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 Whew!!!
Many of our friends know that much of our life is involved in the care
of our 2-year old grandson but they also realize that we do everything
we can to get some of our own time. Most of that time away is just a
quick Florida Keys weekend but in July we, along with a group of dive
club members and friends, actually managed a big dive vacation that
involved things like airplanes, rental cars and foreign countries that
required passports to enter and/or to return to the good old US of
America.
Destination Curacao. We had been to Curacao back in 1999 or so and
enjoyed the idea of “diving freedom”. This is a particular slogan of the
old Captain Don’s Habitat Curacao, now just known as Habitat Curacao
(and Habitat Bonaire, which we have also enjoyed). Diving Freedom is a
wonderful concept. Once you have checked in with the dive shop, showed
your C-card (certification card) and listened to their dive brief, you
are on your own. There are lockers (you provide the locks) at the level
of the dock and there are always filled tanks waiting for you. If you
wake up at 3:00 am (this doesn’t apply to Gary and me because our clock
apparently only shows 9:00 am) you can wander down to the dock, open
your locker, get your dive gear and hook up to your fresh tank. It’s a
short trip down the steps to warm, clear water. A big rope, attached
solidly to the steps, leads out to the wall and down to at least 100
feet (although it may be deeper). You check the current and head against
it for however long you have time or air. Turn around, watch the
wonderful underwater scenery and when you reach the rope, head back to
the dock which is well lit and where you can rinse your cameras and dive
equipment.
 Another
thing we liked about Curacao was the fact that non-divers might find
some entertainment although we do admit that it isn’t enough to keep you
satisfied for more than a day or so. I happen to enjoy the slot machines
but since I stink at gambling, I always set a small limit such as $20
and when that runs out, I’m done. We went to Willemstad, the only big
city, and wandered around the floating market and the typical tourist
shops where we bought t-shirts and trinkets. The first time Gary and I
visited Curacao, we went to one of the big hotel casinos where he was
very bored but I still enjoyed the pull of the one armed bandits. This
trip we just found a local downtown casino – the big guys at the door
looked us over, must have decided that we were harmless and let us into
the smoke filled, dark room. We found the cheap slots (they actually
have nickel and quarter slot machines) and I proceeded to pour my $20
into the machines. I finally gave up and ended up with $10 – a little
entertainment for just a small investment.
Habitat Curacao has a fully staffed restaurant and the food is quite
nice. We thought we should also sample some local food so we headed up
north to a popular restaurant that served goat and iguana. OK – that
isn’t the normal food that tourists are looking for but we’ve lived in
some places that served some strange food – goat was a big item on the
menu in the Philippines, one of our favorite dive destinations, but
iguana was a new experience. We have since decided that we could solve
the big iguana problem in Cape Coral by opening a specialty restaurant
that served iguana. It was presented in a bowl that looked like
stew and yes, it almost tasted like chicken but just a littler bonier.
Our friend Mike asked the restaurant owner about the price of goat meat
and the price seemed reasonable but the answer on iguana was “We just
catch them out of the trees”.
If you are still with us on this article, the diving was spectacular.
The nice thing about Curacao is you can walk off the dock, follow the
wall and see the most spectacular sights you can imagine. I would have
to say that the night dives were really the highlight of the trip for
many of our group. I also have to admit that having to deal with a
camera, two strobes, and my underwater dive light were more challenging
than some of the diving we do in normal circumstances. I thought I had
solved the lighting problem by duct taping a dive light to one of my
strobes – it turns out that it almost works. My digital camera could not
really see what I was seeing in the dive light so I ended up hoping that
what I was aiming for, was really what I was going to get in the end. It
worked sometimes but not always. There were at least two divers with
video cameras and huge underwater lights. Everything underwater seemed
attracted to their lights and of course, we could use them as homing
beacons in case our own lights decided to bite the dust.
I will also report that if there is anyone keeping track of uses for
duct tape. We used it on my strobe to hold on an aiming light; we used
it on Janet’s slave sensors when she lost the cap to one of them; we
used it on Mike’s foot when a fin just rubbed the wrong way and we
needed a coolie (graciously provided by our rental car company) to wrap
his foot and protect it from his fins. Thankfully, one person in our
dive group believes that the safety kit should contain duct tape (or is
that Duck Tape?).
It was a fun trip. There were glitches, as there always are, but if you
are on vacation, you just have to get over them. We had rental trucks
that didn’t appear and we almost ended up with a 9-passenger van for 4
people. The hotel was a little overwhelmed with the arrival of 21 people
at once but it worked out. The dive operators are a little overzealous –
one photographer was hanging under the boat taking photos of divers
returning to the boat and the Divemaster was swimming around her trying
to remove weight from her weight belt. Dive gloves are not allowed on
Curacao so if you go, don’t bring them.
If you want a place where the diving is great and you don’t have to pay
the big bucks for dive boats, then Curacao (and also Bonaire) fits the
bill. The weather is great, the water is warm and the underwater world
is glorious.
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