Considering Curacao and have questions....

[Curacao Sunshine]

Sunshine here,
Granted we're biased. We live in Westpunt but..... to be fair, Damselfish you were here in October 2006. We've had dinner guests who've been sooo please to go out on the boat as solo divers. When this is the case, you can have your choice of sites (except for the ones a half hour away). Usually divers will chose Watamula and go at their own speed. I recently went on a 2 tank boat dive with a friend from town. There were 10 divers, 2 surfaced after 25 minutes and another couple soon after. I was afraid we might have a shortened dive but we went the full hour with just the 2 of us and the DM at the end.
Staying at the Lodge is high end and those who stay at All West have access to air 24/7 and a great house reef - day or night. Stay with us and I promise you won't have to wash dishes. The main thing you'll miss on the dives with OEW now is Andreas. I also think if you start this thread on the ABC forum more will post their opinions; never a shortage on SB. It should be my tag line so I'll say it again. No matter which end of the island you chose to stay, please rent a car or hook up with The Dive Bus to experience at least one site at the other side of the island. Curacao has a variety of dive sites; walls, wrecks, soft coral, hard coral, maybe a dolphin if you are lucky but you'll need to leave the house reef to see it all.
Sunshine
Curacao Sunshine - Rental Property on the Island of Curacao

 

[Damselfish]

yes, it's been awhile, a year longer than I thought. (If we hadn't had that experience, we'd have probably been back by now, but it kind of soured us on things.) If they have changed their policies (or better yet management) that's wonderful. But sorry, it's a little hard to get over the fact that they lied to us, screwed up our trip, and didn't give a damn.

I should point out that I've been going to Curacao for a long time and have been one of the bigger promoters of it on this board before as many people were talking about it or going there.

 

[Curacao Sunshine]

I'm not criticizing you; it's just the dive shop and their practices as we've known them for the past 2 years are not as you described. I'm sure you had a bad enough experience if you chose to change hotels but other divers considering coming to Curacao now might like to hear the current situation. OEW will take divers out on the boat even if there is only one diver. They still use the locker to hold tanks at night but I believe the guards must be used to it because we've never had a hassle with our night dives at Alice In Wonderland. We had a bad experience with Ocean Encounters at Lions Dive, actually the management. I just don't say anything at all about the dive op because, for example we know and like Bryan (who posts on SB) and are confident that he treats his customers well at OE Breezes.
As someone who lives on Curacao, thank you for your posts especially since you include dive sites on both sides of the island. By no means did I mean to offend you.Maybe after Andreas gets settled in back in Germany he can clarify any questions about OEW dive policies.
If anyone has specific questions on Westpunt, Curacao or (mostly west end) dive sites, please feel free to PM me. Sunsh

 

[Damselfish]

Well, given that timing who knows, maybe our complaints and actually checking out of the hotel played some little part in changing things. Heck, one or two people on the staff at the time were even talking about leaving for someplace else. But to be sure, some of the issues on our trip were caused by the main management of Ocean Encounters. While other staff were generally great, unfortunately they couldn't fix most of what management screwed up.

(I don't even talk about our earlier experience with OE because it was so long ago, but when we stayed at Lions dive and dove with OE it wasn't such a good experience either. I believe it was different management back then. We just don't seem too lucky with this company. One of these times I'll get up the nerve to give it another shot!)