Curacao Diving, lodging and dining Recommendations for early July

[ffixxer]

Hello fellow divers.

I am a new diver <300 hours and am planning a trip to Curacao early next month (July) I am interested in any recommendations anyone wants to share. I see some places are all inclusive and am curious how hard it is to eat for less than $65 US a day in Curacao? Anyone stayed at Sunset Waters or Lodge Kura Hulanda ?

I want a cleaner than average place to stay, convenient to diving and Great food.

Feedback for these dive operators: Caribbean Sea Sports, Ocean Encounters or Toucan Diving?

We are casual divers, love warm clear water, and short boat trips or shore diving. Not ready for any thing other than an easy pace.

I have dived in Grand Cayman, Cozumel, Costa Rica (pacific side).
So Please give me any assistant in planing this trip.
Thanks,

 

[DandyDon]

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[alashas]

How many of you? I've posted quite a bit over the past month or so about http://www.curacaosunshine.com/ 3 bedroom 2nd floor apartment in Westpunt, and great diving with http://www.oceanencounterswest.com/

Wherever you stay, there are a lot of good restaurants in Curacao and I wouldn't do AI. My dive buddy and I ate for quite a bit less than $65/day for 11 nights in Curacao. Sunshine and David have a restaurant on weekends and also cooked a # of oustanding meals for us during the week.

Your dive experience indicates that you will do fine in Curacao with both boat and shore dives.

safe diving, alashas http://honeymoon2.smugmug.com/

 

[ffixxer]

Just me and the wife for sure (June 28 - July 8) and maybe my brother and his girl friend, (though she does not dive). We may be a little flexible on the dates as we have not booked yet. What about rental cars? From the posts I've read they seem essential. Still hunting the travel sites trying to find a good deal.

 

[diversteve]

Were there a year ago..

Toucan is now owned by Ocean Encounters. Ocean Encounters is the dominant diveop on Curacao, they have facilities at the SeaAquarium as well as make pickups at several resorts in town daily. So likely to be a larger crowd on the boat. OE West is their affiliated diveop at Kura Hulanda.

Some logistics: Kura Hulanda is 45min. from town. There's about 3-4 other nearby restaurants in West Punt but no real source for food. The closest major market is Centrum which is just south of the airport. For us, it worked best to stop there on our way out to the West End.

Are you planning on staying in town - CSS is the Marriott diveop right? or farther west. One thing that's not apparent is that there's not a lot of dining choices once you leave West Willemsted - the Piscadera Bay area - until you get to West Punt except for some local snaks. So if you stay at Sunset Waters, you'd generally be eating most/all your meals there unless you drive back out to the main road. Personally I liked Sunset Divers but I wasn't overly impressed with what we saw of the resort during our one day there. The food wasn't great in the only restaurant. (ate there twice) Nice beach though, probably one of the best we saw.

Kura Hulanda was really nice, it would meet my standard for "cleaner than average". We did some diving there with OEWest and also (unexpectedly) spent a few hours in one of their suites. It's Radisson or better quality-wise, nice and well-furnished.

Most of the shore dive sites on the West side of the island are semi-long swims out. Almost all that we went to had a beach with some improved facilities on-site, either a diveop or at least a small snack bar. Most also require a small fee in guilders to use the facilities. We dove the following sites: Playa Kalki/Alice in Wonderland (near Kura Hulanda) Playa Lagun, Playa Jeremi, Sunset's house reef, Nos Kas (Habitat's house reef) Porto Mari, Varsenbaai, Tugboat (east of town) and all were easy entries, everyone except Jeremi had facilities.

We dove with OE on the dolphin dive, rented tanks from OEWest at KH and also dove with Sunset Divers and Habitat's Dive outfit (Easy Divers?). As well as Discover Diving in Lagun and Hooks Hut in Piscadera Bay. Of all of them, I liked Sunset Divers the best, they were really accommodating for our group of day divers.

Another option is the DiveBus, they're good people. We never dove with them but they provided us a lot of free info one day when we stopped by. I see a lot of good recommendations for them here. However they only pickup in East/West Willemsted.

Definitely plan a dive at Habitat even if you don't stay there, they have a great reef just offshore and good facilities. We went back later in the week, we liked it that much.

We only did one boat dive (Lost Anchor) since we planned to shoredive all week. I've heard from several people that Watamula is probably the best boat dive on Curacao, OEWest goes there weekly.

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[Diver OnLu]

Hi ffixxer,

I am Andreas from Ocean Encounters West in Westpoint. If you prefer easy and relaxed diving, you will definitely find it on the west side of Curacao. Shore dives are easy; on our boats we take a maximum of 10 divers and have a guide there, of course.

