Noel's Dive Log

Talk about your own private beach in paradise. We arrive at the gate at 8:00 am, 5 gilders to enter but well worth it. There are three beaches to dive from here. We dove Manzalino and Largu. We had the beach all to ourselves. Parked under a tree and walked 10 feet to the water. Quite a few rocks for about 20 feet out, but easy enough to pick your path through most of it. Very little current or wave action. Saw no other divers here in the water, on the beach or on the road. Encountered a turtle on the reef that was extremely friendly until a damselfish chased him off. Great vis on this site and full sun made for an amazing visual experience.

Plenty of secure parking and good facilities here. We arrived here before the shop opened and finished two dives before 10:30 am. Were only 4 others gearing up to dive as we loaded our car. Easy entry via All West dive shop dock steps, only about 1-2 feet of rocks at the waters edge and then a sand bottom out to the reef. Worse part of the dive is carrying your gear up and down the steps to the parking lot, but that is only a minor inconvenience. A short easy swim out to the buoy and down you go. Current was minimal so we did two dives here - one in each direction. Coral and growth is so thick here that there is no sand to break up the visual picture so it is very easy to miss or overlook a lot of interesting life. Swam by a fishing line from the locals on the first dive. It was weighted with 4 spark plugs that they were bouncing up and down, with no success I might add. A good spot for a two tank dive as All West has air. Use of their facilities is cheap and worth it.

Small entrance fee, but well worth it. Great facilities. Several places to gear up here once you unload your gear. Short swim out to a double reef. Vis was not that good when we went but still a very cool site with the sand valley that separates the two reefs. Saw a monstrous lobster here. He was very shy. It was the only live lobster we saw in 7 days of diving in Curacao. We saw a good size lobster at Cas Abou, but he was dead. Well worth a two tank dive at this site. Nice beach and good facilities make it an easy place to kill an entire day here. The cliffs surrounding the beach and the cove make for a perfect picture.

By far the most crowded place we visited on Curacao. Nice shady concrete pavilion to gear up in and easy entry down their stairs to the water with no rocks or no waves, but.... the people!! I would rather gear up in the sand, in the sun, cross the rocks and fight the wave surge than try and swim through that many people. Thankfully it dropped off very quickly if you swam past their floating dive platform. We submerged and navigated our way out of their cove to the dive site. Vis inside the cove is about 10 feet it is so stirred up. Watch out for Wave Runners as well. Nice dive same scenery that you will see on the other dives, but too many people in the water. If you can find a spot on their beach area the swim out of the cove is a lot shorter and there are fewer people swimming in this area.<br>We also dove Tugboat from this end of the island. It is not listed as a shore dive on most literature, but it should be. This was the only site where we saw larger sized fish and the scenery here is vastly different from all the other sites we dove on Curacao. We followed the wall to the left in hopes of seeing seahorses, but no luck. We were told that there are quite a few is this area. The shallows of this area have a lot of fish and we even chanced upon a octopus here as well. Would be a great site for a night dive, just never worked out for us that way.