mhedstrom
Registered
Just got back from the 2007 Colorado Scuba Bash in Curacao. This was our first real dive trip (we did 2 OW dives in Cozumel, and everything else thus far has been in Colorado), so I wasn't sure what to expect - I was afraid in my mind I was overhyping the trip, but it turned out I wasn't.
I think there were about 60-65 Colorado people who attended. The largest gathering from any 1 dive shop was 14 (Coral Reef and I forget who else each had 14). The Coral Reef people had their own dive boat, with a few others from other shops to fill in the extra spots.
Habitat Curacao literally is in the middle of nowhere, on a gorgeous stretch of ocean. There's a boat dock, a dive dock, a pool, a tiny beach, and that's about it for stuff to do. The diving was 24x7 since when the dive shop people go home at night, they leave air tanks in an open air room so you can grab a tank whenever. If you wanted to dive nitrox though at that point, you needed to analyze it beforehand since they lock up the analyzers at night. Out of 18 dives, we did 1 night dive on air because we forgot about that. However all of our nitrox tanks (between the 2 of us, that was 34 tanks), all of them were between 31.4-32.5.
Anyways, the hotel is roughly 30 minutes from town, and if you don't dive, you shouldn't be staying there since there's nothing else around. They do have shuttles running twice a day to and from Williamstad (the main town), or you can call a cab. Be forewarned that that can take awhile - on Friday 3 of us called a cab and it took an hour from them to get to us.
But that's the lifestyle there, everything is slow, casual, and deliberate. The restaurant was decent - not gourmet, not horrible, but good for hungry divers. We figured out very early on that lunch at the restaurant takes an hour so when we had 1:15 boat dive times, we needed to plan accordingly.
The rooms were decent - beds were soft, pillows a little flat, but the room was all tile floor, which was great since we came in dripping wet most of the time.
The dive shop is fantastic. All the people associated with it (from the tank boys to the dms, to the people running the dive shop) were friendly, helpful, and just generally fun to talk to and be around. You very quickly get to a level of comfort with them. There are lockers to store your gear in, and you can buy a padlock ($2.50 to buy) to lock them, or you could bring your own. The lockers themselves are nothing to write home about - they're wooden lockers in a room, and stuff never really dries out, but it's great to keep it out of the way. In the "get ready to dive area", there are a couple long tables, 2 rinse tanks, a camera rinse tank, and an area to hang your wetsuits.
Shore diving at Habitat honestly is great. Off the end of the dive dock (there are stairs leading down, or you can giant stride in) is a rope which takes you to the reef and then goes down to 90 feet. It's impossible to get lost, as long as you know which way you went (left or right) when you get to the reef. Honestly we enjoyed the shore dives more than the boat dives, so on the last day we skipped the boat dives and just did shore dives. Definitely a lot of stuff to see hiding in the coral. Frog fish, octopii, seahorses, lobsters, crabs, and lots of other stuff which I had no idea what it was, but it was cool.
We did dive at the Mushroom Forest dive site on one of our boat dives which looks interesting.
Everybody on the Bash was friendly, social, and it was very easy to see people in the restaurant/bar and just go up and start talking to them. We didn't get to know everybody by name, but definitely got to know a fair number of people outside of our dive shop group. You could be as social as you wanted, or as anti-social as you wanted, it really didn't matter. Some people would go to bed at 9:30-10, others would sit around the bar until 11 when it closed down, and even after (it's an open-air bar/restaurant so they can't really kick you out per se).
Would I stay here again if I came back to Curacao? Definitely. We were there to dive, and even though we did go into town twice (once on a shuttle Wednesday night that they had rented specifically for the Colorado people, and again on Friday during the day), I still would stay here again. You just can't beat it for the shore diving.
I'm starting to go through my photos, and for our first real usage of the camera, we did get some decent stuff. It's all about practice! They'll be posted at Curacao - a photoset on Flickr (I'll be adding more than are there now).
I think there were about 60-65 Colorado people who attended. The largest gathering from any 1 dive shop was 14 (Coral Reef and I forget who else each had 14). The Coral Reef people had their own dive boat, with a few others from other shops to fill in the extra spots.
Habitat Curacao literally is in the middle of nowhere, on a gorgeous stretch of ocean. There's a boat dock, a dive dock, a pool, a tiny beach, and that's about it for stuff to do. The diving was 24x7 since when the dive shop people go home at night, they leave air tanks in an open air room so you can grab a tank whenever. If you wanted to dive nitrox though at that point, you needed to analyze it beforehand since they lock up the analyzers at night. Out of 18 dives, we did 1 night dive on air because we forgot about that. However all of our nitrox tanks (between the 2 of us, that was 34 tanks), all of them were between 31.4-32.5.
Anyways, the hotel is roughly 30 minutes from town, and if you don't dive, you shouldn't be staying there since there's nothing else around. They do have shuttles running twice a day to and from Williamstad (the main town), or you can call a cab. Be forewarned that that can take awhile - on Friday 3 of us called a cab and it took an hour from them to get to us.
But that's the lifestyle there, everything is slow, casual, and deliberate. The restaurant was decent - not gourmet, not horrible, but good for hungry divers. We figured out very early on that lunch at the restaurant takes an hour so when we had 1:15 boat dive times, we needed to plan accordingly.
The rooms were decent - beds were soft, pillows a little flat, but the room was all tile floor, which was great since we came in dripping wet most of the time.
The dive shop is fantastic. All the people associated with it (from the tank boys to the dms, to the people running the dive shop) were friendly, helpful, and just generally fun to talk to and be around. You very quickly get to a level of comfort with them. There are lockers to store your gear in, and you can buy a padlock ($2.50 to buy) to lock them, or you could bring your own. The lockers themselves are nothing to write home about - they're wooden lockers in a room, and stuff never really dries out, but it's great to keep it out of the way. In the "get ready to dive area", there are a couple long tables, 2 rinse tanks, a camera rinse tank, and an area to hang your wetsuits.
Shore diving at Habitat honestly is great. Off the end of the dive dock (there are stairs leading down, or you can giant stride in) is a rope which takes you to the reef and then goes down to 90 feet. It's impossible to get lost, as long as you know which way you went (left or right) when you get to the reef. Honestly we enjoyed the shore dives more than the boat dives, so on the last day we skipped the boat dives and just did shore dives. Definitely a lot of stuff to see hiding in the coral. Frog fish, octopii, seahorses, lobsters, crabs, and lots of other stuff which I had no idea what it was, but it was cool.
We did dive at the Mushroom Forest dive site on one of our boat dives which looks interesting. Everybody on the Bash was friendly, social, and it was very easy to see people in the restaurant/bar and just go up and start talking to them. We didn't get to know everybody by name, but definitely got to know a fair number of people outside of our dive shop group. You could be as social as you wanted, or as anti-social as you wanted, it really didn't matter. Some people would go to bed at 9:30-10, others would sit around the bar until 11 when it closed down, and even after (it's an open-air bar/restaurant so they can't really kick you out per se).
Would I stay here again if I came back to Curacao? Definitely. We were there to dive, and even though we did go into town twice (once on a shuttle Wednesday night that they had rented specifically for the Colorado people, and again on Friday during the day), I still would stay here again. You just can't beat it for the shore diving.
I'm starting to go through my photos, and for our first real usage of the camera, we did get some decent stuff. It's all about practice! They'll be posted at Curacao - a photoset on Flickr (I'll be adding more than are there now).
