WarmWaterDiver
Contributor
I know it's a bit late, but we've really been busy at work. Here's the pics from both above and below water on our summer 2009 Curacao trip.
Picasa Web Albums - abrjwest - Curacao 2009-...
We flew Delta from New Orleans through Atlanta to Curacao, and same on return. No hassles, and the return Curacao to Atlanta leg was a newer 737-700 with the movie screens in each seat back. One of the free movie choices was a 'toned down' to PG rating Watchmen movie, this was the most enjoyable 4 hour-ish flight I've ever had! No extra baggage fees for a second checked bag this trip either. We rented a crew cab Chevrolet Colorado pickup from Hertz and got our free day with the Curacao NOW coupon without hassles; the Curacao Hertz franchise has earned our repeat business on Curacao, they were flawless in both our recent trip and our March 2007 Curacao trip.
Curacao NOW | Great Deals for your trip to the Caribbean Island of Curacao
We rarely ate out, and enjoyed the extra exercise and control of our waistlines - we always return more toned and lighter from our scuba vacations than we are before we leave for a trip! Rancho el Sobrino was a pleasure, and still has the best kabrito stoba IMO. Hook's Hut had some incredible thermonuclear pica they whipped up just fresh for me because I asked for some, and I hoarded the leftovers for the whole 2 weeks we were on the island for seasoning to taste.
We spent the first week at Sun Reef Village in the Barakuda bungalow.
Sun Reef Village on sea Curacao, Netherlands Antilles
Wim & Liesbeth were perfect hosts, and Selma's crilloio meals were delicious! Great diving and easy water access, and good neighbors - the adjoining units are seperated by a rock wall. Their sculpture 'Hercules' made entirely of super-thorny acaia tree branches is a very unique artwork.
The shallows were rubble from the prior hurricane to about 30 feet, but from the wall drop-off on down was great. Major photo safari find was an orange ball corralimorph on one of our night dives here. We also swam with a 5 foot (1.5 meter) long Midnight Parrotfish twice at Snake Bay. We did one dive at Director's Bay and it was badly changed from when we dove there in 2003, and no longer an entry fee, with broken glass and lots of traffic that would park, then drive off after 5 or so minutes.
We did get to meet Suzy at The Dive Bus and Bas, who was teaching a couple from the USA their basic OW, found the red frogfish for our photo safari find of that site! Suzy was a lot of fun to chat with and a very gracious hostess, allowing us to leave our wet gear there while we made a trip to the Seaquarium. Suzy and Mark will have to join us for a BBQ night some time during our next Curacao visit, whenever that may be. We also found a medium size octupus (about the size of a coconut) while returning in the shallows.
We had access to tanks 24/7 at Sun Reef Village, and zero hassles with the on-site dive operation staff.
www.curacao-diving.de - Tauchen auf Curaçao
We even got to squeeze in a dive at Vaersenbaai while one of the staff stayed with the vehicles and all the buddy teams did their own thing one day. The shallows were very badly changed since our last visit in March 2007, no turtle grass in the sand flats anymore, but it probably will return with time, just part of the natural course of events in the tropics.
We spent our second week at All West Apartments in Apartment E.
..:: All West Apartments ::..
This is one of the nicest lodgings and best values we've been at where you don't have a private bungalow or villa. Luis Lopez Ramirez and his family were an absolute pleasure to do business with and we got along great. There were some issues with Ocean encounters West, but the staff members we had difficulties with no longer appear on that web site's staff page, and I'm confident Toni joining the staff has been another quantum leap in improvement. The BBQ pits there are almost Texas style, and I really enjoyed cooking with dried acacia limbs that were alongside the road where the road crews had lopped them, having plenty of experience cooking with mesquite wood growing up and living in South Texas for many years. Cost You Less had great USDA Choice Angus beef available at reasonable prices, and Esperamos and Centrum both carry all natural lump charcoal from Venezuela. I taught Brian at OEW some of my techniques for the pit design so he's now the Westpunt BBQ grillmeister! Next trip I'll bring a rib rack and slow cook some pork loin back ribs on a lazy day, probably getting a dive in between starting and finishing the cooking!
We had great neighbors on the side of the locker room we were staying on, and made good friends with a German couple who were also both engineers (it seemed to be engineers' week at All West because our next door neighbor in Apartment F was an engineer from The Netherlands). Our new friend Michael had a 10 watt HID light that made our night dives great, especially after my wife's U/W strobe slightly flooded and quit working shortly after we started our Director's Bay dive at the end of our first week. We did one boat dive, the single tank afternoon trip to Watamula, but otherwise stuck with buddy team shore diving, many at Playa Piskado right in front of All West, but some at other spots like a 2 tank lazy day at Lagun.
We picked the perfect week for each location for our stay! All in all we'd recommend both properties to folks looking to stay at a 'not very busy' location but have plenty of self-paced vacation fun!
Our next scheduled trip is a 4th trip to St. Croix in May 2010, but I'll bet we'll return to Curacao sometime in the next couple of years.
