did not see any of the prize Caribbean sightings:
No sharks
No octopus (other than the one rumored one)
No frog fish
No sea horses
Restaurant
The restaurant was the true weak spot at the resort. Service was atrocious. I understand island timeͪ have spent 40 days in the Caribbean this year. I even understand the difference between island time and Dutch Caribbean island time (my limited observation is that the Dutch Caribbean takes island time to a whole new extreme.) But island time is one thing and down right torture is another. Water was the biggest issue and self service was the only real solution. But even self service was problematic, because it was dependent of finding a pitcher of water and clean glasses.
Moreover, on our first day at the resort, the staff tried to cajole my wife into signing a bar tab for a patron who had used our room number and not signed the voucher the night before. Then they insisted that we had to pay for lunch which was included in our package. Avoiding being stuck with those two charges required firm insistence on our part.
Lastly, it was not uncommon for a group of four to arrive for dinner at 8:00 and asked to be seated and to be greeted with a shrug by the staffÍÂll the while looking around the room and observing three or four vacant 4-tops covered with dirty dishes, and absolutely no inclination by the staff to bus those tables.
Oddly enough, despite the service, several staff members on our last couple of days at the resort made a point of telling us Americans (aka tipping suckers) when their last shift was before we would be departing.
As an option, I can recommend DanielÃÔ which is a short drive from the resort (expect to spend about $60 a person with appetizers and a cocktail). In town we enjoyed GouverneurÃÔ. But bear in mind that the despite the resort claiming you can take a shuttle into town with a short 25 minute ride, the ride is more like 45 minutes and you have to leave the resort at 9:00 am and your only option to return is at 2:30 pm, effectively blowing a whole day.
Overall
I would not go back. If you are a hard core diver, you will tolerate the resort. But if you are a hard core diver, there are many places with better diving and more accommodating facilities. I have checked Curacao off my list.
We just returned from a 7 night stay at the Habitat Curacao Resort. I will summarize this way: One evening a local wine merchant hosted a wine tasting that was patronized primarily by locals. We happened to meet a woman who claimed to be an ÅÊnvestor in the property. She confided that the resort obviously needed a lot of work and recommended that we patronize restaurants on the island other than the one located on the property. She offered that the ÅÊnvestors were hoping to undertake the much needed renovations sometime in the next year or so and ask that we not judge the property too harshly.
I try to be objective in my reviews and so I wonÃÕ claim that the resort was grossly below our expectationsÍØe had read the trip advisor reviews prior to booking the trip. We were aware of the relatively modest price. But, we were hoping for something more akin to Buddy Dive or Sand Dollar on Bonaire which are the most similar resorts we have visited. Habitat Curacao is at least one or two notches beneath those two properties.
Check-in
Check-in was smooth, actually much smoother than our check-in earlier this year at Buddy Dive. Although in fairness to Buddy Dive, our group arrived in mass and rented vehicles through the resort, so there was much more of a sudden administrative surge. In Curacao, we rented cars at the airport and the group arrived more gradually.
There were a couple of minor annoyances in the form of ÅÓules and extra charges.ÆûSPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>The extra charge for a lost room key was $60; the extra charge for opening your safe if you forgot the code was $30; in order to get a beach towel, you had to post a deposit of $20 which would be refunded on your last day. Fortunately, no one in our group was saddled with any of these charges, but that sort of ÅÓules attitude still aggravates me (I thought the hotel business was part of the ÅÔervice industry?.
Rooms
One the positive side, the air conditioning in the rooms was quite adequate. The units manage to cool the rooms despite the fact that many of the windows were wooden jalousie slats.
The tile floors were dirty. Again, though in fairness, divers can be hard on a roomÍÅragging gear in and out possible covered with sand from shore divesÍÂnd no doubt it would be tough for the housekeeping staff to keep up with that on a daily basis at a lodging in this price range.
Grounds
It did not appear that any landscape maintenance had been done in years. The planted shrubbery was overgrown and the primary ground cover was of the species ÅØeed (and not the colloquial kind).
Pool
The pool and pool deck were more or less clean with one gigantic exception. The deck chairs were a bit moldyÍÂgain something to be expected at a hotel in this price range. The gigantic exception? Well there was a little wooden bridge over the pool. On the little wooden bridge were two large piles of, umm, how to say politely, POOP. The aforesaid POOP remained on the bridge for several days despite one member of our group attempting to nudge the management politely.
