samsonlee
Registered
Stayed for a week at the Sunscape Resort in Curacao. You can see my detailed review at Tripadvisor of the hotel, but basically it was a very nice location, nice hotel with a nice beach and pool. The Carpile dive site was just outside the hotel boundary and was basically 5 minutes away which was great, beautiful site just out your front door. Downsides were loud music until 1030 at night when you just want to sleep and average food. If you're traveling with kids the Kids Club is free and they take good care of your children, but they don't show up on time which was an issue.
I dived with Ocean Encounters which has a dive shop on the premise. I thought they did a nice job and were very efficient. I would reserve early because the boats fill up quickly. They were flexible in terms of refunding money when I hadn't used all of my dives without a problem which I appreciated. The boats can be "cattle" like with some of the trips having 20 divers on board, but they let you get off first if you're more experienced and go down ahead of them with your buddy. they let you do your own profile and I got routinely 60 minutes of bottom time with plenty of air to sprare. They have Nitrox which is $10/bucks a tank. I also had a few trips with only 4 people as well.
Diving in Curacao, I chose to boat dive vs shore dive because I didn't want to rent a car and wanted to spend the least amount of time away from our kids. So we did a two tank morning dive via boat and were gone for about 3.5 hours. I think it you tried to do that shore diving you'd be gone longer but would have more flexibility about dive sites and times. I also didn't want to find parking and drag my equipment down to the beach as my wife has back issues and I'd be carrying two sets of equipment. From what I could see entry was pretty easy at most of the sites we went too, but they did look remote and I didn't see many cars around there.
Diving itself was ok. I though the fish population was pretty healthy but not as healthy as Bonaire. I thought the coral was pretty lush, the wall is a sloping wall down to about 100 feet in the areas I went. The Tugboat is overrated. Carpile was cool. Mushroom forest is overrated. I've dived in Asia and all over the Carribean. My own personal preference for Carribean sites would be Bonaire over Curacao, but I did not like the food on Bonaire at all. I've been to Grand Turk, Provo, Cozumel, Grand Cayman, Little Cayman, Barbados, Aruba, St John, etc. as well I'd say I like Cayman and Cozumel much better then the other places including Bonaire. If you just want to do a bunch of shore diving but don't mind crappy food then go to Bonaire instead of Curacao. I probably won't go back to Curacao. Again diving is very subjective, some people like certain things, and others don't. I do think the more "spoiled" you are and the more you see, the more it takes to impress you. I'm sure if I dived Curacao when I first started I thought it would have been awesome. I'm sure certain people would love Curacao, but I'd prefer Indonesia, Cozumel or Cayman. I'm still glad I went and crossed it off of my bucket list.
I dived with Ocean Encounters which has a dive shop on the premise. I thought they did a nice job and were very efficient. I would reserve early because the boats fill up quickly. They were flexible in terms of refunding money when I hadn't used all of my dives without a problem which I appreciated. The boats can be "cattle" like with some of the trips having 20 divers on board, but they let you get off first if you're more experienced and go down ahead of them with your buddy. they let you do your own profile and I got routinely 60 minutes of bottom time with plenty of air to sprare. They have Nitrox which is $10/bucks a tank. I also had a few trips with only 4 people as well.
Diving in Curacao, I chose to boat dive vs shore dive because I didn't want to rent a car and wanted to spend the least amount of time away from our kids. So we did a two tank morning dive via boat and were gone for about 3.5 hours. I think it you tried to do that shore diving you'd be gone longer but would have more flexibility about dive sites and times. I also didn't want to find parking and drag my equipment down to the beach as my wife has back issues and I'd be carrying two sets of equipment. From what I could see entry was pretty easy at most of the sites we went too, but they did look remote and I didn't see many cars around there.
Diving itself was ok. I though the fish population was pretty healthy but not as healthy as Bonaire. I thought the coral was pretty lush, the wall is a sloping wall down to about 100 feet in the areas I went. The Tugboat is overrated. Carpile was cool. Mushroom forest is overrated. I've dived in Asia and all over the Carribean. My own personal preference for Carribean sites would be Bonaire over Curacao, but I did not like the food on Bonaire at all. I've been to Grand Turk, Provo, Cozumel, Grand Cayman, Little Cayman, Barbados, Aruba, St John, etc. as well I'd say I like Cayman and Cozumel much better then the other places including Bonaire. If you just want to do a bunch of shore diving but don't mind crappy food then go to Bonaire instead of Curacao. I probably won't go back to Curacao. Again diving is very subjective, some people like certain things, and others don't. I do think the more "spoiled" you are and the more you see, the more it takes to impress you. I'm sure if I dived Curacao when I first started I thought it would have been awesome. I'm sure certain people would love Curacao, but I'd prefer Indonesia, Cozumel or Cayman. I'm still glad I went and crossed it off of my bucket list.