Picasa Web Albums - abrjwest - Curacao 2009-...
We flew Delta from New Orleans through Atlanta to Curacao, and same on return. No hassles, and the return Curacao to Atlanta leg was a newer 737-700 with the movie screens in each seat back. One of the free movie choices was a 'toned down' to PG rating Watchmen movie, this was the most enjoyable 4 hour-ish flight I've ever had! No extra baggage fees for a second checked bag this trip either. We rented a crew cab Chevrolet Colorado pickup from Hertz and got our free day with the Curacao NOW coupon without hassles; the Curacao Hertz franchise has earned our repeat business on Curacao, they were flawless in both our recent trip and our March 2007 Curacao trip.
Curacao NOW | Great Deals for your trip to the Caribbean Island of Curacao
We rarely ate out, and enjoyed the extra exercise and control of our waistlines - we always return more toned and lighter from our scuba vacations than we are before we leave for a trip! Rancho el Sobrino was a pleasure, and still has the best kabrito stoba IMO. Hook's Hut had some incredible thermonuclear pica they whipped up just fresh for me because I asked for some, and I hoarded the leftovers for the whole 2 weeks we were on the island for seasoning to taste.
We spent the first week at Sun Reef Village in the Barakuda bungalow.
Sun Reef Village on sea Curacao, Netherlands Antilles
Wim & Liesbeth were perfect hosts, and Selma's crilloio meals were delicious! Great diving and easy water access, and good neighbors - the adjoining units are seperated by a rock wall. Their sculpture 'Hercules' made entirely of super-thorny acaia tree branches is a very unique artwork.
The shallows were rubble from the prior hurricane to about 30 feet, but from the wall drop-off on down was great. Major photo safari find was an orange ball corralimorph on one of our night dives here. We also swam with a 5 foot (1.5 meter) long Midnight Parrotfish twice at Snake Bay. We did one dive at Director's Bay and it was badly changed from when we dove there in 2003, and no longer an entry fee, with broken glass and lots of traffic that would park, then drive off after 5 or so minutes.
We did get to meet Suzy at The Dive Bus and Bas, who was teaching a couple from the USA their basic OW, found the red frogfish for our photo safari find of that site! Suzy was a lot of fun to chat with and a very gracious hostess, allowing us to leave our wet gear there while we made a trip to the Seaquarium. Suzy and Mark will have to join us for a BBQ night some time during our next Curacao visit, whenever that may be. We also found a medium size octupus (about the size of a coconut) while returning in the shallows.
We had access to tanks 24/7 at Sun Reef Village, and zero hassles with the on-site dive operation staff.
www.curacao-diving.de - Tauchen auf Curaçao
We even got to squeeze in a dive at Vaersenbaai while one of the staff stayed with the vehicles and all the buddy teams did their own thing one day. The shallows were very badly changed since our last visit in March 2007, no turtle grass in the sand flats anymore, but it probably will return with time, just part of the natural course of events in the tropics.
We spent our second week at All West Apartments in Apartment E.
..:: All West Apartments ::..
This is one of the nicest lodgings and best values we've been at where you don't have a private bungalow or villa. Luis Lopez Ramirez and his family were an absolute pleasure to do business with and we got along great. There were some issues with Ocean encounters West, but the staff members we had difficulties with no longer appear on that web site's staff page, and I'm confident Toni joining the staff has been another quantum leap in improvement. The BBQ pits there are almost Texas style, and I really enjoyed cooking with dried acacia limbs that were alongside the road where the road crews had lopped them, having plenty of experience cooking with mesquite wood growing up and living in South Texas for many years. Cost You Less had great USDA Choice Angus beef available at reasonable prices, and Esperamos and Centrum both carry all natural lump charcoal from Venezuela. I taught Brian at OEW some of my techniques for the pit design so he's now the Westpunt BBQ grillmeister! Next trip I'll bring a rib rack and slow cook some pork loin back ribs on a lazy day, probably getting a dive in between starting and finishing the cooking!
We had great neighbors on the side of the locker room we were staying on, and made good friends with a German couple who were also both engineers (it seemed to be engineers' week at All West because our next door neighbor in Apartment F was an engineer from The Netherlands). Our new friend Michael had a 10 watt HID light that made our night dives great, especially after my wife's U/W strobe slightly flooded and quit working shortly after we started our Director's Bay dive at the end of our first week. We did one boat dive, the single tank afternoon trip to Watamula, but otherwise stuck with buddy team shore diving, many at Playa Piskado right in front of All West, but some at other spots like a 2 tank lazy day at Lagun.
We picked the perfect week for each location for our stay! All in all we'd recommend both properties to folks looking to stay at a 'not very busy' location but have plenty of self-paced vacation fun!
Our next scheduled trip is a 4th trip to St. Croix in May 2010, but I'll bet we'll return to Curacao sometime in the next couple of years.
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Cost-U-Less had pork loin back ribs in their meat counter as I recall. They'll take about 5 hours to cook properly, so maybe we can squeeze a dive in between starting and finishing the cooking.:texas:
