The diving in Bonaire is better. The road along the island makes it more convenient. There was also less algae on Bonaire - not sure if it is because of the early rainy season this year or because of increased sediments/pollution? Don't know.
Anyway, the diving was still very good. Despite the very heavy rain we had in the first few days, viz was reasonable (50 to 100 ft). Lots of the shore dive site are beaches, and most have dive shop on site. Makes it easy to arrive with gear, rent on site and not have to deal with tank, and benefit from showers/rinse tanks/lockers... There are also a few places that offers packages similar to Bonaire - by the day, or by the tank with easy swaps.
We stayed at Coral Estate - next to former Habitat Curacao (which is being renovated). That's a great location on the West side - great diving, and not too far from the city, which you really want to go back to for groceries... the smaller markets are quite bad, but we found great stores in town (Cost-U-less is like Costco with no card needed. Centrum is as big as a Safeway)
Habitat Curacao might reopen summer 2014 - lots of renovation going on - I think it will be great! (Probably will change name?). However, the dive shop at Coral Estate IS opened - http://www.diveversity.com/en/ great folks, did shore diving from there, and did a boat dive with them too. Very convenient and the house reef is quite good.
We only did 8 dives while there - went with my kids, wife, and parents this time. But it still gave us a good taste of the island. It's not been discussed very often here so feel-free to ask questions if you are considering it...
On this trip I was trying my new RX100Mk2 in Nauticam housing, with a macro lenses, YS-D1, Sola 1200. It is more difficult to do great shots than my old S95, but with practice, I could see a huge improvements over the 8 dives there! Overall quite happy with the results.
You can find lots of shots from the trip here: https://skydrive.live.com/redir?resid=F ... der%2c.jpg
- Sample shot. Saw this turtle deep on the wall at the end of a 2nd dive, did a quick dip near Deco to get this shot... but it was worth it
