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idocsteve
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This thread journals my weeklong trip to the island of Curacao with my girlfriend and details our diving experiences as well as several activities and discoveries we made about the island.
The following vendors were used for this trip and my reviews are included.
* Caradonna Dive Adventures (Travel Agent)
* Ocean Encounters West
* All West Apartments
* Curacao Sunshine Sol Restaurant
* Several other restaurants are given a brief mention
When I first started planning this trip we were headed to Bonaire, and I discovered that several members of ScubaBoard were headed there the same week I was, so I started making plans to join the group, and got in touch with Donna from Caradonna Dive Adventures who was the Travel Agent for that trip. After I booked the trip, my daughter told me that her High School graduation was the Sunday I was leaving, and Donna tried to reschedule the trip, and it looked like it was still a "go", until Continental Airlines later canceled the flight and there was no other way to get to Bonaire during that time period. Donna gave me several more options, one of which was Curacao which she suggested would be a good alternate. Turns out it was, if not better than Bonaire might have been. I can't say enough about Donna and the time and effort she put into changing around our plans and making the trip a success. She always got right back to me (or as soon as she got the requested info from the vendor in question); she was reliable, she got us where we needed to go, and most importantly, back home again!
Give Donna an opportunity to help you out with your next dive vacation before going at it alone. donna@caradonna.com
We stayed at All West Apartments on the Northwest side of the island in the town of Westpunt, because I read that more remote area of the island has the best diving, and this was confirmed numerous times during my trip by other divers as well as the locals. Originally Donna had booked us at Breezes which is an all inclusive resort including food and activities, which was roughly equivalent of where the ScubaBoard group was staying on Bonaire, but we were looking for something more quiet and more suited for a lot of diving. I found All West Apartments after researching alternates, it seemed to fit our needs and Donna gladly made the change for us.
..:: All West Apartments & Diving, Curacao, Netherlands Antilles ::..
We were met at the airport by a fellow holding an All West sign, I waved, he threw me a set of keys and said "We go to market now". No driver's license check, no insurance liability waivers, just "off to the market" to get food. He waited outside while we walked the aisles stocking up on food for the week, figuring we'd catch breakfast and most lunches in the room and find restaurants to eat out. We stocked up on sandwich meat and bread, chips, drinks, granola bars, fruit, and this stuff called "Danio" which is probably an international version of Dannon Yogurt only it comes in large containers as compared to those tiny 6 oz ones, and it tastes amazing. If you like yogurt, get yourself a couple of these.
We were in the largest unit with a king size bed, kitchen, a second room which doubled as a living room or second bedroom. Both rooms open with sliding doors to a large patio with a beautiful view of the bay. There's a full kitchen which is ideal if you don't want to be eating out all the time. The apartment was spacious, reasonably clean and updated, but don't expect to see a maid all week, there's no on site restaurant and no "front desk". My girlfriend pointed out that the resort next to the Ocean Encounters West (OEW) dive shop called Lodge Kura Hulanda and Beach Club might have been more her speed, she likes to ask lots of questions and there is a front desk "concierge", a pool, and several restaurants and a bar, so it's more of a resort than a place to hang your hat. I did a quick price check and it appears that it is only about $250 total additional for the week for their smallest unit but that one doesn't have a kitchen and it's only one room (as far as I can tell). It's a brief walk from there to the dive shop where you can get tanks for shore diving. OEW and the Lodge are about a 2 minute drive from All West Apartments.
All West has a dive room which is locked with 2 grated metal doors, one faces the parking lot for easy gear loading and unloading, the other faces the back of the building for easy access to the house reef. We were given the key to the dive room along with the room key and had unlimited 24 hour access to tanks. They have a beautiful reef right outside the apartments and that was our first dive. I got faked out because I didn't realize how far the swim out was and we spent 20 minutes or so diving in the bay and close to shore which was "nice" but I was thinking "damn I thought the diving would be better". Then I got a bit smarter and we swam out..until we hit the reef which was the nicest diving I've done since Cozumel. The rest of the dives on the trip were at least as good...and most of them feature a gradual slope that allows you to choose any depth and still see great stuff, so you can maximize your gas and get bottom times approaching an hour or more.
