Diving in Curacao

[morayp]

My local dive shop is planning a trip to Curacao in March, 2006, staying at the Lion's Dive Resort. Does anyone have any experience with this resort or Curacao in general? All comments or suggestions welcome.
Thank you.
P.S. Sign-up deadline is in one week.

 

[diveborg]

Curacao has good diving, but Lion's dive resort isn't close to the sites I'd want to dive. Most all the diving is done on the west coast. Lions is in about the middle of the coast and the sites I'd want to dive are near the north end. The mushroom forest is a signature dive in Curacao and it is in the north end.

 

[morayp]

There is and I do.Thank you

 

[Damselfish]

Agree with diveborg. I've been to Curacao a fair number of times. I stayed at Lions Dive once long ago when it was pretty much the only dive hotel option, it was ok but there are much better options now. The hotels to the northwest will do the better diving in the northwest. Also the area around Lion's dive is pretty built up and busy, which you may or may not prefer but in any event it does nothing to help the shore diving there. The shore diving is much better at the northwest hotels and sites.

I'm sure you would have fun on a group trip there, but you'd probably come away with a very different impression of Curacao and the diving there than you would staying someplace like Habitat, Sunset Waters, or some of the other places on the quiet west end of the island.

 

[gangrel441]

Agreed on all of the above. A few years ago we dove from Sunset Waters. The resort was good, we had some issues with the resort management, but the dive shop there at the time was Easy Divers, which I would describe as a first-rate operation. Easy Divers has recently moved to Habitat Curacao, and Sunset Divers now runs the dive operation at Sunset Waters. While I can't speak for the diving at Habitat, or the operation that Sunset Divers runs, I can tell you that the house reef off of Sunset Waters was incredible, and there was easy boat access from there to Mushroom Forest and many of the other famous sites on Curacao. On the other hand, I can tell you that I would dive with Harry and Anne Marie at Easy Divers any day. My guess is you couldn't go wrong with either of those operations.

I don't really know much about the diving at Lion's Dive. Hope all goes well. Enjoy the island and her reefs!