Curacao, Sep 7-14, 2013

William (Billy) Albert Putman

This year I traveled to Curacao and went diving with Ocean Encounters, Sep 8 - 12, 2013. My dive buddy and I dove 11 different dive sites. We stayed at the Sea Aquarium Royal Resort across from the main dive shop and boat dock. Ocean Encounters has several dive shops located at various resorts around the island: at Lions Dive and Beach Resort, Sunscape Resort, Hilton, and the Santa Barbara Beach & Golf Resort The dive boat would stop at the resorts on the way to the dive shop to pick up divers, or shuttle them to the boat dock. Divers must sign-up the day before. The people at Ocean Encounters always met us with a smile and took us to excellent dive locations. All of the dive masters were from Holland and spoke excellent English: Maik, Yolanda, Maurice, Ingrid, Pol, and Willem. I found the other divers to be very experienced and fun to be around.

People
Billy at Small Wall (photo by Mariana)	Nick at Shipwreck Reef	Dive Master, Pol, at Smokeys Reef	Dive Buddy, Bill, at Booby Trap
Places
Ocean Encounters Dive Shop	Ocean Encounters Dive Boat	Augustos Restaurant at Sea Aquarium	Willemstad at night
Dive Sites
Small Wall - Sea lion fish	Small Wall - coral	Small Wall - sponges	Small Wall - Sea fan
Small Wall - Social feather duster	Beacon Point - Brain coral	Beacon Point - Golden Crinoid	Beacon Point - Corky sea fingers
Beacon Point - Elkhorn coral	Shipwreck Reef - Stag horn coral	Shipwreck Reef - Fire coral	Shipwreck Reef - Fire coral
Sandys Plateau - Barrel sponges	Sandys Plateau - Harlequin bass in Sheet coral	Booby Trap - Blue tip sea anemone	Sea Aquarium - Spiral worm on fire coral
Sea Aquarium - Spiral sea worm	Mushroom Forest - Cleaner shrimp	Port Marie - Lion fish	Port Marie - Tube sponge