Trip Report Curacao Trip Report - April 2014

[Pacific Diver]

What part of Roatan did you stay at & dive out of? I ask because a poster with extensive Roatan experience in one or more other threads has pointed out that many scuba tourists to Roatan tend to 'stay on the reservation' (unlike Bonaire, where they drive around the island) and often dive only a fairly small local part, serviced by their dive op. This is significant because Roatan offers substantially different underwater environments, based on where you are.

So I'm curious as to what part you dove.

Richard.

Sorry, I'm a few thousand miles away from my dive log. It's been a few years since we've been to Roatan. I'd have to dig the log out and look it up.

 

[Pacific Diver]

Interesting! I've been to Bonaire, not the other 3 as yet. From what I've read on the forum by others, I thought the general community consensus tended to be that Little Cayman was about the best diving in the Caribbean, Curacao & Bonaire very similar with pretty good reefs and 'fishy,' and Roatan had lush reefs and lots of macro subjects but wasn't as 'fishy.' I figure there will be divers whose experiences don't line up with those generalizations, and evidently yours did not.

What part of Roatan did you stay at & dive out of? I ask because a poster with extensive Roatan experience in one or more other threads has pointed out that many scuba tourists to Roatan tend to 'stay on the reservation' (unlike Bonaire, where they drive around the island) and often dive only a fairly small local part, serviced by their dive op. This is significant because Roatan offers substantially different underwater environments, based on where you are.

So I'm curious as to what part you dove.

Richard.

Better late than never - we dove on the west end of the island, roughly between Odyssey Wreck and Half Moon Bay, with a couple of side trips.

 

[Diver OnLu]

Hello everybody,

This is just to clarify the question about paying at Playa Kalki:

The beach entry is public, so anybody can gear up on the parking lot, walk down the stairs to the beach, and dive from there without paying any fees.

When you come down the main flight of stairs, and turn left, you enter the premises of Go West Diving (I work there, by the way). Our customers - minimum renting tanks - can make use of our facilities without any extra charge, including rinse tanks, shower, bathroom, tea, coffee, drinking water, WiFi, lockers to store away your valuables (instead of leaving them in the car on the parking lot upstairs), picknick tables, gear setup benches etc.

We invest quite some money in keeping our facilities clean and intact (we don't get any government support for taking care of the pier at Playa Kalki, not even for making repairs after storm damages). All this said, we ask all divers who want to make use of our facilities, but don't bring us any business at the same time, to pay a facility fee of 7.00 US$ or 13.00 Ang per person and day for the service we provide to divers at Playa Kalki. This has been our policy for years already. And by the way, it's cheaper, and less work (remember all the talk about the stairs?), to rent a tank from us, instead of renting it somewhere else and paying facility fee.

Anybody thinking this is unreasonable will still have the chance to bring all they need, and use the beach for starting their dives, no problem.

I hope this is helpful information.

Safe diving, everyone,

Andreas