We stayed at All West Apartments is located in Westpunt, about half an hour from Willemstad. All West is a small, simple, reasonably-priced complex of about a dozen clean and comfortable apartments, all with ocean-front balconies or terraces, fully equipped kitchens, and efficient air-conditioning. From your west-facing deck you can enjoy tropical birds and hummingbirds in the morning and sunsets each evening. All West provides airport transportation and hassle-free onsite truck rentals. They are set up for shore divers with a secure room to rinse and store gear and to pick up and return tanks. The location is convenient to the Go West Diving shop and several beaches good for shore diving.
April 2024 was our sixth visit. The last one was in 2017, and Westpunt has seen some changes since then: a lot of new construction, and the new-to-us daily influx of tour buses at the parking lot adjacent to the apartments. All West is still a great place to stay if you’re willing to work around the hordes of cruise ship passengers and other tourists arriving by the busload and crowding the beach (known as Playa Piskado or Playa Grandi). This formerly peaceful spot is now heavily promoted as the best place to snorkel with sea turtles, and additional development of the beach is in the works. Local fishermen had always cleaned their fish there and thrown the scraps off the dock, which attracted the sea turtles. Feeding the turtles has been turned into a performance for tourists. It appears that some of the tourists harass the turtles by following too closely and trying to touch them. A few voices in the wilderness are decrying the exploitation, but it is doubtful they will have much influence.
The reefs we dove were in sad shape, with large areas of dead coral in shades of brown, beige, and white. Overfishing has clearly taken a toll, as we saw very few parrot fish, all of them small. The good news is that we saw few invasive lionfish. We did all of our diving from shore, on the All West house reef, the Go West Diving house reef, Playa Lagun, Playa Jeremi, Klein Knip, and Porto Saint Marie. All were conveniently located with nice beaches, easy for entering/exiting the water, but much diminished underwater. The high point of our visit was a night snorkel in front of the apartment with, among other creatures, a large slipper lobster and a two-foot-long reef squid. Water temperatures were in the 80s, even at depth. Record-setting heat is projected for this summer.
April 2024 was our sixth visit. The last one was in 2017, and Westpunt has seen some changes since then: a lot of new construction, and the new-to-us daily influx of tour buses at the parking lot adjacent to the apartments. All West is still a great place to stay if you’re willing to work around the hordes of cruise ship passengers and other tourists arriving by the busload and crowding the beach (known as Playa Piskado or Playa Grandi). This formerly peaceful spot is now heavily promoted as the best place to snorkel with sea turtles, and additional development of the beach is in the works. Local fishermen had always cleaned their fish there and thrown the scraps off the dock, which attracted the sea turtles. Feeding the turtles has been turned into a performance for tourists. It appears that some of the tourists harass the turtles by following too closely and trying to touch them. A few voices in the wilderness are decrying the exploitation, but it is doubtful they will have much influence.
The reefs we dove were in sad shape, with large areas of dead coral in shades of brown, beige, and white. Overfishing has clearly taken a toll, as we saw very few parrot fish, all of them small. The good news is that we saw few invasive lionfish. We did all of our diving from shore, on the All West house reef, the Go West Diving house reef, Playa Lagun, Playa Jeremi, Klein Knip, and Porto Saint Marie. All were conveniently located with nice beaches, easy for entering/exiting the water, but much diminished underwater. The high point of our visit was a night snorkel in front of the apartment with, among other creatures, a large slipper lobster and a two-foot-long reef squid. Water temperatures were in the 80s, even at depth. Record-setting heat is projected for this summer.
