chachita
Contributor
This was my 6th diving trip to Curacao. I logged 10 dives - 7 were shore [Westpunt, Jeremi, Lagun, Porto Marie, Boka Sami, Snakebay & Superior Producer] and 3 were boat dives [Mushroom Forest, Oostpunt & Awa Blanku].
I did the shore dives with Trunk Divers and with a buddy. This was my first time diving with Karel & the Trunk Divers team and I couldn't be more pleased: extremely knowledgeable, total professionals, very flexible and accommodating and reasonably priced. I don't like diving in large groups, on a fixed boat schedule and I don't like the short or rushed surface intervals typical of dive boats. With Trunk Divers you have your own guide, you can go wherever and whenever you want and you can take the time for a nice lunch between dives. I truly recommend them!
The two boat dives to Oostpunt I did with Niels Jorissen of Dive Charter Curacao. Niels and his captain were great and they make it possible to dive in areas that can't be easily accessed by land, like Oostpunt and the North Side. I'll do the North Coast with him on my next trip. The Mushroom Forest I did with the incomparable Captain Goodlife - Junny Obersi. The Mushroom Forest is my fave Curacao dive, in part because at the end I sit down to what is invariably the best fried fish lunch of the trip, courtesy of Junny's wife.
I was surprised to see bleached corals, something I had not seen on Curacao before. The bleaching was uneven: some reefs showed no bleaching, while others, like the Mushroom Forest, were extensively bleached. The other nasty surprise were the lion fish, which were small in Westpoint beaches but huge at Oostpunt. We saw them at every single dive. 11 in one dive at Lagun and about 5-9 in clusters everywhere else.
Notwithstanding the bleaching and the lion fish, the reefs were in great shape with many more and bigger fish than in my previous two trips. Visibility was great on 4 trips [70 feet], so so [for Curacao] on most others and non-existing on one Westpunt dive.
Memorable sightings include a monstrously big green moray, a giant lobster, a huge manta ray, four large barracudas shadowing us throughout the Mushroom Forest and the biggest blue parrot fish I have ever seen.
I did the shore dives with Trunk Divers and with a buddy. This was my first time diving with Karel & the Trunk Divers team and I couldn't be more pleased: extremely knowledgeable, total professionals, very flexible and accommodating and reasonably priced. I don't like diving in large groups, on a fixed boat schedule and I don't like the short or rushed surface intervals typical of dive boats. With Trunk Divers you have your own guide, you can go wherever and whenever you want and you can take the time for a nice lunch between dives. I truly recommend them!
The two boat dives to Oostpunt I did with Niels Jorissen of Dive Charter Curacao. Niels and his captain were great and they make it possible to dive in areas that can't be easily accessed by land, like Oostpunt and the North Side. I'll do the North Coast with him on my next trip. The Mushroom Forest I did with the incomparable Captain Goodlife - Junny Obersi. The Mushroom Forest is my fave Curacao dive, in part because at the end I sit down to what is invariably the best fried fish lunch of the trip, courtesy of Junny's wife.
I was surprised to see bleached corals, something I had not seen on Curacao before. The bleaching was uneven: some reefs showed no bleaching, while others, like the Mushroom Forest, were extensively bleached. The other nasty surprise were the lion fish, which were small in Westpoint beaches but huge at Oostpunt. We saw them at every single dive. 11 in one dive at Lagun and about 5-9 in clusters everywhere else.
Notwithstanding the bleaching and the lion fish, the reefs were in great shape with many more and bigger fish than in my previous two trips. Visibility was great on 4 trips [70 feet], so so [for Curacao] on most others and non-existing on one Westpunt dive.
Memorable sightings include a monstrously big green moray, a giant lobster, a huge manta ray, four large barracudas shadowing us throughout the Mushroom Forest and the biggest blue parrot fish I have ever seen.
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