The great Curaçao getaway

By Ty Sawyer

updated 6:44 p.m. ET April 17, 2007

I have a measuring stick for dive destinations. I call it the flyaway disease. It's what happens when I'm on the airplane, taking off after a week or two of diving and exploring and feel like I never got to the pulse of a place. That I didn't get to experience enough of a destination to feel like I understand it. That slight panic that if asked I'm not going to be able to describe what it was like with anything close to clarity. This is not a bad feeling. In fact, I get a great deal of satisfaction from places like this. There's a tingle of thrill that rides the coattails of flyaway disease. This feeling comes about when a destination offers more, or much more, than can be experienced within the confines of a trip. Truly, these places are getting harder to find. Which is why we've decided to feature the truly great getaways. The dive destinations that ripple with enough adventure to fill an epic journey, not just the typical span of a holiday.

Places with so much to see and do and discover that unless you try to bite off only small chunks at a time, you'll get a little dizzy. In the Caribbean, Curaçao heads a small list of destinations that exceed expectations. Curaçao evokes envy in its neighbors. And, traveling there will give you flyaway disease.

All Over Experience
Ocean Encounters
What I'd love to do one day is to just yell "Stop!" on the dive boat, come to a screeching halt and jump in to see what hidden treasures await on the reef below. I don't have this little fantasy about every destination. No, far from it. But, I'm pretty sure I could get Christian Ambrosi, one of the co-owners of the family-owned PADI 5-Star Ocean Encounters, to jump at the chance. They've certainly made numerous discoveries since they arrived on Curaçao more than five years ago, such as the wreck of the Stella Maris last year. But, more than that, I know I'd be nicely surprised at what we'd find because Curaçao is only just becoming a big-time dive destination. There's plenty left to discover.

The east end of Curaçao, the area nearest the UNESCO World Heritage-listed city of Willemstad, is littered with dives - wall dives, wreck dives, shore dives, lush coral gardens - that have quickly become not only Curaçao icons, but also some of the top dives in the Caribbean. Dives that beg to be repeated. This is especially true of the wreck of the Superior Producer, which sits just outside the entrance to Willemstad harbor. With so much commerce defining the history of Curaçao, it's no surprise that there are a few shipwrecks off its coast.

Besides the Superior Producer, there are several tugboats idling their time at permanent anchor. But the Superior Producer rules the seafloor, as it were, and Ocean Encounters tries to include this on every diver's schedule for the week. This 200-foot wreck was cause for celebration when it foundered just outside the harbor in 1977 and sank in 120 feet of water. Not that shipwrecks are normally cause for celebration, but this particular wreck sank with a full cargo of T-shirts, jeans and rum - much of which washed ashore or was repatriated, as it were, by the local populace according to the unwritten rules of shipwreck salvage. It sank just before the Christmas holidays, so the rum especially helped jumpstart the season. Occasionally someone finds a bottle tucked in the sand around the ship or on shore after a storm. But no matter how tall the tale, it never matches the actual experience of diving the Superior Producer.

Ty Sawyer Playa Lagun on Curacao’s extreme west end basks in the afternoon sun.

When you dive the Superior Producer, the hustle and bustle of Willemstad looms closely in the distance. Boats come in and out of the harbor, and people walk along the shore. And despite the sudden silence when you begin your descent, the sight of the Superior Producer on the sand will evoke an inner dialogue that will lead you from the coral-encrusted bow to the wheelhouse to the debris on the sand. It would take months of dedication to fully appreciate the variety of creatures and habitat and drama that this artificial reef has created. Because of its depth, I'm always torn between a slow, inch-by-inch discovery of the critters hidden among the lush growth and taking in the panorama and grand vista of the ship. The first thing to do, though, is to drop to the sand, kneel and look up at the bow's profile against the surface. It's majestic. Then lift up and fin close to the hull. You'll find a galaxy of marine life. As cosmopolitan as Willemstad is, life on the Superior Producer is full of the nonstop energy of the greatest cities on the planet. In one sweep, I found arrow crabs, fire worms, eels, Peterson shrimp and several species of nudibranch.

The Shore Thing
Habitat Curacao
At some resorts, people reserve way in advance for Christmas. At others, it's for New Year's Eve, Thanksgiving or Easter break. But at Habitat Curaçao Resort, the times that veteran visitors have blocked out on their calendars this year are September 15-21 and October 14-20. And the draw is two weeks of raucous, all-night sex.

Slide show   A Mermaid’s Playground Presented by Sport Diver Magazine. more photos

No, it's not what you're thinking. Two to four days after the full moon in September and October, it's the coral that gets busy in a seemingly choreographed frenzy that looks as if the whole reef is doing its version of an upside-down ticker-tape parade. A dozen different species of corals get in on the act, as do sea urchins, sea cucumbers, brittle stars, fire worms, Christmas-tree worms and the touch-me-not sponge.

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