My wife and I just got back from a week at Breezes Curacao, and had a great time. Our room in the Pelican wing was reasonably roomy, nicely furnished, with a very comfortable bed, and very quiet. It had the usual tropical musty aroma, but we’re pretty much accustomed to this from almost every resort in which we’ve ever stayed in the tropics. My latest theory is that it must come from condensation in the air conditioning ductwork. Guests were a varied lot, with a good contingent from Europe (especially the Netherlands) and from Curacao and neighboring Caribbean islands. This diversity was fun; we shared a table one night with one family group from Curacao and one from Aruba.

We found the food in general high quality, though not fancy. We ate at Munusan and Pastafari 2 nights each, and Jimmy’s Buffet 3 nights. It’s not Grand Lido level cuisine, but it compares well to other moderate resorts – good selection (though a bit light on the vegetables) and well prepared. Every meal had some excellent rendition of fresh fish, which we really appreciated. We like to drink wine, and found the selection to be fine – several cheap but pleasant Chilean and South African wines. And if you want to avoid having to flag down a waitress multiple times during the meal, just request a bottle for the table. And a related note on drinks: I had seen the advice in this forum to take large insulated mugs to fill at the bar, and we took a couple of these with us. We never used them because it really didn’t seem necessary – the bars aren’t that far away from the beach – and there were signs up saying that the bartenders would only fill glasses supplied at the bar. I did see a few people wandering around with big mugs, so maybe these signs aren’t serious, but in any case, this doesn’t seem to me to be a big issue.

The biggest attraction for us was the snorkeling and diving. A breakwater runs parallel to the beach about 30 meters offshore, forming a lagoon. Inside the lagoon, the water is perfectly calm even on rough days, and there is good visibility and some interesting fish life to look at, though no coral. If you don’t mind somewhat rougher conditions and deeper water (starts out about 3-5 meters), on the seaward side of the breakwater is a really nice coral reef. You can snorkel out the mouth of the harbor and go either right or left, or on fairly calm days, you can climb over the breakwater if you don’t want to swim to the harbor mouth. One caveat on the snorkeling: The day before we left, they started some beach replenishment work, which looked like it had the potential to silt up the water inside the lagoon. Hopefully, that won’t go on too long, but if the snorkeling is important to you, you may want to check before you book. But in any case, it shouldn’t affect the water outside the lagoon.

For divers, one shore dive a day is included. You can either go with an escort around 2:00, or if you have a buddy can go out on your own any time you like during the day. Since my wife and I both dive, we found it nice to be able to set our own schedule and also to dive as much as our air and computers would allow us to do. Typically with escorted dives, the divemasters make you come up long before it’s really necessary. Only thing I really hated about the shore diving was having to tow a “diver down” floating flag to tell boats and jet-skis to watch out, in case we had to surface unexpectedly. The day before we left, one of the divemasters suggested that we wouldn’t have to tow the flag if we had a blow-up float that we could use to signal when we come to the surface, so if we go back, we’ll take one of these. Shore diving was nice, but after 3-4 dives, it would have been nice to have a boat dive or two for variety. Of course, you can pay extra for this, but it’s pretty expensive by Caribbean standards – close to $50 for a 1-tank dive, even if you provide your own equipment. It would really increase the appeal of this place -- especially for repeat customers -- if they would include a couple of boat dives/ week as part of the all-inclusive package.

Another great thing about the resort (and Curacao in general) was the bird life. Lots of beautiful song birds, 4-5 species of doves, and of course the pelicans and other sea birds are fun to watch. Breezes also had some large outdoor cages in which they had nesting pairs of macaws of several different species. We got some nice bird pix.

The workout facility was first-rate, with plenty of running, bicycle, and step machines, Nautilus equipment and free weights. It also seemed very underutilized.

My biggest disappointment was the fact that they do not offer tennis lessons. I had really enjoyed the lessons at Breezes Runaway Bay and Grand Lido Braco, and I just assumed this was part of the standard SuperClubs package. But not at this Breezes.

Night-time entertainment was a mixed bag. The singers – and a sax player -- on the pool deck during dinner some nights were excellent. The stage entertainment – dancers, a mariachi band (from Curacao!), a dance competition, battle of the sexes, etc. -- tended to be pretty lame, but I suppose no worse than other AIs. Somebody must like this stuff, but it’s not our cup of tea.

We only ventured off the reservation one day. We took a day tour of the island with Peter Trips, and loved it. Peter is a very nice Dutch fellow – completely fluent in English – with an obvious love for and deep knowledge of Curacao. His tour is absolutely first-rate, and a bargain at about $50. We went all over the island, and it’s worth the whole day trip just to see the wild western tip. Hard to believe that this area with huge waves crashing against the volcanic shore (which looks like a moonscape) is part of the same island where you just went snorkeling in swimming-pool calm water. We had lunch at a very nice open-air restaurant with great seafood, with hundreds of birds outside. Lunch isn’t included in the $50, but again, it’s a bargain. And we saw a flock of flamingos -- pretty cool!