My only "complaints" if you want to even call them that, about All West is that the 2 bedrooms have great A/C but the kitchen, hall, and bathroom have no AC so you gotta keep the room doors closed and it's really hot in the non AC rooms. Also while we didn't experience any crime, there was a suggestion that it was possible and to secure items in the safe when not there. Other resorts have gated entrys and security. I couldn't fit my laptop in the safe so I placed it between two towels on a shelf. One morning I was eating cereal while waiting for my girlfriend to pack up her stuff for the dive, I was rushing her, and before I could stop her she reached up to grab the towels. I tried to yell "No!" with a mouthful of Frosted Flakes, but I was too late and the towels and laptop came crashing down, shattering the laptop screen. Not a huge loss because the laptop was 4 years old, not running all that fast, hardly any hard drive space left, and I just bought a new one for about $500 after $100 off as a "trade in" for the old one.
OEW has a close affiliation to All West Apartments, at least one dive shop employee runs what you might loosely call the "office" at All West, and as I said that's the closest thing to a concierge desk that you'll find over there, not that you really need it. You've got the keys to the place and the tanks, if you don't mind washing your own dishes or letting them pile up in the sink all week, and you can change your own sheets, then it's all good. During the week the refrigerator was making a loud hum so I gave it a good shake (don't ask me why), and the frige got quiet but it also stopped working. When they got someone in there to look at it, turns out I pulled the plug out of the wall. They did the dishes while they were there so that might be a way to get them washed if you use a whole bunch.
All West has their own rental cars for a discounted rate over typical Curacao rental cars from various agencies on the island. They're Nissan pickup trucks and those things are tough! Twice I backed into stuff, once a building and another time a telephone pole (both times at a fairly good clip) and there wasn't a scratch or dent that I could see. During the week I put some gas in the truck and 5 minutes out of town the truck started to hesitate and misfire. I headed back to the station, where it was determined that I had overlooked the small sticker on the inside of the gas cap that said "Diesel". Long story short, I contacted Andreas who works in the dive shop (he was my girlfriend's AOW instructor), he also works at the Apartments and ultimately he had the tank drained and partially refilled, and he billed me $17.50 for the refill. I paid it but I still think there's some shared blame here. When you toss the keys to the driver, how about letting them know it's diesel? I never thought to bend down and look inside the cap to check the type of fuel, after speaking to Andreas I was left with the impression that I was the first tourist in the entire history of Curacao to put the wrong fuel in a rental car.
Check out the diesel sticker inside the cap
Although we had originally planned on doing a lot of shore diving, in the end I did a total of 19 dives, my girlfriend did 16 dives, and of my dives, 7 were shore and the other 12 were boat. The shore dives included Carpile, Playa Lagun (night dive), Playa kalki aka Alice in Wonderland Reef (off of OEW dive shop pier), All West House reef (really an extension of the Alice in Wonderland reef), and Porto Marie (aka "The Valley"). That last one is a unique 'double reef system' with a valley in between and is a nice change from the others that to me, get somewhat similar after a while. I did the All West house reef 3x, once as an orientation dive, once solo and once more for my girlfriend's AOW night dive requirement.
Large Green Moray at about 25 feet at Porto Marie
Creepy looking Neptune Statue at the All West Apartments house reef at night
Many of the reefs have corals that look like the one in the following picture, and Mushroom Forest is filled with them. At times I felt like I was swimming through a cartoon.
Here's why I would suggest that anyone going to Curacao consider doing more boat diving than shore diving:
1- Curacao is a rather large island and the dive spots are spread apart. On the map they look close but in fact you've got to head inland, usually back to the main road, then travel a bit, find the correct side road and drive back down to the beach and those "off roads" are usually 20 minutes or so on rough paved or even dirt roads. It takes a lot of time to get to them, and worse yet, the roads are poorly marked if at all and the dive sites are often not even labeled anywhere. So it's a lot of hit and miss, and a lot of wasted time making wrong turns and unintended detours. After a week of driving all over the island I don't think I'd have a problem, but what good is that NOW?
