Apologies for this being so late. I came home and remembered to post it on another forum. However, most of the info I received about Curacao came from here, so I really should have been paying it forward here first. Forgive any spelling errors or typos. I tend to brain dump into these things and invariably that leads to grammatical error. If I turned this in as an actual book report I would work harder at making it pretty - but since it's just for YOU GUYS, I'm not worrying about it 
Curacao October 2014 trip report
My wife daughter and I went down to Curacao for 6 nights, we dove 8 tanks over 5 days (yes, it would have been easy to do more, but with the wife and daughter 2 tanks a day is the limit). It was a great trip and wanted to put some details on paper for anyone who finds themselves considering a trip.
first - the dive porn: 8 tanks condensed into 11minutes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TyBCAC_Uooo
The hotel:
We stayed at the Hilton Curacao. Im a diamond member with Hilton due to work travel, and I was able to get 2 adjoining rooms using points. I hesitate to use the word free simply because of the cost of food at the hotel : )
Looking at the hotel from the outside isnt very impressive. Its a very drab looking baby blue that could use a paint job in one of those bright primary colors in most famous photos of Curacao. However, the grounds were in good repair. The beach was small but comfortable for swimming, snorkeling, or sunning. They have plenty of pool space, and a lounge chair could always be found between beach or pool. The lobby, bar and eateries all look to be in fine shape for a 3 star resort. If you go expecting a Hilton 5 star building and food (which is common on their other properties) you will be disappointed. I would say its nice for what it is just make sure your expectations are correct. Go look on trip advisor and youll find a lot of people picking it apart. It has flaws, just none of them the type I care about. The room was in excellent repair nice paint, furniture, maybe the best dive vacation bed Ive ever been on. We were on the 4th floor and the ocean view rooms have a beautiful view pretty steep green hillside making its way to limestone shorelines. There was a nice TV with at least 7 English speaking channels as usual you can watch friends or big bang theory in English no matter where I the world you are. The carpet and hallways have décor that seems kind of 70s however, its all in fine repair. We had 2 adjoining rooms 1 for wife and me, 1 for 15 year old daughter. We were very comfortable. Hot water was hot, water pressure was good tap water was drinkable. There was one period for a few hours that AC was out in the room. However, this was something we were warned about the next day and was necessary for maintenance. We were out diving, so I didnt mind. The rooms had a small fridge which we used, see my next note below.
Food we ate a couple lunches at the hotel. Food is expensive. At the bar a burger + fries will cost you $22 USD before tax and tip. Soda would be $2-3. A cocktail would be almost $10. We knew this going as a diamond member I get access to the executive lounge which has complimentary bottles of soda. Also in the morning the lounge has a small continental breakfast pastries, boiled eggs, bacon, juices, toasts and spreads, cereals, yogurts we ate that every day the daily breakfast buffet is nearly $20 per person in the regular restaurant (but has many more choices). Since we would be diving, light breakfast was fine. We would go up in the AM get breakfast and take down a few sodas. We took a soft sided cooler which we would take to the beach or dive local with sodas and bottles of water. I dont drink, but the wife bought a bottle of something that mixed well with sprite and likely saved $100 in cocktails over the week.
In fairness to the hotel, the food is expensive on the entire island. Its simply MORE expensive in a tourist hotel like the Hilton. If I wanted I could have eaten fast food for about ½ of Hilton prices but I dont even like fast food at home.
