Curacao dive sites

[tarheeldiver]

My wife and I are going to Curacao in 2 weeks and I was wanting to know what are some of the must do sites. We are staying on the west end at Kura Hulanda Lodge.
thanks for any reccomendations
greg

 

[divingsteve]

Sorry I cant help you with dive sites yet. My wife and I are going in january 08. Did you rent a truck for shore dives? We are trying to see what the best way is for shore diving but the rental cost seem high 70.00 day? any ideas. Did you look at Habitat Resort? Hope you have a great trip let me know how things go.
If you do a search on the board and ask you question I think you will find its been asked before and you will get a list of must dives in Curacao. Hope that helps.

stay wet
steve

 

[irie1029]

You are staying right on one of the best sites to shore dive. Called Alice in Wonderland it is awesome... There is a public snack shop at the east end of the beach before the dive shop Ocean Encounters. Have the fish sandwich.

Enjoy!

 

[johnny_bravo]

Just checked my log...Mushroom Forest, Superior Producer, Saba/Tugboat...it seems I enjoyed Watamula (the dive most ops do after the Mushroom Forest) the most.

I had many great dives at the house reef at Breezes.

Have a good time.

Cheers.

-J.-

 

[diversteve]

Sorry I cant help you with dive sites yet. My wife and I are going in january 08. Did you rent a truck for shore dives? We are trying to see what the best way is for shore diving but the rental cost seem high 70.00 day? any ideas. Did you look at Habitat Resort? Hope you have a great trip let me know how things go.
If you do a search on the board and ask you question I think you will find its been asked before and you will get a list of must dives in Curacao. Hope that helps.

stay wet
steve

Don't rent a truck. There's a lot of theft on Curacao. Our apt. mgr. warned us not to leave anything in the vehicles while diving. And to always lock them. Rent a car with a trunk or an SUV with a deck cover. Most of the shoredive sites have paved roads and parking areas so a car is fine.

We dove at Habitat twice because we liked the reef so much. Big green moray eels, lots of coral and fish life all over, flounder in the shallows off the divedock. I filmed a barracuda hanging around the boat dock, I think he lives under there after they moor the boats. There's also a resident octopus in shallow water near one of the moorings - it's marked with a pile of coral rubble. My friends found him at night.

The resort itself looked a little tired. But so does most of Curacao. The whole island is 150M$ in debt and it shows.

The best dive on Curacao is Watamula - it's a boat dive only.

We also liked Playa Kalki/Alice in Wonderland by Kura Hulanda. Nothing memorable but it was two good dives.

Sunset Waters reef is good to the east but the west had hurricane damage and a boat channel to contend with.

Varsenbaai was unexpectedly good, there's a pontoon boat perched on the edge of the reef in about 80' of water, Seahorses by the first ball, (ask the diveop mgr. how to find them) there's turtles in the sand flats 100' off the dock in 6' of water. The first dive there I saw at least 100 squid 50' off the dock.

We also dove Playa Jeremi, it was a long swim out to the reef and nothing exceptional. Coming back in along the cliffs was fairly interesting though, lots of small critters living in there. It's the only site we dove with no facilities so bring everything.

An instructor we met recommended Snake Bay but we didn't get there. We dove the Tugboat one morning. As we got there, a cruise ship operator dropped 100 snorkelers on top of my friends. (It's only 20' deep) So try to do that one in the afternoon...

 

[ronbeau]

My wife and I are going to Curacao in 2 weeks and I was wanting to know what are some of the must do sites. We are staying on the west end at Kura Hulanda Lodge.
thanks for any reccomendations
greg

I can suggest some sites based on my last two trips my wife, daughter and I took to Curacao. Please be aware that other than the Mushroom Forest these sites are closer to the East End of the island.

Caracas Bay - Tugboat
Nice dive site with full showers, restrooms, snack bar shaded tables & dive shop
Two-tiered reef structure goes to 60 feet and beyond
after turn-around spend a very long and enjoyable safety stop at the tugboat (17 feet max)

Vaersenbaai
Nice dive site with restrooms, snack bar & shaded tables
Saw four turtles on each dive along with an assortment of reef fish & seahorses

Porto Mari
Outdoor rinse showers, dunk stank and full restaurant
Nice sandy beach for entry
Double-reef provides excellent variety of creatures to see

Breezes Curacao aka Oswaldo's Leap
Dunk tanks and fresh water rinse hose on dock
Particularly convenient if staying at Breezes Curacao
Decent variety of reef fish

Mushroom Forest
Boat dive not shore dive
Used Sunset Divers at Sunset Waters Resort
Sunset divers was excellent - effectively valet diving
Mushroom Forest was nice but somewhat over-hyped
Fully enjoyed the dive but was expecting more based on the hype
Surface interval provided fruit etc plus snorkeling in a partially submerged cave.

Alice in Wonderland
Unfortunately we never made it there (daughter sick that day)

Director's Bay
Not to far from Caracas bay
Dive was OK but nothing to write home about
Car will be in remote area (unlike the other dive sites mentioned)

One option to consider is using the services of the Dive Bus

http://www.the-dive-bus.com

We used them for some dives on each trip. Suzy and Mark are great to deal with.

I am listing some other sites below but I don't have personal experience with them

Cas Abou
This site has public restroom facilities and I believe it has a snack bar
One of the members of our dive club dove there 3 years ago and really like it.

Pierbaai
Good for a night dive. This is the only night dive I did on Curacao. ScubaTexasTony from ScubaBoard (American ex-patriot living in Curacao until 6 months ago) indicated that this is one of the best night dives on Curacao. This site located right next door to Breeze Curacao and at the location of the Dive Bus hut.

Car Pile
This is supposed to be a nice deep dive to about 90 feet.

If you want I can send you a magazine article from June of last year that I scanned into an Adobe Acrobat document. Just send me a PM with your email address.

Both times we stayed on Curacao we stayed at Breezes Curacao. I can fill you in on things to consider about Breezes Curacao if that is a place that you are considering.

 

[scubachica]

Agree with irie1029 that the house reef, Alice in Wonderland, is one of the best dive sites on the island. We stayed at Lodge Kura Hulanda last year (loved it) and dove with Ocean Encounters. We went on a combination of boat and shore dives and Alice in Wonderland was one of my favorites (in the top 2 along with Watamula). Frankly, I wish I had skipped a few of the boat dives to dive Alice in Wonderland a bit more.

 

[CheddarChick]

Loved Curacao diving, shore dives are so easy you might not ever need to get on a boat. I second The Divebus, great people!!! And Port Marie is really beautiful... And Habitat is a great dive also., waa wanna go back.......

 

[diverrex]

My wife still talks about our dive at Mushroom Forest in June as her favorite. Yeah, it may be hyped too much and over rated for what it is. But it's a nice relaxing dive, inetresting formations and fish. We did it as a slow drift dive from the Ocean Encounters boat, leaving from Sunset Waters. If you do it make sure you snorkel into the cave during the SI.

We stayed at the other end of the island and enjoyed The Corner, Saba, and Tugboat. Some people get Saba and Tugboat confused since they are each a tugboat wreck. I preferred Tugboat. I had the resident puffer fish swim out of the wheelhouse right to me.

 

[tarheeldiver]

Thanks Everyone you are getting me sooo excited!!! Great info just keep it coming these are definitely going along with me.