I just returned from a week and half in Curacao, and dove GC and LC in Jan., 07. All 3 islands are great and you should have a wonderful time which ever one you chose.
In Curacao, my dive buddy and I stayed in a very comfortable 3 bedroom apartment owned by an American couple, David & Sunshine Livingston, in the western part of the island in the quaint fishing village of Westpunt:
http://www.curacaosunshine.com/ David & Sunshine also have a restaurant on the weekends that is frequented by both locals and divers. In addition, they cooked another 3 delicious dinners for us, and they serve a range of food from pizza and salads to steak and tuna. We ate all of our breakfasts and some of our lunches in the apartment between dives. There are several very good local restaurants nearby, and we also ate several meals in Willemstad.
Curacao has over 80 dive sites, some accessible by boat and many from shore. IMHO, some of the best sites are in the western part of the island, but we only dove a couple of sites in the Willemstad area, including a fascinating dolphin dive. We did our boat dives with
http://www.oceanencounterswest.com/ and I cannot say enough good things about this professional, courteous, and enjoyable dive shop. We also rented our weights from them and were able to rent tanks, too. However, many of the shore diving sites are located at small, beautiful beaches, and many of those beaches have dive shops from whom you can rent tanks, and restaurants where you can do your SI. When their schedule permits, David and Sunshine can accompany you to shore diving sites, and Andreas, a DM at OEW, took me to a nearby shore diving site to see seahorses. I've posted a few photos of the that dive, as well as Curacao here:
http://www.scubaboard.com/forums/abc-islands/229737-curacao-seahorses.html
Here is the Playa Kalki beach directly in front of the dive shop, location of the excellent shore dive "Alice in Wonderland:"
Much of the western part of the island is a beautiful national park that includes Watamula, which means the breath of Curacao because of the sound of the waves breaking through the small hole, as if the island is breathing. There is a world class dive site just a short distance from this location that was loaded with so many thick stands of healthy coral that it was a mind boggling, surreal drift dive that left us speechless:
Here is the natural bridge at Shete Boka National Park, pretty well covered at high tide:
A small butterfly farm has a restaurant that makes sandwiches as well as the best smoothies I've ever had:
There is a large oil refinery outside the city of Willemstad that employs thousands of people, and Willemstad also has a deep port:
The city, AKA, "New Amsterdam," is very Dutch and filled with quaint streets and shops:
The 2 sides of the city are connected by a pontoon bridge that opens to let ships through:
The oldest synagogue in continuous use in the western hemisphere is in the city and the sanctuary floor is covered in sand:
Curacao is quite a cultural experience and has many great dive sites, comfortable places to stay, delicious places to eat, and friendly, hospitable people. I hope to post more info when I get my uw shots edited. You can seel more photo albums here:
http://honeymoon2.smugmug.com/
cheers, alashas