The diving
We did shore diving exclusively. We rented a truck for the week, from budget (the onsite rental at Hilton) booked and paid in advanced $290 for 5 days. Fuel was pricey, about $6 per gallon I would say half a tank in a small Toyota pickup was $60 which is what I used for the week. We went from site to site, and used the onsite operator to rent tanks. Unlike Bonaire, the idea of a central dive shop where you buy a weeks worth of tanks is less common. This was easy. Many sites have onsite ops and if you rent tanks from them you can use their rinse tanks, showers, restroom, piers, etc. Paying for 3 divers this was the way to go. Tanks were typically $9, and weights were about $4 (yep, tanks dont include weights) for 3 people to dive 2 tanks was pretty consistently about $63 total (including tax) only 1 shop charged an extra fee for cc usage. All shops were very friendly with giving a dive profile, a couple had diagrams of the reef, and instructions for compass headings from certain objects back to shore. The sites with shops were generally much safer to park your car at. 1 shop even had a security guy watching customer cars. Directors Bay was the most remote we visited and didnt have either more on that in a minute. They also had lockers and would watch your stuff that you didnt want to put in your car. We dove Playa Kaliki 2 days (4 tanks) this was my favorite site. We dove Directors bay 1 tank this was a neat site in that it had a non existent swim to the reef. However its off the beaten path, good luck finding it without GPS coordinates. We dove Porto Marie 1 day (2 tanks), and Playa Lagus 1 day (1 tank). Playa Lagun had one of the prettiest reefs but is a haul out to the reef, and theres not much to look at until you are there. I dont really mind the haul my air consumption is really low and a 10 minute trip out to the reef can still give me at least 45minutes on the reef with plenty of air to make the 10 minute trip back. However, if long swims burn up your air or your patience better to skip this one. The boat diving, or guided diving was quite pricey. 2 tanks on a boat was anyplace between $90 and $100, and 1 tank guided shore was $55-$60. We didnt feel it necessary to try either. Im sure the dive prices have to do with the expense of food on the island DM have to eat. The boat we saw coming in at Playa Kaliki looked very nice and had 6 divers or less on it.
What we saw: trumpet fish. If I were in charge I would rename the entire island Trumpet fish Island Most times we were on the reef I had at least 1, and as many as 3-4 trumpet fish in my immediate field of vision. 5 minutes into our first dive we stopped pointing them out to each other because they were already so common. I saw big trumpet fish, little trumpet fish, red trumpet fish, yellowish trumpet fist. Plenty of schools of fish not a lot of fish larger than say a dinner plate. So a lot of fish, just not really big ones. We saw several eels, though they were mostly quite shy. We only saw 1 turtle all week. No nurse sharks at all. 1 Octopus during the day. At playa Lagun while gearing up at the beach we saw dolphins playing at the surface quite a distance off shore. Didnt see them on the dive, but I looked up at the surface a lot during that dive hoping : )
What I learned: So our first day diving was at Directors Bay. We picked up tanks at Curious2Dive, where Hans rented us tanks and gave us advice on our rental car Open all your windows, leave everything in plane view, leave no valueables in the car. I expected this and had a plan. The car key had an alarm on it which had to remain dry so I took a small dive light, took out batteries and bulb and used that as a waterproof container for keys and alarm FOB. Yes, it flooded, yes it sucked. After the dive it flooded, and made itself impossible to open (ironic as it flooded) I spend 30 minutes with a dive knife breaking the seal so I could get it open (and I tried a lot of other methods: including rocks, cement, cursing, etc). Once I got it open I realized even with the car key if the alarm is armed you cant start the car so then called budget to see if they had a kill switch for the alarm I the cab nope. Called roadside assistance: where are you Directors bay beach huh? Where is that? Im a tourist, I can give you GPS coordinates but the last 6 roads I took to get here have no streetnames (common on the island) well, directors bay beach means nothing to me - after a few minutes of this I asked a local at the beach (we were the only divers there, mostly locals having a Sunday at the beach) they told me caracas bay which btw is a fairly big place to find a guy in a rental truck. Eventually I realized I had the dive shop phone number on my receipt, called the shop and had the shop give the roadside folks directions to the site. Curious2dive was great they said if they cant find you they will stop by my shop and Ill ride with them - so roadside assistance showed up about 1 hour later. They had to tow us to the airport and I got a new truck. I had to pay $50 for the damaged fob. The real adventure was the tow. 3 people + 1 small Toyota to take to the airport no problem, but he tow truck cab only has seating for driver plus 1. My daughter volunteered to ride with me in the towed vehicle. Yep I got to see several miles of Curacao streets in reverse off the back of a towed vehicle it was fun and thrilling. What I learned was: if using a site that doesnt have onsite op figure out where you are going to hide your key in the cab. If really worried hide the alarm fob only, and dive with the key. Leave the windows down and unlocked. The rest of the week we dove with onsite shops and had lockers or other options for leaving our valuables (and safer lots in general).
