Curacao Recommendations for a short dive trip for divers who like Bon and GC

[tkaelin]

My wife and I may have a chance to take a 4 day trip to Curacao in April. Both experienced divers, love Bon and GC but have never been to Curacao. Wife prefers shore diving over boat diving and 1 tank boat dives or 2. Long boat rides a no go. Prone to seasickness. First, is solo diving prohibited in Curacao? Read somewhere that it was. Any recommendations on a place to stay - prefer good house reef with onsite dive op. (Would also prefer the ability to take some solo dives on the house reef as well). Would prefer a kitchen or kitchenette. No preference on whether near town or out West but I do not know the island at all. Thanks.

 

[mselenaous]

Definitely look into GoWest Diving and All West Apts. Great combo packages include airport pickup & rental cars. Nice apts.
Apts. have a house reef and small scuba locker with fill station down stairs. Go West is about 1/2 mile away, 3 boats, and another very nice house reef.

And it's close to Sunshine's Sol Food (yes that is her name) - give her a hug for me.
View Profile: Curacao Sunshine - ScubaBoard - Scuba Diving Forum - Diving Social Network

http://www.scubaboard.com/forums/le...aous-netdoc-do-curacao-go-west-trip-blog.html

We loved it and would love to go back there soon. Have a great time and tell Luis @ AllWest "It's a serious matter" (must use your best Sean Connery accent).

 

[Curacao Sunshine]

Hi, David and I live in Westpunt so we are very biased on where to dive All West Apartments would be perfect for you. As Elena mentioned you can get a room/car/tank package. The house reef is also our back yard and an excellent dive. Solo diving is not encouraged. If you stay at All West it is very easy to get a dive buddy if your wife wants to sit out a dive or two. There are some very 5 to 15 minute close boat dives. Highly recommended would be Watamula and Alvin's although the sea is usually very calm and you might be able to make it 15 or 20 minutes to Redhio or Scooter as well.
Curacao Andreas here on Scubaboard is the manager at All West and an instructor at Go West. He can help you make a reservation. My biggest suggestion is to double your Curacao vacation time!

 

[tkaelin]

Thank you for your replies and info. Let me investigate some of your suggestions. Likely to have more questions.

 

[diversteve]

First, is solo diving prohibited in Curacao?

Man I hope not because I broke the law about 1/2 dozen times if it is...

Some dive operators don't allow it. The above mentioned Go West is one of them. Although they, like everyone else rent tanks to be taken off the property. The other that I'm aware of with a firm policy is the Ocean Encounters shops - there's 3-4 of them at the resorts SE of town.

If it's really an issue, there's a lot of good shore dives with no facilities on them at all. Playa Jeremi is the first that comes to mind. At Playa Lagun the dive shop is 2 blocks from the beach...There must be another 1/2 dozen plus I'm not thinking of. Probably Snake Bay, Directors Bay, and one of the Gnip sites also. And there's the old Sunset Wates site, the resort shut down and was partially razed but the breakwater and reef are still out there...lol.

Relaxed Guided Dives is a tank rental/fill station on the main road leading west. So you're not going to be diving there with their tanks. We rented a lot of tanks from Discover Diving in Lagun - he never even asked. A couple of us realized that since we'd arrived a day later, he'd never seen our c-cards either.

Here's my take on Go West/Westpunt etc. for a 4 day trip.

My issue with Westpunt is the distance. It's 45mins. from town. So really quiet at night. But so is the nearest large food store unless something has changed recently. In fact many of the properties out there or in Lagun nearby (where we stayed) recommend stopping at a market in town before driving out. Centrum is that market - it's about a mile or two south of the airport rotary - go straight thru instead of right to Westpunt. They even sell cheap disposable $1 styro boxes to keep your food cold on the drive out. It just seems like a lot of driving for four days - if you did want to "see the sights" in Willemstad, with parking that's close to an hour drive each way - we did it twice.

Sunshine only opens Fri/Sat/Sun. so unless you're doing a long weekend...Otherwise there's 7 restaurants in Westpunt. Landhuis Misje seems to be the best listed on TripAdvisor. We ate at Rancho El Sobrino - it was average. Our apt. mgr. suggested Landhuis Daniel as one of the best but it's along the main road back towards town.

I like Go West. I think they're one of the better dive operators we used (6-7 of them over 2 weeks on the island) They have an excellent facility and are on arguably the best house reef Playa Kalki/Alice in Wonderland. I've been to All West but not inside. One thing to know about All West is there's a lot of stairs down to the beach you carry your gear back up.

We actually knew going in that we were going to spend a few days in Lagun then move to town. We relocated in the Piscadera Bay resort area - if I did it again I would've moved farther south and east of town. Except for the Superior Producer - which you can't dive if a cruise ship is in next door at the MegaPier there's not a lot of good dives from PBay south thru town. I think I'd plan to drive out to Westpunt for one whole day but stay closer to town for the convenience.

My suggestions might be Atlantis Apts. just south of downtown or even farther south at Lions Dive Resort. There's also the Sunscape AI resort nearby - it's an ex-Breezes kids resort though.

