Considering Curacao and have questions....

[DESIGNERDIVER]

Hi everyone,
My Fiance and I are considering a few destinations for a 5-7 day dive trip,one of them being Curacao. My one major question is this.........is Curacao (like its sister island Bonaire) mainly for shore diving? I understand Shore diving is great and cheap and all that............however we arent looking for that. We would prefer to go out by boat and dive off of the boat. Now do not get me wrong we will try a shore dive while we are there. I do not however want that to be the focus of the trip.
any input would be greatly appreciated
thanks

 

[CheddarChick]

Tons of places to go by boat....Ocean Encounters, Carribbean Sea Sports all leave from the hotels they have thier dive shops at. Most also have great shore diving, with very easy entry. And a great outfit is the Dive Bus..they pick you right up at the hotel if you don't want to rent a car (though I highly recommend the car) Try the shore diving...I'm sure you will love it...Many of the beachs have resturants & bathrooms with showers right on site with very easy entry. We have spent the last 5 years on vacation in Curacao and love it soooo much!!!

 

[DESIGNERDIVER]

Tons of places to go by boat....Ocean Encounters, Carribbean Sea Sports all leave from the hotels they have thier dive shops at. Most also have great shore diving, with very easy entry. And a great outfit is the Dive Bus..they pick you right up at the hotel if you don't want to rent a car (though I highly recommend the car) Try the shore diving...I'm sure you will love it...Many of the beachs have resturants & bathrooms with showers right on site with very easy entry. We have spent the last 5 years on vacation in Curacao and love it soooo much!!!

wow the last 5 years you say? well can you tell me what hotels you have stayed at? and the ups and downs of them? and also if you dont mind a round about figure on how much was spent total for the trip?

 

[CheddarChick]

Wow...Have you got all night??? We usually stay for 2 weeks, so we have taken to staying at condos or resorts that have longer term rentals, $$$$$ being the first issue. Also most rentals come with kitchens & more room to spread out. Our first 2 week stay was the Marriott...loved it except for the lack of room to move and store stuff, beautiful resort, top notch dive shop (ask for Elly). Then we moved onto a 2 bedroom townhouse on the lower part of the island on Caaracais Baai Weg. Really nice place until it got broken into, and we lost a ton of stuff. Then scared, last year we went to Lions Dive Resort and a hotel room again and hated it. Not the resort, the fact it was so small for such a large amount of money. The resort was very nice. This year we rented a townhouse resort rental at Piscedera Bay Resort. Kitchen with a full size fridge and stove top, 2 bedrooms, bath, huge covered veranda with table & chairs. I could get WIFI there which was a must (work calls). Washer, Satellite TV (lots of soccer games, but not a lot of US news. So I could always find a place to hide from the hubby (LOL). It came complete with a resident cat we named Adolph, (he had a moustache like Hitler). While in the tropics you must always remember that it is not the US, and a 4 star place is really like a 2 star here in the states. No cleaning lady daily so we couldn't be pigs. We rented a car at Budget and for 2 weeks it ran just under $400.

So here is my breakdown on the 2 weeks.
Curacao Feb 2009 PB-2 br
Piscedera Bay Resort
Apartment $1,680.00
Cleaning Final & 1 weekly $85.00
Utilities $190.00
Internet $40.00
Airfare Appox $665.80 x 2 $1,331.60


Chicago hotel $113.00 (Did an early flight)
Car $390.00
Diving $500.00
Food & Fun $1,000.00 (Bugeted But only spent $600)
Departure tax $77.00
Total for 2 weeks for 2 $5,406.60 ish
Hope this helps. Please if you need more help PM me!!!
Ilena

 

[Damselfish]

You could only shore dive, or only boat dive, and be happy either way there without missing (too) much. We always stick to boat dives except the dives we do off our hotel dock, as that's what we prefer.

 

[DESIGNERDIVER]

You could only shore dive, or only boat dive, and be happy either way there without missing (too) much. We always stick to boat dives except the dives we do off our hotel dock, as that's what we prefer.

and where have you stayed??

