We spent a wonderful week of diving in Curaçao and loved it. Even though we’re in Florida and dive regularly here, the 100+ foot visibility, the close to shore drop-off, and the healthy reefs full of life made diving in Curaçao a treat.
Getting there
Curaçao is a short flight from Miami, and we flew American direct. Just under 3 hours with some good tailwinds.
Where to stay
The island is filled with hotels and dive resorts. Each has its merits and there is plenty to choose from for all budgets. We opted for a luxury stay at the Curaçao Marriott Beach Resort.
See our review of the resort and some perspective on using a traditional hotel for a scuba diving vacation here: Scuba Diving Vacation at the Curaçao Marriott Beach Resort
Dive shops
Throw a stone in any direction and you’re likely to hit a dive shop in Curaçao. They were everywhere. That said, it’s easy just to pick one that is convenient to where you’re staying or to the sites you want to dive.
We would suggest you build your diving plan around your preferred dive sites. Especially if you are intent on diving the more famous (and popular) ones. We found that many of the shops are very accommodating and well equipped to get you up and down the island by boat or by car to get to where you want to dive.
Curaçao has many famous diving sites and we had gathered a list from friends and dive forums before going that included the Mushroom Forest and the Tugboat dive site.
Diving with Goby Divers
Staying at the Marriott, we used the resident dive shop on the property, Goby Divers. We reached out to the shop’s owner Andhiela (pronounced Angela) ahead of time to organize guided shore dives and boat dives for our week-long stay. She was great, as was her whole crew.
Goby Divers has a good formula. They have a boat that boards from a small dock right on the Marriott’s beach for boat dives. They also have a van that hits the popular shore dive sites that loads up at the shop. While we did rent a car, we were happy to be chauffeured around in the Goby Divers van to many of the popular sites. It also helped keep our rental car clean!
The van experience wasn’t much different than the boat. The dive guide cut up fruits between dives and helped us get geared up. They also had bins for the wet gear.
The shop was not busy, and we were on our own one day for a private dive with two guides. Another day there was only one other diver with us. You can of course just rent tanks and shore dive the sites on your own, but the guides also knew their way around the local sites and pointed out some cool stuff.
Shore dive sites we did
Tugboat
A very popular shallow site just east of Willemstad. There is an eclectic shop on Tugboat Beach where we hung out for a while. Check out their treasure map of the site.
Entry was easy and you can dive the pilons as well as the deeper drop-off just past the Tugboat wreck. We saw a very camouflaged frogfish here which was very cool.
The shipwreck itself is beautiful with so much encrusted coral. It was full of redlip blennies.
Cabana Beach
This site, between Tugboat and Willemstad was also an easy entry. The beautiful corals were spectacular, like a forest and filled with critters.
Here, we saw lots of juvenile fish such as a cute little dice-sized smooth trunkfish and jewel-like flamingo tongue.
Kokomo Beach
This site was to the west of the Marriott and gave us the chance to explore another part of the coast. The entry itself was part of a resort area and our luck was such that there were busloads of cruise ship passengers at the site making it a bit crowded to navigate our entry. It was a longer walk while geared up and there was no free shower provided.
That said, once we were in the water, we made our way out to the drop-off and down to 60-70 ft to see more of the spectacular corals. We saw Caribbean reef squid checking us out and a couple of morays along with the usual suspects we were getting to know here.
Snake Bay
This site was a more difficult entry down a long-sloped boat ramp. The small beach area was filled with kids that were very curious about us divers. So much so that we were worried about bumping them with our tanks on the way in or out.
Again, once in the water and past the swimmers and frolickers we were down the drop-off and admiring the corals again.
There was a strong current here and when our guide brought us up into the shallows earlier than expected, we ended up doing a good part of the dive in the sand amongst dead corals. Not sure if this was a result of bleaching or pollution but it was sad to see in comparison to the other reefs we had experienced.
Coming out we were surprised by a huge school of sardines. We also saw a sharptailed eel giving some credence to the Snake Bay name.
The drop-off is always quite close to shore. Just 50-100 ft out and you’re down to 60-80 ft. Often you can look over the edge of the wall and it seems to drop down forever.
Goby Divers House Reef
Just outside the hotel we could simply get tanks from Goby Divers and head out to the drop-off for self-guided shore diving. It was also a nice dive but unfortunately the sand from the Marriott’s artificial beach had been washed out over much of the reef covering anything that might have been there above 50 ft depth or so.
It looked like a ski slope from below and we thought about all those little creatures that may have lost their homes or worse been buried in the avalanche of sand to accommodate the beachgoers above.
Below that, starting around 50ft there were still healthy corals and a nice reef. We saw the usual suspects including morays, anemones with cleaner shrimps and lots of reef fish.
Boat diving in Curaçao
The boat dives also left the dock directly from the Curaçao Marriott Beach Resort. We’d just walk over half suited up and onto the boat we went. They were ok to motor out a good 30-40 minutes in each direction to show us different sites east and west of the hotel which was nice.
Bullenbaai and Vaersenbaai
The first day it was fairly choppy, and we headed west to find a break in the waves. We did Bullenbaai and Vaersenbaai, and these were both great dive sites. Here, we saw lots of anemones with Pederson and spotted cleaner shrimp. We were taking pictures of every one of these and even after dozens we did not tire from seeing these colorful creatures.