What else I learned: due to my reliance on automatic headlights I no longer remember to turn off headlights. I drained the battery overnight. This happened at the hotel though no one at the hotel (including budget) had jumper cables so I had to call roadside assistance again. They came out with a jumper box that didnt have enough juice in it to jump the little 4 banger diesel in the truck. So we tried a push start (at the suggestion of the roadside assistance guy) no go. So he towed me into a jump start that worked. Kind of a weird moment hey you make sure you hit the break once it starts ok! I remember thinking buddy, this was your idea, if I hit your tow truck Im not paying for it, or my damages. However, we started it, and I didnt hit the tow truck. At least that time it only took him 30 minutes to come to me at the hotel.
Other than rental car woes, the trip was without incident and diving was great.
Water conditions: in October coolest water temp was about 81. I saw a lot of full suits, but shorty worked fine for me, and I get chilly easy. Visibility was usually about 80ft on the reef Playa Lagun had a few spots that were down to 20ft vis on the way out to the reef through the channel to the beach. There was never any current and you could dive either direction on a wall and make an easy return. Only exception was that on some reefs if you wanted to go out deep and come back in less than 25 ft at the top of the reef, you might have a little and I mean just a little, surge to deal with it only happened once, but it did make me think if I was going to do that dive again I would have descended a bit more on the wall to get out of the surge during the return.
Weather we lucked out, it only rained one day, and was done by 11am. It ranged from hot to real hot all week. Temps were 80 at night, not bad with a breeze. During the day it would be 90 at the hottest time, about 2pm. October is the beginning of the rainy season but I think simply lucked out.
Driving on the island getting to dive sites can be challenging. There is one major road that goes North/West where many sites are and then you have to take a number of roads off of it to get to your site the furthest sites were 45 minutes from the Hilton, but nothing was any closer than 25 minutes to the hotel. A site that was 3 miles down the beach might be 25minutes because of the 10 miles of odd roads you would have to take. So if you stopped some place and liked it, it was usually worth it to do 2 tanks. That was our plan after the first day. The only place we didnt do 2 tanks was Playa Lagun, the wife just wasnt up for another trip out to the reef. Since it takes so much time and trouble to get setup at another shop (25 minutes to drive there, 10minutes to rent tanks/fill out forms, 10 minutes to gear up, 1 hour dive) we just called it a day. Also we had a late start that day because someone (me) left lights on the car the night before and the battery was dead. So getting around is difficult at times. Directions were really easy. I found an android app that does turn by turn gps directions (https://play.google.com/store/apps/d...nia.bor3&hl=en) but allows you to download the maps and works without any data connection (data would have been quite expensive in Curacao). So I downloaded curacao maps back home. I went to shorediving.com and got the gps coordinates for dive sites and saved them in the app. Then when we would pick a site I would just click on the site name in my saved list, it would pull up the coordinates and find me roads that got me there. Mostly the app worked great. Theres one round about in town that it would consistently tell me to exit the 2 turn on but it meant 3rd. If it did tell me to do something I couldnt or was wrong, as soon as I was on the wrong road it would find a new path. I cant imagine driving the island without that GPS. The drive up to the North/West dive sites is really picturesque and some of my favorite memories are going up there. The drives might be long, but at least some of it was pretty.
It was a great trip. We have been to Cozumel, Belize, and Roatan. My wife said these were some of he favorite dives. Lack of current to contend with (nice on a shore dive) similar to Roatan, but with better fish/reef life. I still think my favorites are Cozumel and Belize but without a doubt I could come back to Curacao and have a great time. However, with all the other places on the list, I doubt well get back anytime soon.
