Because we are active travelers (versus passive vacationers), we had been looking for a Caribbean island that could offer enough to keep us busy for five days. American Airlines offers discounted frequent flyer deals in the fall to various islands, so we narrowed it down to two options that could be reached in 25K miles each and only one stopover in Miami—Curaçao and Turks and Caicos. Because we scheduled the trip in October, we chose the island that was outside the hurricane belt.
The primary reason we chose the Breezes resort was it’s proximity to some excellent snorkeling. We could have just snorkeled at the hotel and seen plenty of amazing creatures, fish, and coral. Below is the view from our hotel beach.
Our little waterproof camera came in very handy on this trip, although we needed to give it a break every 20 minutes or so to keep it operating flawlessly.
(upper left: Eric underwater; upper right: a feather duster worm; lower left: unknown friendly fish; lower right: elkhorn coral)
The other area of the island well known for it’s snorkeling is the northwest coast near Westpunt. My sister and her boyfriend, Michael, rented gear (we had our own) and we spent the rest of our morning exploring Playa Kalki near the Kura Hulanda resort. The beach was wide and private and the snorkeling was entirely open ocean with good visibility. There were several divers getting ready to go out when we arrived.
(left: blue parrot fish; right: an octopus hiding behind some giant brain coral)
The next beach we visited was Playa Kenepa beach, which was more cove-like. There was a lot of coral along the rocky outcrops on either side of the beach. Eric took this shot of me just before I scraped my foot on some coral (thankfully not the stinging/poisonous kind). I managed to get this shot of a pufferfish on my way back in to give the camera a break.
We wanted to visit Seaquarium Beach (one hotel over from ours), but didn’t feel like paying the steep entrance fee to the aquarium. I’m confident that the snorkeling is comparable to the experience at our hotel.
This was by far the best snorkeling we’ve experienced, taking into account trips to Hawaii’s Big Island (the northwest coast) and south of Cancun, at Xpu-Ha Palace.