If you like to stay at a nice hotel, I recommend Kura Hulanda Lodge. For a nice apartment, you might like to check the following site, too: ..:: All West Curacao ::... There is an intense cooperation with Ocean Encounters West, at the apartments we service a dive locker room with full (air) tanks 24 hours a day, hangers, rinse tanks, shower, boxes for equipment transport by car - and a marvelous house reef!

For shore dives I definitely recommend to have a car, you can rent one with All West Apartments, too, if you like.

For food, I agree with Alashas that AI might be convenient, but you miss the variety of food you are offered at different locations. Of course, if you don't even want to prepare your own breakfast, you are better of in a hotel like Kura Hulanda Lodge.

I hope to see you when you come to our sunny island! If you are here and need more information on our divesites, just let me know and I will help you.

Best regards from Curacao,

Andreas

 

[Rand]

My wife and I stayed at Kura Hulanda and dived with OE West last year. We had a large group of 40+ with about 30 of them diving. OE West made special arrangements to put us all on one boat. They did a great job, especially considering all the tanks they had to haul. For one day, the large boat was not available and they used two 10 person boats and divided our group into a morning and afternoon session. I liked those dives the best. Smaller boat is the way to go.

I don't remember a dive site that took more than 30 minutes to reach. From what I've read and heard the west side of the island has the best diving. And, from what I've seen, I believe it. I don't have a lot to compare to, but many experienced divers in our group said the life on the reefs was a lot more than other Carribean sites they've been to.

We only did two shore dives, both at the house reef, Playa Kalki. But, the reef is so nice you can do several there and not get bored.

One small issue doing night dives there is that you need to make arrangements ahead of time if you are renting tanks from OE West. They shut down operations around 6 PM and you have to pick up and store your tanks prior to that for night dives. The lodge gave us lockers by the dive shop to use and we had no problems as long as we planned our night dives ahead of time.

As far as the lodge/food goes, Kura Hulanda was very nice, clean, and the rooms were comfortable and spacious. They have a small kitchen area in each of the suites with a sink, fridge, and toaster. We packed bagels and jelly with us and used that for breakfast each day. We ate lunch and dinner onsite for all other meals except for two dinners off site. We ended up spending about $1000 for the two of us for those onsite meals, including a drink or two each night (we're not huge drinkers), which comes to a little over $70 a day/person.

There were some complaints from non-divers that they bored quickly of the menus onsite. We were close to getting there, but for a week, there is enough variety and the food is good.

For non-divers, there is not a whole lot to do at Kura Hulanda, but they have a decent pool, rent bikes for touring, and have massages/exercise area. The beach is small but adequate. There were a lot of local kids jumping off the dock later in the day that could become annoying if you want more of a peaceful beach experience.

We were there just to dive and did not rent a car or go offsite for sight seeing. We walked to one local restaurant and took a taxi to the other.

A few people in our group did rent cars. I think Kura Hulanda has some rental cars available. They drive on the right there, so no problems for most of the driving world. I would adivse coordinating any rental vehicles ahead of time. If you are planning on having a rental vehicle suitable for hauling dive gear, that might be an issue if renting from the lodge. All the rentals I saw were small Nissan Sentra types. If you want a truck or van you'd probably have to rent elsewhere.

Enjoy your trip and I hope you don't get slammed on airfare.

 

[Arturo]

Why don't you consider The Habitat Curazao Resort. I've been there and it seems to me the place fullfills all your requirements. Only trouble I can see it's far away from town, but you can allways get a cab ride. Their site is :

HABITAT CURACAO RESORT Dive Resort - Dive Curacao's PADI 5 Star Diving Center, Luxury Caribbean Spa

 

[alashas]

ffixxer,

You might want to see the info I just posted here: http://www.scubaboard.com/forums/abc-islands/236419-curacao-recommendations-what-not-miss-3.html

safe diving, alashas honeymoon2's photos- powered by SmugMug

 

[joeg]

I would steer clear of Budget Car rental at the airport.
Was in Curacao a few weeks ago. Found the airport rental staff to be rude and the cars dirty(rotting fruit under the seats and just plan dirty).
You will need a car to get around but I would rent from somebody else.
Stayed at the Habitat and used Easy Divers.
Easy Divers was just that, very laid back. Went on some great dives with them.
Habitat was OK. A/C worked, rooms were clean but you had to fight with the ants and other bugs.
You will have a wonderful in Curacao.