Curacao October 2014 trip report
My wife daughter and I went down to Curacao for 6 nights, we dove 8 tanks over 5 days (yes, it would have been easy to do more, but with the wife and daughter 2 tanks a day is the limit). It was a great trip and wanted to put some details on paper for anyone who finds themselves considering a trip.
first - the dive porn: 8 tanks condensed into 11minutes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TyBCAC_Uooo
The hotel:
We stayed at the Hilton Curacao. Im a diamond member with Hilton due to work travel, and I was able to get 2 adjoining rooms using points. I hesitate to use the word free simply because of the cost of food at the hotel : )
Looking at the hotel from the outside isnt very impressive. Its a very drab looking baby blue that could use a paint job in one of those bright primary colors in most famous photos of Curacao. However, the grounds were in good repair. The beach was small but comfortable for swimming, snorkeling, or sunning. They have plenty of pool space, and a lounge chair could always be found between beach or pool. The lobby, bar and eateries all look to be in fine shape for a 3 star resort. If you go expecting a Hilton 5 star building and food (which is common on their other properties) you will be disappointed. I would say its nice for what it is just make sure your expectations are correct. Go look on trip advisor and youll find a lot of people picking it apart. It has flaws, just none of them the type I care about. The room was in excellent repair nice paint, furniture, maybe the best dive vacation bed Ive ever been on. We were on the 4th floor and the ocean view rooms have a beautiful view pretty steep green hillside making its way to limestone shorelines. There was a nice TV with at least 7 English speaking channels as usual you can watch friends or big bang theory in English no matter where I the world you are. The carpet and hallways have décor that seems kind of 70s however, its all in fine repair. We had 2 adjoining rooms 1 for wife and me, 1 for 15 year old daughter. We were very comfortable. Hot water was hot, water pressure was good tap water was drinkable. There was one period for a few hours that AC was out in the room. However, this was something we were warned about the next day and was necessary for maintenance. We were out diving, so I didnt mind. The rooms had a small fridge which we used, see my next note below.
Food we ate a couple lunches at the hotel. Food is expensive. At the bar a burger + fries will cost you $22 USD before tax and tip. Soda would be $2-3. A cocktail would be almost $10. We knew this going as a diamond member I get access to the executive lounge which has complimentary bottles of soda. Also in the morning the lounge has a small continental breakfast pastries, boiled eggs, bacon, juices, toasts and spreads, cereals, yogurts we ate that every day the daily breakfast buffet is nearly $20 per person in the regular restaurant (but has many more choices). Since we would be diving, light breakfast was fine. We would go up in the AM get breakfast and take down a few sodas. We took a soft sided cooler which we would take to the beach or dive local with sodas and bottles of water. I dont drink, but the wife bought a bottle of something that mixed well with sprite and likely saved $100 in cocktails over the week.
In fairness to the hotel, the food is expensive on the entire island. Its simply MORE expensive in a tourist hotel like the Hilton. If I wanted I could have eaten fast food for about ½ of Hilton prices but I dont even like fast food at home.