 

[morecowbells]

Jan 24-31st 2009 stayed at All West Apts in Westpunt Curacao. We did 4 boat dives the rest were shore dives.

$1200 for my husband and I. This covered unlimited shore diving. 1 Bedroom apt and rental car. Wifi was no extra charge. No maid service. Apts. basic but roomy and bright, immaculate and views to die for. No t.v.

Booked 2 two tank dives. Since added on to package was $59 per person for two tanks. Booked through Oceans Encounters West.

Airfare was $650 per person on AA. It looks like Insel Air has some decent rates out of Miami and appears to be getting very positive feedback. I will look into them for next year. I sign up for fare alerts on Kayak. Unfortunately, so far there are no big bargans to Curacao.

We typically are breakfast and lunch at apt and ate dinner out. Meals ran about $40-$75 USD which included a glass of wine or Mojito for each of us.

I was very happy with our decision to stay up in Westpunt. You are away from the tourist and cruise crowds. For some people it may feel too isolated but for us it was a good match. You have Sol Food and Rancho Sobrino near by. We did not try Jaanchie's. Other than that you may have to drive for some good food. You are about 35 minutes from the airport and about 40 minutes from Willemsted.

We dove Porto Mari up to Playa Kalki and many areas in between. Each dive was amazing in it's own way. That trip made me a huge fan of shore diving. One of these days I have to give The Dive Bus a try-especially after reading Cheddar Chick's experience. Everybody seems to have a blast with them.

You can click on some of the shore dive sites at: Scuba Shore Diving Site Listing for: Curacao, ABC Islands
I found the info to be extremely helpful.

You may want to request this thread be moved to the ABC islands forum to get more traffic. Good luck. If you have any questions let me know.

 

[Damselfish]

and where have you stayed??

I've only stayed at 3 places, though I've visited many of the others.

Lion's Dive, long ago. I personally wouldn't stay there now because the area has gotten so much busier and IMO both shore and boat diving options are better towards the western end of the island anyway. The dive op there (and IMO far too many places on Curacao) is Ocean Encounters, which I'm not fond of.

Habitat, many times. Great dive op and set up (though the shore dive there, while still nice, is showing the wear.) Hotel itself used to be nice enough but it's seriously suffering from lack of maintenance, and I probably won't go back there until/unless I hear they've improved things.

Kura Hulanda Lodge. Very nice place with a great shore dive, as good or better than most boat dives. Dive shop is Ocean Encounters West, which is better in some ways than the main Ocean Encounters. The dive setup there is pretty good though not nearly as convenient as it could be - it's been described in other threads here. I would love to stay here again, but Ocean Encounters did a number of things that really pissed us off so I'm not sure. (Problems with management, not the dive staff which was great.)

 

[CheddarChick]

Damselfish is right about the wear & tear on the hotels, again keep in mind the tropics are are tough on all materials, though the upkeep is better in some hotels than others. I think the diving on the west side is also great, coral is probably better looking up there, all the sites show some kind of damage from Omar, but nothing I wouldn't expect. If you like to go out to eat at night, and have a more "touristy" vacation stay on the east side near Williamstad. Either way you can't go wrong.

 

[ApexLongimanus]

we just came back from curacao and i'll second cheddarchicks comments completely.

we stayed at the hilton (on hilton points....). this place has also seen better times but it is still ok. as with all these places, room for dive gear is an issue but the balconies are big and stuff dried outside better than in our a/c room.

concerning diving: we spread it between shore diving (the dive bus) and boat diving (ocean encounters). hindsight 20/20, the next time i would probably stick with the shore diving. not that the boat dives were bad, but we liked it better.

i can recommend both dive outfits but due to the smaller size, the dive bus with mark, suzy, crawley and ellie is waaaay more personal.

@cheddarchick, never met but the dive bus guys mentioned your name when we were talking about scubaboard.... funny.