Atlantis has their own shore dive and Atlantis Diving on-site. They're just far enough south to not have a problem with the dowtown cruise/visitor traffic which can be really bad. Lions Dive is more upscale and has the main Ocean Encounters shop 50 yds. away - their house operator. OE does some nearby boat dives and some that are farther in either direction. They're one of few shops south of town that dive the famous Mushroom Forest dive but that would be a long ride from their dock.

Lions Dive is across from the Sea Aquarium so that area has a few shops and restaurants within walking distance. Also Mambo Beach Club for some adult (kids are allowed) nightlife. And it's five minutes drive from downtown for all the shops, many of the restaurants, the casinos etc. Downtown around the RIF fort area is nice after 5PM when the ships leave. The fort is interesting, there's shopping next door and some bars/restaurants in that area - many waterfront/view.

Should you be interested in doing a Dolphin Dive, they're kept at the Sea Aquarium and OE does them weekly. The boat ride is all of five minutes out to a shallow reef just off the breakwater and it's a pretty good experience. For $200pp. We enjoyed the interaction but the same dolphins also "perform" at the Aquarium so there's that...

I've only been by Sunscape so can't comment on it. Except that almost out front of their beach is where the Curacao Marine Park starts and goes east to the end of the island. Conversely we theought the better diving was in the West but we didn't do a lot of dives east for comparison.

This will give you a decent idea of many of the Curacao shore dives. Scuba Shore Diving Site Listing for: Curacao, ABC Islands Besides the Dolphin Dive, we only did one afternoon of boat diving to dive a specific site we'd read about for seahorses. There weren't any but later we found them at Varsenbaai 100' off the beach. Ask Trunk Divers on-site.

Again I'm not trying to pan Westpunt/All West/Sol but if I had only four days I wouldn't want to spend several hours of it driving back to town for anything not nearby.

hth,

 

[JohnN]

Man I hope not because I broke the law about 1/2 dozen times if it is...

I was on Curacao in late April, about 35 dives over two weeks, all solo

Some dive operators don't allow it. The above mentioned Go West is one of them. Although they, like everyone else rent tanks to be taken off the property. The other that I'm aware of with a firm policy is the Ocean Encounters shops - there's 3-4 of them at the resorts SE of town.

Go West will rent you tanks as a solo diver, they just won't let you go on their boat as solo. I had a couple nice dives off their dock (Alice in Wonderland)

If it's really an issue, there's a lot of good shore dives with no facilities on them at all. Playa Jeremi is the first that comes to mind. At Playa Lagun the dive shop is 2 blocks from the beach...There must be another 1/2 dozen plus I'm not thinking of. Probably Snake Bay, Directors Bay, and one of the Gnip sites also. And there's the old Sunset Wates site, the resort shut down and was partially razed but the breakwater and reef are still out there...lol.

Snake Bay was right outside of where we stayed. Nice dives. I dove places with no facilities, I prefer facilities (that fresh water shower sure feels nice, not to mention the adult beverage when you're done for the day). Cas Abu was especially nice, another advantage of places with facilities is they have a dude that watches the parking lot so some slimeball doesn't break into your rental car

Relaxed Guided Dives is a tank rental/fill station on the main road leading west. So you're not going to be diving there with their tanks. We rented a lot of tanks from Discover Diving in Lagun - he never even asked. A couple of us realized that since we'd arrived a day later, he'd never seen our c-cards either.

I rented from Vederfoort Dive (at Boca Sami), no longer directly run by Herr Vederfoort, but the current operator/owner was a nice guy and quite accommodating. FWIW, all the shops get their tanks filled by a central supplier so you'll likely find most prices are very close.

The only place I tried that wouldn't allow solo diving was Blue Bay, private beach, their beach, their rules. Otherwise be sensible, carry a pony tank and have a great time. Despite what I was told, Habitat also let me solo dive

 

[diversteve]

Habitat also let me solo dive

Me too, in front of the employee filling tanks.

Diveversity is in there now: DiveVersity at Coral Estate Curacao | DiveVersity Dive Centers

 

[Damselfish]

While I have no experience with the new op at Coral Estate, when Habitat was there they appeared to have no problem with solo diving (similar to the Habitat Bonaire attitude of "you're an adult please just don't be a moron.") I don't think there's any general law or rule about solo diving, just ops that don't allow or discourage it. It happens that the biggest op(s) there don't seem to like it, so I suspect that alone makes lots of people come away with the impression it's an island thing.

 

[keesmon]

I would suggest staying somewhere in between Westpunt and Willemstad.
I've stayed in Westpunt for a week, and every bit of travel is in one direction from there.
You'll hit Westpunt and All west for a full day, hopefully on a day they boat dive Watamula.
That's a 5 minute boat ride and you can do the second boat dive or get dropped back on the dock.
Their shore dive is worthwhile, so I Would start my day there, and work my way back home as the day goes on.
For my next trip I'm staying in one of the Pueblo apartments at Coral Estates, for many of the same reasons you list.
Good house reef, and centrally located to all the sites I want to hit.
Have fun, whatever you decide.

 

[LindaSSF]

Near town, consider Atlantis Dive apartments. Very nice, modern, walking distance to a grocery store, near restaurants. You can dive with them. Apartments are on the water - fall in & go outside the break for the house reef. The other dive shop I'd recommend on that side of the island is CURious2Dive (Hans Plej).


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