The diving
We did shore diving exclusively. We rented a truck for the week, from budget (the onsite rental at Hilton) booked and paid in advanced $290 for 5 days. Fuel was pricey, about $6 per gallon I would say half a tank in a small Toyota pickup was $60 which is what I used for the week. We went from site to site, and used the onsite operator to rent tanks. Unlike Bonaire, the idea of a central dive shop where you buy a weeks worth of tanks is less common. This was easy. Many sites have onsite ops and if you rent tanks from them you can use their rinse tanks, showers, restroom, piers, etc. Paying for 3 divers this was the way to go. Tanks were typically $9, and weights were about $4 (yep, tanks dont include weights) for 3 people to dive 2 tanks was pretty consistently about $63 total (including tax) only 1 shop charged an extra fee for cc usage. All shops were very friendly with giving a dive profile, a couple had diagrams of the reef, and instructions for compass headings from certain objects back to shore. The sites with shops were generally much safer to park your car at. 1 shop even had a security guy watching customer cars. Directors Bay was the most remote we visited and didnt have either more on that in a minute. They also had lockers and would watch your stuff that you didnt want to put in your car. We dove Playa Kaliki 2 days (4 tanks) this was my favorite site. We dove Directors bay 1 tank this was a neat site in that it had a non existent swim to the reef. However its off the beaten path, good luck finding it without GPS coordinates. We dove Porto Marie 1 day (2 tanks), and Playa Lagus 1 day (1 tank). Playa Lagun had one of the prettiest reefs but is a haul out to the reef, and theres not much to look at until you are there. I dont really mind the haul my air consumption is really low and a 10 minute trip out to the reef can still give me at least 45minutes on the reef with plenty of air to make the 10 minute trip back. However, if long swims burn up your air or your patience better to skip this one. The boat diving, or guided diving was quite pricey. 2 tanks on a boat was anyplace between $90 and $100, and 1 tank guided shore was $55-$60. We didnt feel it necessary to try either. Im sure the dive prices have to do with the expense of food on the island DM have to eat. The boat we saw coming in at Playa Kaliki looked very nice and had 6 divers or less on it.
What we saw: trumpet fish. If I were in charge I would rename the entire island Trumpet fish Island Most times we were on the reef I had at least 1, and as many as 3-4 trumpet fish in my immediate field of vision. 5 minutes into our first dive we stopped pointing them out to each other because they were already so common. I saw big trumpet fish, little trumpet fish, red trumpet fish, yellowish trumpet fist. Plenty of schools of fish not a lot of fish larger than say a dinner plate. So a lot of fish, just not really big ones. We saw several eels, though they were mostly quite shy. We only saw 1 turtle all week. No nurse sharks at all. 1 Octopus during the day. At playa Lagun while gearing up at the beach we saw dolphins playing at the surface quite a distance off shore. Didnt see them on the dive, but I looked up at the surface a lot during that dive hoping : )
What I learned: So our first day diving was at Directors Bay. We picked up tanks at Curious2Dive, where Hans rented us tanks and gave us advice on our rental car Open all your windows, leave everything in plane view, leave no valueables in the car. I expected this and had a plan. The car key had an alarm on it which had to remain dry so I took a small dive light, took out batteries and bulb and used that as a waterproof container for keys and alarm FOB. Yes, it flooded, yes it sucked. After the dive it flooded, and made itself impossible to open (ironic as it flooded) I spend 30 minutes with a dive knife breaking the seal so I could get it open (and I tried a lot of other methods: including rocks, cement, cursing, etc). Once I got it open I realized even with the car key if the alarm is armed you cant start the car so then called budget to see if they had a kill switch for the alarm I the cab nope. Called roadside assistance: where are you Directors bay beach huh? Where is that? Im a tourist, I can give you GPS coordinates but the last 6 roads I took to get here have no streetnames (common on the island) well, directors bay beach means nothing to me - after a few minutes of this I asked a local at the beach (we were the only divers there, mostly locals having a Sunday at the beach) they told me caracas bay which btw is a fairly big place to find a guy in a rental truck. Eventually I realized I had the dive shop phone number on my receipt, called the shop and had the shop give the roadside folks directions to the site. Curious2dive was great they said if they cant find you they will stop by my shop and Ill ride with them - so roadside assistance showed up about 1 hour later. They had to tow us to the airport and I got a new truck. I had to pay $50 for the damaged fob. The real adventure was the tow. 3 people + 1 small Toyota to take to the airport no problem, but he tow truck cab only has seating for driver plus 1. My daughter volunteered to ride with me in the towed vehicle. Yep I got to see several miles of Curacao streets in reverse off the back of a towed vehicle it was fun and thrilling. What I learned was: if using a site that doesnt have onsite op figure out where you are going to hide your key in the cab. If really worried hide the alarm fob only, and dive with the key. Leave the windows down and unlocked. The rest of the week we dove with onsite shops and had lockers or other options for leaving our valuables (and safer lots in general).