2- Shore dives are WORK. And they can be tough on your gear which gets dragged over rocks, not to mention sand in and around your regs and gauges and photo equipment. In many cases it's a long walk down a lot of stairs, out over a rough rocky surf, and a 10-15 minute or longer swim out to the reef (and back). The boat? Hop in, set up your gear, enjoy the 10 minute to half hour ride out, get a nice briefing and a guided dive to see the best spots of the reef, and relax! If I did more shore dives I'd have been literally exhausted...especially since my girlfriend cannot carry her gear long distances so I had to make 2 trips on most of the shore dives (sometimes up and down flights of steps) or carry her gear while transporting my own on my back.
3- Several of the boat dives cannot be reached from shore and those are the BEST...the ones written up in the dive magazines..including Watamula, Mushroom Forest, Hells Corner, etc. OEW has a regular schedule but they're flexible if the divers are ok with it and you might be able to request a special trip. Their schedule is already filled with the best dive spots so why even bother.
As part of our boat diving package through Ocean Encounters we booked the one day trip to Klein Curacao, which is an "upgrade" and we had to drive to the southeast part of the island to catch the boat, which was a large catamaran that holds 60 people. Since we had made the drive earlier in the week we had no problem but if it was the first time attempting the journey we might have run into a problem finding the place. There were 40 people on our trip, about 10 of them being divers. The trip was one of the highlights of our vacation and I highly recommend it. During the day trip you are treated to drinks (alcoholic and non), and a mid day barbeque by the highly experienced staff who have obviously done this before, and the diving is quite a bit different from that on the island with a very steep vertical wall topography interspersed with valleys, with the sand on top that gives the impression you are flying over a snow capped mountain.
Vertical wall topography at Klein Curacao as well as some reef inhabitants
There were several turtles above the sand in the shallows at the island
Spotted Moray at Klein Curacao
On the day we did the Island trip, we also did the "Carpile" outside of Breezes and thanks to Suzy and another fellow at the Dive Bus, I got a great predive briefing for the site. I asked if they had any availability so I could dive with them on the one day I had free but they were booked. Nice folks, I recommend them if you're looking for guided shore dives. Definitely the way to avoid getting lost and finding the best reefs and the best places to look for stuff.
The following vendors were used for this trip and my reviews are included.
* Caradonna Dive Adventures (Travel Agent)
* Ocean Encounters West
* All West Apartments
* Curacao Sunshine Sol Restaurant
* Several other restaurants are given a brief mention
When I first started planning this trip we were headed to Bonaire, and I discovered that several members of ScubaBoard were headed there the same week I was, so I started making plans to join the group, and got in touch with Donna from Caradonna Dive Adventures who was the Travel Agent for that trip. After I booked the trip, my daughter told me that her High School graduation was the Sunday I was leaving, and Donna tried to reschedule the trip, and it looked like it was still a "go", until Continental Airlines later canceled the flight and there was no other way to get to Bonaire during that time period. Donna gave me several more options, one of which was Curacao which she suggested would be a good alternate. Turns out it was, if not better than Bonaire might have been. I can't say enough about Donna and the time and effort she put into changing around our plans and making the trip a success. She always got right back to me (or as soon as she got the requested info from the vendor in question); she was reliable, she got us where we needed to go, and most importantly, back home again!
Give Donna an opportunity to help you out with your next dive vacation before going at it alone. donna@caradonna.com
We stayed at All West Apartments on the Northwest side of the island in the town of Westpunt, because I read that more remote area of the island has the best diving, and this was confirmed numerous times during my trip by other divers as well as the locals. Originally Donna had booked us at Breezes which is an all inclusive resort including food and activities, which was roughly equivalent of where the ScubaBoard group was staying on Bonaire, but we were looking for something more quiet and more suited for a lot of diving. I found All West Apartments after researching alternates, it seemed to fit our needs and Donna gladly made the change for us.
..:: All West Apartments & Diving, Curacao, Netherlands Antilles ::..
