My wife and I returned on Wed. from a nice seven day trip to Curacao. We stayed at the Marriott primarily because my wife has lots of Mariott points and the room was free. I had heard that the Marriott was the best place on the island, and we had no complaints, just a very nice hotel. We never seemed to have much luck with the various restaurants on the island, they all seemed to leave a LOT to be desired, but the food at the Marriott was excellent and left nothing to be desired.
We dove five of the six full days we were there, 2 tanks/day, and all dives were boat dives with Caribbean Sea Sports, which is on premisis at the Marriott. No complaints at all about their operation, and the DM's were friendly and knowledgable. There were generally 8-10 divers/day on the boat, but one day we had twelve; I can easily 16+ divers on this boat during high season and that would be a negative for me since I really dislike cattle boat opertaions. The DM's were very flexible allowing more experianced divers do their own thing, which I like, although we were with the group as this was only my wife's second OW trip.
We did not do any shore dives and I really wanted to do severala afternoons of shore dives, but it didn't work out. I got some kind of sore throat/cold **** on the third day and didn't want to do much more than the 2 tank morning dive. The diving was nice, not spectacular, and probably a bit less than I was expecting. My Dad dove Curacao several years ago and really liked it, I had heard the same from others, so I was expecting a bit more; it is completely my fault that this did not happen. I generally research any vacation destination we visit and did very little reseach for this trip, almost none to be in fact.
The night before we left I was talking to one of the guys we had been diving with, he had been to Curacao numerous times and said the next day he would make his 100th dive on Curacao. He mentioned that the diving on the west end (Westpunt area) of the island was better than what we had been experiencing. As a side note I thought out best dive was the Porto Marie, which we did on our last day; it was also the most western spot we dove. At the airport on the way out I talked to a couple that had been there a week; they had great things to say about the diving and they only dove the westernmost part of the island. When I talked to my Dad after returning he said the dove, you guessed it, on the west end.
While I'm not the least bit unhappy with out trip I sure wish I had researched a bit more before we left and concentrated on the west end. Because of this staying in the west would probably be better, however, it would not have made a difference in our choice of hotels as the price was sure right at the Marriott. I want to return to Curacao in the near future, and if my wife has Mariott points we'll stay there again, but if we have burned the elsewhere we'll stay farther west. We will definitely spend most of out time underwater in the westpunt area.
We dove five of the six full days we were there, 2 tanks/day, and all dives were boat dives with Caribbean Sea Sports, which is on premisis at the Marriott. No complaints at all about their operation, and the DM's were friendly and knowledgable. There were generally 8-10 divers/day on the boat, but one day we had twelve; I can easily 16+ divers on this boat during high season and that would be a negative for me since I really dislike cattle boat opertaions. The DM's were very flexible allowing more experianced divers do their own thing, which I like, although we were with the group as this was only my wife's second OW trip.
We did not do any shore dives and I really wanted to do severala afternoons of shore dives, but it didn't work out. I got some kind of sore throat/cold **** on the third day and didn't want to do much more than the 2 tank morning dive. The diving was nice, not spectacular, and probably a bit less than I was expecting. My Dad dove Curacao several years ago and really liked it, I had heard the same from others, so I was expecting a bit more; it is completely my fault that this did not happen. I generally research any vacation destination we visit and did very little reseach for this trip, almost none to be in fact.
The night before we left I was talking to one of the guys we had been diving with, he had been to Curacao numerous times and said the next day he would make his 100th dive on Curacao. He mentioned that the diving on the west end (Westpunt area) of the island was better than what we had been experiencing. As a side note I thought out best dive was the Porto Marie, which we did on our last day; it was also the most western spot we dove. At the airport on the way out I talked to a couple that had been there a week; they had great things to say about the diving and they only dove the westernmost part of the island. When I talked to my Dad after returning he said the dove, you guessed it, on the west end.
While I'm not the least bit unhappy with out trip I sure wish I had researched a bit more before we left and concentrated on the west end. Because of this staying in the west would probably be better, however, it would not have made a difference in our choice of hotels as the price was sure right at the Marriott. I want to return to Curacao in the near future, and if my wife has Mariott points we'll stay there again, but if we have burned the elsewhere we'll stay farther west. We will definitely spend most of out time underwater in the westpunt area.
