The well known dive site Mushroom Forest does not need a lot of introduction. It is consistently voted the #1 site on Curacao, and Sport Diver Magazine rates it as “one of the World’s Best Dives”
http://www.sportdiver.com/travel_des...6&diveLocID=61 There is no doubt in my mind that Watamula is a more extraordinary site, but Mushroom Forest will probably tend to get the most votes as the best site on Curacao, simply because more dive shops dive it on a regular basis. Mushroom Forest is an outstanding dive and definitely worth doing.
We spent a fabulous week and half diving on Curacao in April and can not say enough good things about the comfortable 3 bedroom 2nd story apartment
http://www.curacaosunshine.com/ in Westpunt. Our friendly hosts, David and Sunshine Livingston, also have a restaurant “Sol Food” on the first floor and very spacious patio on the weekends, and we ate 6 scrumptious meals with them. It is worth the drive from anywhere on the island to enjoy some of the best cuisine Curacao has to offer.
We did our boat dives and some of our shore dives with
http://www.oceanencounterswest.com/ and give this dive shop our highest recommendation. Every person at the shop speaks at least 3 languages and they are very professional, courteous, safety conscious, friendly, and outstanding divers. They are also the furthest thing from a “cattle boat” dive operation. Their two boats have the capacity for 10 and 16 divers, and I do not believe we ever had more than 12 divers on either boat. Their location at Playa Kalki on the western end of the island is within 3 to 20 minutes of nearly 20 dive sites, and we spent most of our surface intervals at the shop, enjoying refreshments and discussing our dives. The shore dive site, "Alice in Wonderland" at Playa Kalki is one of the best sites on Curacao and persons who learn to dive with OEW will be diving on a very healthy, beautiful reef. In fact, my dive buddy, Ted, did his AOW with DM Andreas Kaufmann, and raves about the outstanding training and thorough introduction to diving he received from Andreas. Keep up the good work, OEW!
Mushroom Forest is a huge stand of various types of star coral and other varieties of coral on a sandy plateau. Over the decades, the base of the corals have been slowly eroded by waves, fish, sponges and clams, creating the appearance of huge mushrooms growing on the ocean floor. Most of the coral is in 40 to 60’ of water, so divers can get an hour or more on a single tank. The site can only be reached by boat and nearly every dive shop on Curacao dives it at least one or more times a week. There is a mooring ball approximately in the middle of the site, but there was just enough current the morning of April 5th that we dove it as a drift dive, which was a first at this site for DM Andreas.
Shortly after our descent, we swam onto and through the huge mushrooms:
Some of the coral is more than 10’ in diameter:
and others are quite a bit smaller:
There is also a variety of other coral and sponges:
tube sponge:
barrel sponge:
and huge schools of fish:
We saw lots of orange elephant ear sponge on virtually every dive in Curacao:
We saw this turtle toward the end of the dive:
Dive Master Andreas releasing the buoy to let Captain Tuki know that we are almost done:
My dive buddy, Ted, on the left, and yours truly:
After our first dive at Rediho and before diving Mushroom Forest, we did part of our surface interval as a snorkel at Blue Cave. I understand that some divers finish their dive at Mushroom Forest inside the cave. The ceiling is around 20’ above the water and there is air inside. The water is around 8’ deep and less, and the cave can comfortably hold a half dozen or more persons:
There was a lot of particulate in the water and I was less than happy with the photos inside the cave:
You can see more photos of Mushroom Forest here:
http://honeymoon2.smugmug.com/galler...92876614_qGAHJ
safe diving, alashas
http://honeymoon2.smugmug.com/
Curacao Mushroom Forest and Blue Cave are highly recommended
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