February Aruba Trip Advice

[choiahoy]

Hi Scubaboard,

Due to air mile restrictions, my wife and I are planning on stopping over in Aruba for three nights on our way to Bonaire for two weeks in February. We did a similar trip two years ago, but instead flew through Curacao. Instead of going back, we wanted to see someplace new and experience the diving in Aruba, particularly the wreck diving.


A few questions / issues -

- Being that we'll be diving reefs for two weeks on Bonaire, we would love to hit as many wrecks as possible for the two days of diving we have in Aruba. I know a lot of dive ops have set schedules so we were considering doing our PADI wreck diving specialty to learn what we can, and to try to force the schedule to be more "wreck-heavy". Has anyone done the PADI wreck specialty in Aruba or elsewhere? Any recommendations for dive ops? Any wrecks that are particularly good? We have our eyes on the Antilla, Jane Sea, and the airplanes.

- From the reading I've done on scubaboard, JADS, Dive Aruba (Clive), and Native Divers all get high marks. My problem is that I can't get a single email response from any of them! At this time, I've emailed each of them twice and am only hearing radio silence back. Any thoughts on how to get in touch with these companies? Or recommendations for other ops that actually communicate?

- My wife tends to get sea sick easily. Generally speaking, are the dive sites far from shore? Are the seas as calm as Bonaire or Curacao or should we expect something rougher?

- If we stay in the Eagle Beach area, do you think we can get by without a car?

Thanks in advance for your help.

Mike

 

[CptTightPants21]

Seas were very calm on West end of island. A little more current on the south side, but pretty benign seas.

Check out Diversity. They are next to the Marriot and have no set schedule so you can pick the sites you want to hit.

No reason to do wreck specialty, would be a waste on money in my opinion

Wrecks to look into.

1. Antilla (duh..its their flagship dive)
2. Star Gerran
3. Debbie II


Pedernales is a shallow debris field, I would skip it, but sometimes the operators like to do it because it is easy and allows the divers to off gas as the three wrecks above are in the 60-85ft range
Just tell them you want all wrecks and not to do Arashi reef or the airplanes

 

[Ontwreckdiver]

If you don't want to rent a car, you would be better off staying on Palm Beach. There is a boardwalk behind the hotels that goes along the length of the beach that has all kinds of restaurants, bars and shops. There is also a lot of restaurants, bars and shops along the street in front of the hotels. You can catch the city bus into town which is about 10 mins. away. Last time we were there (2008-09)? it was $2.50 round trip. I dove with Romeo at Native Divers and it was easier to phone them. Some of the wreck dives are Antilla, Debbie II, Jane Sea, Pilot boat, the airplanes (both can be done on one dive). Doing the PADI wreck course is a waste of money, just dive.