ScubaBumlet, first I apologize for not directly answering your question. One of my pet peeves is the guys who post not to answer
your post, but to tell you youve asked the wrong question. And here I am about to do the same thing.
In the interest of full disclosure, I know nothing firsthand -- zero, zip, zilch, nada -- about Habitat. I never have set foot on the premises. OTOH, I know the dive staff at Sunset very well. Ive made at least 30 dives with them since mid-September. I obviously like them, but I have never stayed there. But back to the story:
Two weeks is a lot of living and both Habitat
and Sunset are a 30-minute drive from anything resembling entertainment. All the dive operations Ive dived with here have something akin to a weekly dive site rotation, and I expect Habitat is no different. The point is that two weeks at any dive operation is more likely to be one week times two.
The dive operations west of Bullenbaai pretty much all dive the same sites. The dive operations
east of Bullenbaai pretty much dive all the same sites. AFAIK, The Dive Bus is the only operation that dives both ends of the island (the north, too, on occasion). For boat trips, the magic number seems to be four. If fewer than four divers sign up for any trip, the shop
will cancel it without so much as a by your leave.
If youre coming to dive your
tooches off, that makes a
BIG difference. Night boat dives become a very iffy proposition. If youre coming with a diving significant other, you have all you need to night dive any time you take the notion. But dont rely on
any dive shop to provide you the service. Some shops dont even get to the afternoon dive because not enough divers have signed up.
I harp on this because Im the kind of idiot who goes on diving binges and makes five and sometime six dives a day (Allah be praised for Nitrox!!!). Boat diving operations in general cant support that aggressive a schedule and little ticks me off more than a dive shop that ruins my plans for the evening by canceling the nights festivities just because not enough people want to join me.
True enough, Sunset and Habitat will give you all the tanks you can haul, and theyll even draw a map so you can find Klein Knip or Oswalds Drop-Off after dark. And they both have entertaining house reefs, but theyre not the only places on the island that pump gas.
Yeah, one week I can see. But if you have two weeks, I would highly recommend you consider taking one week on each end of the island.
I dont care if the chef is Paul Prudhome or Wolfgang Puck, Im going to get tired of his stuff after two weeks. At both Sunset and Habitat, your only options are the house restaurant or a local snack. If food means anything to you at all, IMO, youd be better served staying closer to Willemstad, where you can go to KFC or Craving Sushi if the mood strikes.
The other advantage is that youd get to dive both ends of the island. I have to admit Im partial to the west end but the east has some excellent dive sites, too. Spend the entire two weeks at either Habitat or Sunset and youre guaranteed to miss Car Pile, Superior Producer, Tugboat and Klein Curacao, to name but four.
Pick a place in town and you could spend a week driving each morning to, say, Sunset, then the next week driving to Lions Dive/OE East.
Or you could spend the second week on Bonaire.