We were met at the airport by a fellow holding an All West sign, I waved, he threw me a set of keys and said "We go to market now". No driver's license check, no insurance liability waivers, just "off to the market" to get food. He waited outside while we walked the aisles stocking up on food for the week, figuring we'd catch breakfast and most lunches in the room and find restaurants to eat out. We stocked up on sandwich meat and bread, chips, drinks, granola bars, fruit, and this stuff called "Danio" which is probably an international version of Dannon Yogurt only it comes in large containers as compared to those tiny 6 oz ones, and it tastes amazing. If you like yogurt, get yourself a couple of these.
We were in the largest unit with a king size bed, kitchen, a second room which doubled as a living room or second bedroom. Both rooms open with sliding doors to a large patio with a beautiful view of the bay. There's a full kitchen which is ideal if you don't want to be eating out all the time. The apartment was spacious, reasonably clean and updated, but don't expect to see a maid all week, there's no on site restaurant and no "front desk". My girlfriend pointed out that the resort next to the Ocean Encounters West (OEW) dive shop called Lodge Kura Hulanda and Beach Club might have been more her speed, she likes to ask lots of questions and there is a front desk "concierge", a pool, and several restaurants and a bar, so it's more of a resort than a place to hang your hat. I did a quick price check and it appears that it is only about $250 total additional for the week for their smallest unit but that one doesn't have a kitchen and it's only one room (as far as I can tell). It's a brief walk from there to the dive shop where you can get tanks for shore diving. OEW and the Lodge are about a 2 minute drive from All West Apartments.
All West has a dive room which is locked with 2 grated metal doors, one faces the parking lot for easy gear loading and unloading, the other faces the back of the building for easy access to the house reef. We were given the key to the dive room along with the room key and had unlimited 24 hour access to tanks. They have a beautiful reef right outside the apartments and that was our first dive. I got faked out because I didn't realize how far the swim out was and we spent 20 minutes or so diving in the bay and close to shore which was "nice" but I was thinking "damn I thought the diving would be better". Then I got a bit smarter and we swam out..until we hit the reef which was the nicest diving I've done since Cozumel. The rest of the dives on the trip were at least as good...and most of them feature a gradual slope that allows you to choose any depth and still see great stuff, so you can maximize your gas and get bottom times approaching an hour or more.
My only "complaints" if you want to even call them that, about All West is that the 2 bedrooms have great A/C but the kitchen, hall, and bathroom have no AC so you gotta keep the room doors closed and it's really hot in the non AC rooms. Also while we didn't experience any crime, there was a suggestion that it was possible and to secure items in the safe when not there. Other resorts have gated entrys and security. I couldn't fit my laptop in the safe so I placed it between two towels on a shelf. One morning I was eating cereal while waiting for my girlfriend to pack up her stuff for the dive, I was rushing her, and before I could stop her she reached up to grab the towels. I tried to yell "No!" with a mouthful of Frosted Flakes, but I was too late and the towels and laptop came crashing down, shattering the laptop screen. Not a huge loss because the laptop was 4 years old, not running all that fast, hardly any hard drive space left, and I just bought a new one for about $500 after $100 off as a "trade in" for the old one.
OEW has a close affiliation to All West Apartments, at least one dive shop employee runs what you might loosely call the "office" at All West, and as I said that's the closest thing to a concierge desk that you'll find over there, not that you really need it. You've got the keys to the place and the tanks, if you don't mind washing your own dishes or letting them pile up in the sink all week, and you can change your own sheets, then it's all good. During the week the refrigerator was making a loud hum so I gave it a good shake (don't ask me why), and the frige got quiet but it also stopped working. When they got someone in there to look at it, turns out I pulled the plug out of the wall. They did the dishes while they were there so that might be a way to get them washed if you use a whole bunch.
All West has their own rental cars for a discounted rate over typical Curacao rental cars from various agencies on the island. They're Nissan pickup trucks and those things are tough! Twice I backed into stuff, once a building and another time a telephone pole (both times at a fairly good clip) and there wasn't a scratch or dent that I could see. During the week I put some gas in the truck and 5 minutes out of town the truck started to hesitate and misfire. I headed back to the station, where it was determined that I had overlooked the small sticker on the inside of the gas cap that said "Diesel". Long story short, I contacted Andreas who works in the dive shop (he was my girlfriend's AOW instructor), he also works at the Apartments and ultimately he had the tank drained and partially refilled, and he billed me $17.50 for the refill. I paid it but I still think there's some shared blame here. When you toss the keys to the driver, how about letting them know it's diesel? I never thought to bend down and look inside the cap to check the type of fuel, after speaking to Andreas I was left with the impression that I was the first tourist in the entire history of Curacao to put the wrong fuel in a rental car.