What else I learned: due to my reliance on automatic headlights I no longer remember to turn off headlights. I drained the battery overnight. This happened at the hotel though no one at the hotel (including budget) had jumper cables so I had to call roadside assistance again. They came out with a jumper box that didnt have enough juice in it to jump the little 4 banger diesel in the truck. So we tried a push start (at the suggestion of the roadside assistance guy) no go. So he towed me into a jump start that worked. Kind of a weird moment hey you make sure you hit the break once it starts ok! I remember thinking buddy, this was your idea, if I hit your tow truck Im not paying for it, or my damages. However, we started it, and I didnt hit the tow truck. At least that time it only took him 30 minutes to come to me at the hotel.
Other than rental car woes, the trip was without incident and diving was great.
Water conditions: in October coolest water temp was about 81. I saw a lot of full suits, but shorty worked fine for me, and I get chilly easy. Visibility was usually about 80ft on the reef Playa Lagun had a few spots that were down to 20ft vis on the way out to the reef through the channel to the beach. There was never any current and you could dive either direction on a wall and make an easy return. Only exception was that on some reefs if you wanted to go out deep and come back in less than 25 ft at the top of the reef, you might have a little and I mean just a little, surge to deal with it only happened once, but it did make me think if I was going to do that dive again I would have descended a bit more on the wall to get out of the surge during the return.
Weather we lucked out, it only rained one day, and was done by 11am. It ranged from hot to real hot all week. Temps were 80 at night, not bad with a breeze. During the day it would be 90 at the hottest time, about 2pm. October is the beginning of the rainy season but I think simply lucked out.
Driving on the island getting to dive sites can be challenging. There is one major road that goes North/West where many sites are and then you have to take a number of roads off of it to get to your site the furthest sites were 45 minutes from the Hilton, but nothing was any closer than 25 minutes to the hotel. A site that was 3 miles down the beach might be 25minutes because of the 10 miles of odd roads you would have to take. So if you stopped some place and liked it, it was usually worth it to do 2 tanks. That was our plan after the first day. The only place we didnt do 2 tanks was Playa Lagun, the wife just wasnt up for another trip out to the reef. Since it takes so much time and trouble to get setup at another shop (25 minutes to drive there, 10minutes to rent tanks/fill out forms, 10 minutes to gear up, 1 hour dive) we just called it a day. Also we had a late start that day because someone (me) left lights on the car the night before and the battery was dead. So getting around is difficult at times. Directions were really easy. I found an android app that does turn by turn gps directions (https://play.google.com/store/apps/d...nia.bor3&hl=en) but allows you to download the maps and works without any data connection (data would have been quite expensive in Curacao). So I downloaded curacao maps back home. I went to shorediving.com and got the gps coordinates for dive sites and saved them in the app. Then when we would pick a site I would just click on the site name in my saved list, it would pull up the coordinates and find me roads that got me there. Mostly the app worked great. Theres one round about in town that it would consistently tell me to exit the 2 turn on but it meant 3rd. If it did tell me to do something I couldnt or was wrong, as soon as I was on the wrong road it would find a new path. I cant imagine driving the island without that GPS. The drive up to the North/West dive sites is really picturesque and some of my favorite memories are going up there. The drives might be long, but at least some of it was pretty.
It was a great trip. We have been to Cozumel, Belize, and Roatan. My wife said these were some of he favorite dives. Lack of current to contend with (nice on a shore dive) similar to Roatan, but with better fish/reef life. I still think my favorites are Cozumel and Belize but without a doubt I could come back to Curacao and have a great time. However, with all the other places on the list, I doubt well get back anytime soon.
IMHO you need to rethink the hide the FOB as you never know who is watching. Diving with a guy who figured he would "hide" his expensive shades... gone. Hans is a great guy. I do all my dive with him and let him worry about the keys and other stuff.
