We would not consider Aruba a real dive destination We booked our dives through Pelican Watersports which had an activities desk at the LaCabana, where we were staying. We rented the studio unit condo from a friend of ours here locally. Pelican Watersports provided transportation from hotel to dive boats at another hotel. The dive gear storage did not seem very secure so we didn't leave anything there between dive trips except weight belts and weights. This was somewhat inconvenient since lugging wet gear around is not very pleasant.The reefs were OK but visibility was not very good. All dives were boat dives; and all were guided. You had to play "follow the leader". As the week went by the visibility got steadily worse and the surface got rougher and rougher. We did a night dive that was so bad all you could see were the other divers' lights. Unfortunately one of the divers was a young man on his first night dive. He lost his buddy after a few minutes into the dive, when he got back to the boat he said he was never so scared in his life. I think we convinced him that normally night dives aren't that bad so I think he might try it again. They should have canceled but we got the impression that they were more interested in the money than the diving.
Because the water was pretty rough, and the visibility wasn’t great, we did fewer dives than we originally planned to do. We did the Antillea wreck twice, once in the morning and then again on the terrible night dive. The diving isn’t really terrible, and maybe if the visibility had been better we would have enjoyed it more, but we really don’t feel that it is a place to go if you are really serious about diving. It’s more of a "sideline". As Alex from Pelican Watersports put it, people don’t come to Aruba for diving but may want to do a couple of dives while they are there. We did see a seahorse on our last day of diving. But other than that, there wasn't much spectacular to see. The reefs are nice but they don’t compare to Bonaire or Curacao.
