Family Diving - Bonaire vs Caymans or other???

[ronbeau]

Thank you Damselfish. You really cleared up many of the questions I had. I've narrowed my trip down to either Bonaire or Curacao. Like I said, we're a pretty simple family that's easy to please. We love to do things like tennis, kayaking, play pool, ping pong, or participate in local cultural experiences when we are not diving.

My wife daughter and I spent two weeks in Curacao last summer.

I will try to outline some of the things we did in Curacao.
We stayed at Breezes Curacao.

As far as on the resort we did the following (in no particular order):

Diving - One shore dive per day on the reef is included free of charge with your stay
Pocket billiards (pool)
Ping Pong
Darts
Snorkeling on reef
Trapeze
Rock Climbing wall
Karaoke
Hobie cat was available but we did not use it
Juggling
Entertainment
Swimming pools
Plenty of food & drink
Japanese & Italian restaurant were very good

Outside of the resort

Ostrich Farm
Aloe Vera plantation
Wind Farm
Wilemstad (Punda & Otrabanda) tours & shopping
My wife and I are not much for shopping but we enjoyed a day shopping in Wilemstad (Punda & Otrabanda) Good deals of polo shirts etc. Otrabanda had good deals on hats, shirts and souvenir type stuff

Blue Curacao factory tour
Mount Cristophel National Park (did not get a chance to go there)
Miscellaneous site seeing tours
Fort Nassau (very good view of Curacao & restaurant at top (did not eat there)
Fort Amsterdam
Tour the island by car (I did not have any problems driving on the island)

The Dive Bus

Caracas Bay (Tug boat) - Nice reef and the worlds longest safety stop - The Tug Boat sits in 17 feet of water and has tons of fish around it - Fresh water showers and changing facilities and dive shop

Porto Mari - Nice beach, excellent diving, restaurant & bar & dive shop

Director's Bay - OK diving


Let me know if you, your wife or kids have any other questions. My daughter would be happy to provide insight from the perspective of kid just short of 13.

 

[alashas]

Hi Making Bubbles,

My 2 bros and I just returned from Bonaire. It's a great place for shore diving and I'm sure we will return. However, from the sound of your family, your children's ages, your wife's back, you, personally, will be doing an awful lot of work. There was a lot of surge during the 10 days we were there, and it nearly knocked us over on more than one occasion. Some sites are easier to get to than others, and the easiest, by far, are the dives off the end of the piers at the dive resorts. I don't know how strong your children are, but you may end up carrying quite a bit of their gear. Even at the resorts I just mentioned, your children will need to exit the water by walking up steps and I imagine they'll need take their BCs off in the water and you'll need to carry that up the steps.

Another thing to consider is that most of the resorts offer boat dives as well and that may work out better for your family. Or, if you plan to do shore dives, you may want to hire a DM to dive with you.

My family of 4 dove Grand and Little Cayman in January and we really enjoyed both islands. Divers do not need to go down the wall in order to appreciate Bloody Bay Wall. In fact, the diving between BBW and the shore is a great place to see all kinds of sealife in 30 feet of water or less.

Another place to consider is the Virgin Islands. Great beaches, wonderful places to stay, easy boat dives. You may want to consider renting your own villa, and this is a very helpful site: http://www.blueescapes.com/

I don't have my Bonaire UW photos up yet, but have land photos of Bonaire and other places here: http://honeymoon2.smugmug.com/

Cheers, alashas

 

[Mahidoodi]

I have been to many of the locations mentioned in other posts. Just to give you an indication of my favorite, I am going back to Bonaire for the 6th time in 6 years, next week. I am not sure if I can mention the name of the resort, where I stay, here on this board. So if you are interested to get more info, drop me a note.

 

[Damselfish]

I am not sure if I can mention the name of the resort, where I stay, here on this board.

Why not? We all talk about various resorts all the time here.