- Messages
- 26,272
- Reaction score
- 5,875
- # of dives
- I'm a Fish!
Porto Marie
Nos Cas (Habitat's house reef)
Playa Kalki/Alice in Wonderland (Ocean Encounters West's house reef)
Playa Lagun
Varsenbaai
I really liked Varsenbaai for the diversity of things we saw there in one dive - seahorses, turtles, squid and a big pontoon boat wreck. My friends did the Tugboat, they said the better part of that dive was the wall around the point. An instructor friend who lives there recommends Snake Bay also, but we didn't get to it. Watamula is supposed to be one of if not the best boat dive on the west end but we didn't get to it.
The two sites I found disappointing were Playa Jeremi and Sunset Waters house reef. The plane wreck off Sunset is s dis-membered Cessna in 40', my friend thought it was a lobster trap, the cockpit is so stripped. And there's hurricane/boat channel damage to the west so the entire dive is east. After we did Jeremi, several people mentioned it was just average.
For us it was all shorediving except for one boat dive - Lost Anchor. The only full-drift/live pickup dive we did. I don't remember anything memorable except that we were told where to find seahorses there - but didn't.
Everything is an easy entry - most are sand beaches with a short swim out to the reef. A lot of the sites have on-site facilities, at least a dive dock if not more. Every site I mentioned has a full-service diveop on-site, except Playa Jeremi has no facilities. At most you pay a small fee (in guilders) to dive there/use the facilites. You can also rent tanks at a variety of places to take off-site, we did from Discovery Dive in Lagun, Habitat and Hooks Hut in Piscadera Bay (west Willemsted) We must've hauled 10+ tanks around all week, there were 5 of us.
We were also advised by our rental owners to lock the cars and conceal anything that looked valuable everywhere. Parts of downtown Willemsted are a little grimy - around the refinery etc. Most of the tourist areas seemed crime-free but you will notice that just about everywhere there's fences/bars/security.
One thing I always mention is that food/market options are surprisingly limited if you're planning to stay on the westside. Most peoiple hit up Centrum Market on arrival, it's a few miles south of the airport, before driving out to their resort/apt etc.
If you're looking for escorted shore dives, I can't recommend the Dive Bus highly enough. Other's here will concur. If you want to dive with Dolphins, Ocean Encounters at the Seaquarium does one just offshore there. But it was $200pp. a couple years ago and frankly somewhat disappointing in the amount of time that the dolphins were around - they go exploring first before they come back for the interaction - in our case that was about the 1st 20 mins. of a 45min. dive.
Nos Cas (Habitat's house reef)
Playa Kalki/Alice in Wonderland (Ocean Encounters West's house reef)
Playa Lagun
Varsenbaai
I really liked Varsenbaai for the diversity of things we saw there in one dive - seahorses, turtles, squid and a big pontoon boat wreck. My friends did the Tugboat, they said the better part of that dive was the wall around the point. An instructor friend who lives there recommends Snake Bay also, but we didn't get to it. Watamula is supposed to be one of if not the best boat dive on the west end but we didn't get to it.
The two sites I found disappointing were Playa Jeremi and Sunset Waters house reef. The plane wreck off Sunset is s dis-membered Cessna in 40', my friend thought it was a lobster trap, the cockpit is so stripped. And there's hurricane/boat channel damage to the west so the entire dive is east. After we did Jeremi, several people mentioned it was just average.
For us it was all shorediving except for one boat dive - Lost Anchor. The only full-drift/live pickup dive we did. I don't remember anything memorable except that we were told where to find seahorses there - but didn't.
Everything is an easy entry - most are sand beaches with a short swim out to the reef. A lot of the sites have on-site facilities, at least a dive dock if not more. Every site I mentioned has a full-service diveop on-site, except Playa Jeremi has no facilities. At most you pay a small fee (in guilders) to dive there/use the facilites. You can also rent tanks at a variety of places to take off-site, we did from Discovery Dive in Lagun, Habitat and Hooks Hut in Piscadera Bay (west Willemsted) We must've hauled 10+ tanks around all week, there were 5 of us.
We were also advised by our rental owners to lock the cars and conceal anything that looked valuable everywhere. Parts of downtown Willemsted are a little grimy - around the refinery etc. Most of the tourist areas seemed crime-free but you will notice that just about everywhere there's fences/bars/security.
One thing I always mention is that food/market options are surprisingly limited if you're planning to stay on the westside. Most peoiple hit up Centrum Market on arrival, it's a few miles south of the airport, before driving out to their resort/apt etc.
If you're looking for escorted shore dives, I can't recommend the Dive Bus highly enough. Other's here will concur. If you want to dive with Dolphins, Ocean Encounters at the Seaquarium does one just offshore there. But it was $200pp. a couple years ago and frankly somewhat disappointing in the amount of time that the dolphins were around - they go exploring first before they come back for the interaction - in our case that was about the 1st 20 mins. of a 45min. dive.
