I've done both. The biggest differences are that on Curacao the reef generally starts farther out. A 5-10min. swim on the surface generally is about all that's needed. On the West side, there's high ironshore cliffs in a lot of areas with small sandy beach coves intermingled. Those are where you get out to the reef. Sites like this would include Playa Lagun, Playa Jeremi, The "Knips" and to some extent Playa Kalki - although the Kura Hulanda Resort and OEWest make that easier with stairs/docks.
Another big difference is that the main road(s) that bisect Curacao to the west are inland. So unlike South Bonaire where you drive along the road 100' from the water in some areas, on Curacao it's typically a 10-15 min. trip to the water then back out to the main road to the next one.
There are exceptions especially east of Town, Tugboat is right on the beach and the divesite at The DiveBus's location is right there also. Hooks Hut is another one where you park close, walk through the bar to the diveshop then out. It's a long swim though as the reef parallels the shoreline farther out.
It really limited our ability to do more than 3 divesites/day - only once did we manage to do 4 and that was because just 5min. down the street from Habitat is Porto Marie - a great dive.
We rented an SUV. It had a cargo cover. Our apt. owner recommended we use it when out diving.
If you're going to stay out west at one of the resorts know that it's a 20-45 min. drive back to town for just about anything. There's a few restaurants around West Punt but the AI's - Sunset Waters and Habitat don't have anything nearby. The one small town nearby has a few "snaks" and a little store, for anything else you'd need to drive to the Willemstad/Piscadera Bay area south of the airport.
There's also a recent thread here discussing the decline of Habitat recently. We were there 2 years ago - diving, not staying and it looked a little tired even then. But it's really a great dive and worth going there even if you don't stay there. Do their all day pkg, it's like $25 and do two dives off their house reef and then 2 more using their tanks at Porto Marie. Since Habitat is about 50' above the water, they have tank storage on their divedock level and also at the hut at the south end of their parking lot for easy vehicle pickup. Their reef is only about 100' offshore and it's good in both directions. We saw eels, an octopus, flounder, barracuda and lots of fish every dive.
Other convenient places were Sunset Divers/Sunset Waters as you can drive down the hill to the diveshop but I don't know if you can remove tanks from their property. At Playa Lagun, Discover Divers let us take tanks/wt. anywhere we wanted and in town, Hooks Hut let us remove tanks also - even helped us load them by opening up a closer door, there were 5 of us renting.
There's a couple good websites about Curacao divesites. Here's one:
Welcome to Curaçao Diving Paradise - Curacao Diving Paradise Some of the better dives are boat only, Mushroom Forest, Superior Producer (I think) and Watamula which most agree is one of the better if not best dive there. It's west of West Punt. We also did Lost Anchor with Sunset Divers, that was a pretty good dive. You can actually shore dive it if you want to carry your gear vertically down about 300 steps...lol. Our DM lives there and says even he doesn't do it.
Good to great shoredives were Playa Kalki/Alice in Wonderland near West Punt, Habitat's Reef, Porto Marie, Varsenbaai and the Tugboat all the way east. The best part of the Tugboat site is the wall around the point to the south. Since the boat is in 20' you can do your safety stop there on your return. An Instructor friend who lives there recommends Snake Bay also.
We rented apts. in Lagun and they mentioned shorediving from their property also. What they didn't mention was the 50' vertical ladder to get to the water. My buddy climbed down it and said it would be tough with gear - we actually considered using a rope. So anywhere you stay on the West End, ask about water access as sometimes it's a little deceiving. The east seemed to be much flatter.