Diving
The dive operation was the best managed of the hotel facilities. We did one two-tank boat dive daily. Without exception, the captains and dive masters were excellent. The briefings were well done and our dives were without any major incident. A dive master was in the water on every dive and you were free to follow him/her at your pleasure. A couple of us mentioned to the dive master that we were thinking about doing a little deeper dive one day and she offered that the first site of that day would be a good candidate. When my buddy and I reached our planned depth of 110 feet, I realized why she thought it would make a good site, the reef ended at about 114 feet at a sandy plateau and the gradual slope of the reef made for a very easy gradual assent back to the top of the reef. That struck me as good diver management with a bunch of unknown tourists.
The resortÃÔ web site oversells the quality of the house reef. (Actually the web site oversells everything.) The house reef is very beat up without a great deal of wild life (although I heard rumors of an octopus sighting on one night dive).
Our only irritation with the dive operation was their nitrox offerings. In my opinion (and since it is mine, it has to be right) a resort that offers any sort of a high number of dives, ought to also encourage nitrox use through its pricing and facilities. Habitat Curacao charged a $10 up-charge for each nitrox tank (my opinion is that price is too steep and based on the overall nitrox usage we observed at the resort, most people agreed). They did not have a membrane and apparently hand blended each tank using an oxygen cylinder. Their blends were quite unreliable with the ?2% blends ranging from 29% to 31.2%. Moreover, the nitrox tanks were under filled. The resort had a mechanical pressure gauge at the nitrox fill station which was miscalibrated. The resortÃÔ mechanical pressure gauge would read 3000 to 3200. But both my wifeÃÔ and my pressure gauges read between 2800 and 2950 on those same tanks. We never once found a nitrox tank that was actually 32% or 3000 pounds. (And just as a reference point, our pressure gauges read between 3000 and 3200 on the eight air tanks we used over the week.)
We saw the usual suspects under water:
Parrott fish
Trumpet fish
Trunk fish
Cow fish
Porcupine Fish
Burrfish
Balloon Fish
Spotted Eels
Green Eels
Slipper lobster
1 Spiny lobster
nine squid (all in a row)
a very few rays
a very few turtles
We did not see any of the prize Caribbean sightings:
No sharks
No octopus (other than the one rumored one)
No frog fish
No sea horses
Restaurant
The restaurant was the true weak spot at the resort. Service was atrocious. I understand island timeͪ have spent 40 days in the Caribbean this year. I even understand the difference between island time and Dutch Caribbean island time (my limited observation is that the Dutch Caribbean takes island time to a whole new extreme.) But island time is one thing and down right torture is another. Water was the biggest issue and self service was the only real solution. But even self service was problematic, because it was dependent of finding a pitcher of water and clean glasses.
Moreover, on our first day at the resort, the staff tried to cajole my wife into signing a bar tab for a patron who had used our room number and not signed the voucher the night before. Then they insisted that we had to pay for lunch which was included in our package. Avoiding being stuck with those two charges required firm insistence on our part.
Lastly, it was not uncommon for a group of four to arrive for dinner at 8:00 and asked to be seated and to be greeted with a shrug by the staffÍÂll the while looking around the room and observing three or four vacant 4-tops covered with dirty dishes, and absolutely no inclination by the staff to bus those tables.
Oddly enough, despite the service, several staff members on our last couple of days at the resort made a point of telling us Americans (aka tipping suckers) when their last shift was before we would be departing.
As an option, I can recommend DanielÃÔ which is a short drive from the resort (expect to spend about $60 a person with appetizers and a cocktail). In town we enjoyed GouverneurÃÔ. But bear in mind that the despite the resort claiming you can take a shuttle into town with a short 25 minute ride, the ride is more like 45 minutes and you have to leave the resort at 9:00 am and your only option to return is at 2:30 pm, effectively blowing a whole day.
Overall
I would not go back. If you are a hard core diver, you will tolerate the resort. But if you are a hard core diver, there are many places with better diving and more accommodating facilities. I have checked Curacao off my list.
for dinner. If you realize this before you come to the island you won't have high expectations. I tell our guests that when they go out, relax. You're not going to get anything quickly. Just to sit back and enjoy their companions company.