The dive profiles were always quite similar. We would anchor in about 20-30 ft of water and drop down and head over the drop-off. At half a tank we would start back and come up over into the shallows to around 20 ft or so to do our safety stop while enjoying the shallower areas. Sure beats floating at 15ft starting at ones computer!
Here we saw lots of cool shrimps, eels, and lots more.
Saba and Shipwreck Point
Another day they took us east and we got to dive Saba and Shipwreck Point. These were great dives and we saw another small tugboat at Shipwrecks Point along with the largest lettuce sea slugs we had ever seen.
There was also a cool slipper lobster and lots of juvenile damselfish. So cute with their little sparkles.
Go West Diving
At the westernmost tip of the island, you’ll find Go West Diving. There used to be a dive resort right next door but this has unfortunately been closed. It is slated to reopen soon with a recent new owner.
The West End seemed calmer and had even more life than what we saw further east. The reef here was pristine and we would have loved to do it multiple times. It was an hour’s drive from the Marriott however, so we didn’t make it back.
Mushroom Forest (boat dive)
We were also intent on doing the Mushroom Forest site on the West End and drove out to Go West Divers to get that site in with their boat. Usually a Sunday only dive schedule, they made a special trip out on a Tuesday for us as our holiday had us arriving and departing on consecutive Sundays. Thank you, Go West Divers!!
This site didn’t disappoint. There were so many coral heads in weird shapes (with some imagination you could perhaps say they looked like giant mushrooms) but the life on each of these was thriving. I think we could have spent a full dive looking at one of these coral heads filled with little secretary blennies, shrimp, and crabs in all the nooks and crannies.
Broken Rock (boat dive)
We also did a second site called Broken Rock. Not too creative in the naming department, there was a large broken rock off to one side of the cliffs on shore. Here too, there was lots of life and we loved to look for the small stuff. We had more divers on this boat, but everyone was experienced and both dives were great.
We did find the West End much calmer in terms of current and surf. The locals told us this was often the case.
Go West House Reef (shore dive)
Being on site and seeing that it was an hour’s drive from our hotel, we opted to stick around and also do a shore dive at the Go West House Reef. We had read about it beforehand and heard that it was great. It did not disappoint and the reef here was very healthy and full of life. It was also nice to be on our own and to take our time looking for the small stuff.
Not sure what the deal was with the saxophone statue on the reef but it made for a fun underwater pose.
General diving in Curaçao
All dives at both shops were at least an hour, which was nice. We’d been to some resorts where they chased you up after 40 minutes (with over half a tank!). The dives were also done at a nice pace for us. Slow enough that we could enjoy the small macro stuff. The guides would check back and wait when we were taking photos. No reef rocket guides here!
Thanks to the steep wall, we could often do our dive profile such that the end of the dive would consist of climbing the wall to safety stop depth allowing us to explore the shallows (still very lively) instead of just floating looking at the computer for three minutes.
A couple of times we had newer divers and once a discover scuba class on the boat. These always had a separate instructor, and it didn’t affect our dive time. We did pick shallower sites on these occasions, but they were beautiful to dive for us too (and the steep wall makes for some wonderful wall diving).
Even as the more experienced group got low on air, the divemaster would let those with more air poke around a little longer. Visibility was so good you could see the boat from a good distance.
We ended up diving air all week as the local shop had a $12 a tank supplement for nitrox and it didn’t seem worth the extra expense. While it’s cheaper to simply rent tanks and do shore dives, we appreciated the guides and didn’t mind helping the local dive economy by paying extra for the guided dives. We also tipped generously.
Overall we were a bit surprised that we did not see anything big on any of the dozen dives we did. No turtles, no sharks, no rays. We did see a couple of dolphins but these were actually following a dolphin encounter tourist boat and were trained to do tricks so they probably shouldn’t count.
That said, we do love the small stuff and we were amazed at the amount of life we saw. We would check each and every anemone and it was rare not to see at least one cleaner shrimp or Pederson shrimp. We saw one anemone with 15 Pederson shrimp on it!
By the end of the week we had so many great pictures of spotted cleaner shrimp we would just admire them and stopped snapping photos.
We also saw a lot of the redlip blennies as well as the tiny spinyhead or secretary blennies. One brain coral head had a dozen of the small guys poking up through holes checking us out.
Other exciting finds for us were a chain moray (our first) and some lettuce sea slugs the size of my palm. We also saw a huge school of sardines and a slipper lobster.
What was most impressive too was just the extent of the coral and how healthy it was. It looked like a thick garden of bushes that would go on and on as it went over the edge and down the wall into the depths.
Top side activities
We also reserved a day for land-based activities in Curaçao to let our gear dry and to have a little extra buffer in our pre-flight time. See our write up: 5 Land-Based Activities to Do in Curaçao
Conclusion
We had a great time and we’re glad to have had the chance to dive Curaçao. We did some great diving and got to meet some very nice people. Kudos to Sue at Go West Diving and Angela, Dr D, Jacob, Captain Tiko, and Mika at Goby Divers who all left us with fond memories of Curaçao.
It was wonderful to be back in the Caribbean and to experience the 100+ foot visibility and plentiful and thriving marine life. The reefs were comparable to Bonaire with more sand on the beaches. We didn’t encounter strong currents like the adrenaline pumping drift diving of Cozumel, and the drop-off wall diving was reminiscent of Grand Cayman.