Check out the diesel sticker inside the cap
Although we had originally planned on doing a lot of shore diving, in the end I did a total of 19 dives, my girlfriend did 16 dives, and of my dives, 7 were shore and the other 12 were boat. The shore dives included Carpile, Playa Lagun (night dive), Playa kalki aka Alice in Wonderland Reef (off of OEW dive shop pier), All West House reef (really an extension of the Alice in Wonderland reef), and Porto Marie (aka "The Valley"). That last one is a unique 'double reef system' with a valley in between and is a nice change from the others that to me, get somewhat similar after a while. I did the All West house reef 3x, once as an orientation dive, once solo and once more for my girlfriend's AOW night dive requirement.
Large Green Moray at about 25 feet at Porto Marie
Creepy looking Neptune Statue at the All West Apartments house reef at night
Many of the reefs have corals that look like the one in the following picture, and Mushroom Forest is filled with them. At times I felt like I was swimming through a cartoon.
Here's why I would suggest that anyone going to Curacao consider doing more boat diving than shore diving:
1- Curacao is a rather large island and the dive spots are spread apart. On the map they look close but in fact you've got to head inland, usually back to the main road, then travel a bit, find the correct side road and drive back down to the beach and those "off roads" are usually 20 minutes or so on rough paved or even dirt roads. It takes a lot of time to get to them, and worse yet, the roads are poorly marked if at all and the dive sites are often not even labeled anywhere. So it's a lot of hit and miss, and a lot of wasted time making wrong turns and unintended detours. After a week of driving all over the island I don't think I'd have a problem, but what good is that NOW?
2- Shore dives are WORK. And they can be tough on your gear which gets dragged over rocks, not to mention sand in and around your regs and gauges and photo equipment. In many cases it's a long walk down a lot of stairs, out over a rough rocky surf, and a 10-15 minute or longer swim out to the reef (and back). The boat? Hop in, set up your gear, enjoy the 10 minute to half hour ride out, get a nice briefing and a guided dive to see the best spots of the reef, and relax! If I did more shore dives I'd have been literally exhausted...especially since my girlfriend cannot carry her gear long distances so I had to make 2 trips on most of the shore dives (sometimes up and down flights of steps) or carry her gear while transporting my own on my back.
3- Several of the boat dives cannot be reached from shore and those are the BEST...the ones written up in the dive magazines..including Watamula, Mushroom Forest, Hells Corner, etc. OEW has a regular schedule but they're flexible if the divers are ok with it and you might be able to request a special trip. Their schedule is already filled with the best dive spots so why even bother.
As part of our boat diving package through Ocean Encounters we booked the one day trip to Klein Curacao, which is an "upgrade" and we had to drive to the southeast part of the island to catch the boat, which was a large catamaran that holds 60 people. Since we had made the drive earlier in the week we had no problem but if it was the first time attempting the journey we might have run into a problem finding the place. There were 40 people on our trip, about 10 of them being divers. The trip was one of the highlights of our vacation and I highly recommend it. During the day trip you are treated to drinks (alcoholic and non), and a mid day barbeque by the highly experienced staff who have obviously done this before, and the diving is quite a bit different from that on the island with a very steep vertical wall topography interspersed with valleys, with the sand on top that gives the impression you are flying over a snow capped mountain.
Vertical wall topography at Klein Curacao as well as some reef inhabitants
There were several turtles above the sand in the shallows at the island
Spotted Moray at Klein Curacao
On the day we did the Island trip, we also did the "Carpile" outside of Breezes and thanks to Suzy and another fellow at the Dive Bus, I got a great predive briefing for the site. I asked if they had any availability so I could dive with them on the one day I had free but they were booked. Nice folks, I recommend them if you're looking for guided shore dives. Definitely the way to avoid getting lost and finding the best reefs and the best places to look for stuff.
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