Just arrived on Curacao

Please register or login

Welcome to ScubaBoard, the world's largest scuba diving community. Registration is not required to read the forums, but we encourage you to join. Joining has its benefits and enables you to participate in the discussions.

Benefits of registering include

  • Ability to post and comment on topics and discussions.
  • A Free photo gallery to share your dive photos with the world.
  • You can make this box go away

Joining is quick and easy. Log in or Register now!

Are the restaurants in W’stad open?
no idea, based on what I've seen so far, my educated guess would be hell-yes. I'm planning a trip for goat stew at the "Old" market soon. My favorite place to eat is Landhuis Daniel, about 20Km West of Willemstad
 
no idea, based on what I've seen so far, my educated guess would be hell-yes. I'm planning a trip for goat stew at the "Old" market soon. My favorite place to eat is Landhuis Daniel, about 20Km West of Willemstad

Any diving yet?
 
We were in Curacao from January 29 to February 11 staying in Westpunt. We flew LAS-MIA-CUR on American. The red eye flight out of Las Vegas was full. The MIA-CUR leg was about 1/3 full. Curacao's 72 hr PCR countdown is 72 hrs. prior to your departure to CUR. In our case, MIA. The return to the U.S. is within 3 days before departure. There are 3 places in Curacao to get your PCR test. We used ADC and got the nasal swab test. The cost was $90 USD. My health insurance carrier said they would pay for the tests. We just have to submit a claim. We took our tests at 11 am and had the results back electronically by 6 pm that evening. The return flight CUR-MIA was full as was our flight from MIA-LAS.

We dove every day up on the west end. What we noticed was that visibility was less than it was during our normal Sept/Oct trips. I forgot to carry my underwater tape measure but perhaps visibility was less than 50 ft. most of the time. Visibility appeared to get better the last couple days we dove. I will try to convince my photographer to log in and post some photos.

We noticed that a couple of restaurants on the west end (Cactus Cafe and Landhuis Misje) had closed since we were last on the island (October 2019). We celebrated my wife's birthday at Sol Food. The food was excellent as always. Kudos to Sunshine and her staff. We ate lunch one day at Gouverneur de Rouville in Willemstad. Overall, the island was not very busy due to the travel restrictions and reluctance to fly. Reminded me of the week after Hurricane Irma went through the Caribbean back in 2017 - no cruise ships and flight cancellations. Eerily quiet on the island. We were on the second to last flight to leave Miami that day before the airport was closed.

We are headed back for a month in Sept/Oct. Flying American to CUR and looks like at this time United back to Las Vegas via Panama and Copa Air (12 hr 47 min). American's return flights to Las Vegas from Curacao in October are currently 19+ hrs. It appears, that the MIA departure to LAS is now earlier in the evening with the flight from CUR arriving to late to make the connection. Hopefully, American readjusts their flight time as the year goes on. Only 215 days to go.
 
A shortish 50 min drive a little East of Snake Bay. This is Sunday,so I'm staying away from the "popular" beaches. Tomorrow maybe a couple dives at Kokomo.

Get on with the program, don't waste time :) The 5 weeks will slip by very fast!!

Write reports!!
 
So how was the first week?
 
We were in Curacao from January 29 to February 11 staying in Westpunt. We flew LAS-MIA-CUR on American. The red eye flight out of Las Vegas was full. The MIA-CUR leg was about 1/3 full. Curacao's 72 hr PCR countdown is 72 hrs. prior to your departure to CUR. In our case, MIA. The return to the U.S. is within 3 days before departure. There are 3 places in Curacao to get your PCR test. We used ADC and got the nasal swab test. The cost was $90 USD. My health insurance carrier said they would pay for the tests. We just have to submit a claim. We took our tests at 11 am and had the results back electronically by 6 pm that evening. The return flight CUR-MIA was full as was our flight from MIA-LAS.

We dove every day up on the west end. What we noticed was that visibility was less than it was during our normal Sept/Oct trips. I forgot to carry my underwater tape measure but perhaps visibility was less than 50 ft. most of the time. Visibility appeared to get better the last couple days we dove. I will try to convince my photographer to log in and post some photos.

We noticed that a couple of restaurants on the west end (Cactus Cafe and Landhuis Misje) had closed since we were last on the island (October 2019). We celebrated my wife's birthday at Sol Food. The food was excellent as always. Kudos to Sunshine and her staff. We ate lunch one day at Gouverneur de Rouville in Willemstad. Overall, the island was not very busy due to the travel restrictions and reluctance to fly. Reminded me of the week after Hurricane Irma went through the Caribbean back in 2017 - no cruise ships and flight cancellations. Eerily quiet on the island. We were on the second to last flight to leave Miami that day before the airport was closed.

We are headed back for a month in Sept/Oct. Flying American to CUR and looks like at this time United back to Las Vegas via Panama and Copa Air (12 hr 47 min). American's return flights to Las Vegas from Curacao in October are currently 19+ hrs. It appears, that the MIA departure to LAS is now earlier in the evening with the flight from CUR arriving to late to make the connection. Hopefully, American readjusts their flight time as the year goes on. Only 215 days to go.

Great news, Cactus Cafe is back in town at Rancho Sobrino. One big happy, hungry family here; Taco and Emily will be in for dinner tonight :wink: See you later this fall.
 
were arriving March 20. We have done lots of Caribbean diving, but never Curacao. What are the water temps?

Jay
 

Back
Top Bottom