Willemstad by eight, the reef by ten. Curaçao runs on boat times.
Which catamaran anchors long enough to actually snorkel. What half a day on the dirt roads costs. Whether the turtles at Playa Piskado need a guide at all. Reviews of every tour you can book on the island.
The five bookings a first week on Curaçao is built around.
One town morning, one long boat day, and three ways into the water. What each costs and how long it takes.
01The long boat dayKlein Curacao Day Trip with Premium Open Bar and BBQ-LunchTwo hours out to an uninhabited island with a lighthouse and a wrecked tanker on the beach. Leaves early, back at dusk, and it fills up in season.
02Under the surfaceAquafari Tour in CuraçaoA one-person electric scooter that tows you along the reef. You breathe inside a clear dome, so there is no certificate and no mask to clear.
03The sure thingSwimming with Sea Turtles meets Sea turtle beachGreen turtles come in to the fishermen at Playa Piskado most mornings. This is the boat that gets you into the water beside them.
04Off the tarmacCuracao Half Day ATV East Adventure TourHalf a day on the dirt tracks of the east end, past salt pans and cactus, finishing at a bay nobody drives to.
05The town itselfThe best walking tour WillemstadOtrobanda and Punda on foot, with the pontoon bridge swinging open mid-sentence. The cheapest good morning on the island.
Mask, tank or scooter. The reef starts a few strokes off the beach.
The drop-off runs the length of the leeward coast, close enough in that you can reach it swimming. What you book decides how deep you get and how far along it you travel.
★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · Snorkel with Turtles & Kenepa Grandi Beach: Nr.1 Island Day Trip
Mask and finsBoat out to the coves, a couple of hours in the shallows.
TanksShore dives, the wrecks, and a first try for people with no certificate.
TurtlesPlaya Piskado and Turtle Bay, where they come in to feed.
MotorSeabobs and jet skis for covering the coast fast.
EveningOut past the harbour mouth for the last hour of light.
All 19 boat days on the leeward coast →
Curaçao is thirty-eight miles long and no two days on it look alike.
A Dutch colonial town on one side, a wall of reef along the other, salt pans and cactus in between, and a boat out to an island with nobody on it. Six ways to spend a day, and the best booking in each.
An island with a lighthouse, a shipwreck and nobody living on it.
Klein Curaçao is a flat sand bar fifteen miles off the south-east tip, reached only by boat. The crossing takes about two hours each way and can be rough, the beach is white and completely undeveloped, and the whole thing is a committed full day. Every operator leaves at first light.
Willemstad is two towns arguing across one channel.
Everything in Willemstad →
Punda has the painted gables on the Handelskade and the floating market behind them. Otrobanda has the steep lanes, the murals and the museums. The Queen Emma pontoon bridge joins them until a ship needs through, at which point it swings aside and everybody waits. These three cover it.
- 1The best walking tour Willemstadfrom $28
- 2Curacao City Highlights 4-Hour Tourfrom $65
- 3Curacao TukTuk City Tourfrom $25
Otrobanda and Punda in one morning
The short version of the island’s history, told in the streets it happened in: the slave-trade wharf, the Jewish quarter, the pastel facades a governor supposedly ordered painted because the white glare gave him headaches.
The town, then the coast road
A tuk-tuk or a minibus that takes in Punda, Fort Amsterdam and the Queen Juliana bridge, then runs west along the water to the salt pans and the flamingos at Jan Kok.
Chobolobo, and what laraha actually tastes like
Blue Curaçao is made at a small country house in Willemstad from the dried peel of the laraha, a bitter orange that grows nowhere else. The tasting is short, the colour is food dye, and the original is clear.
The Curaçao days out that more travellers take than any other.
Every tour we have reviewed on the island →Eight bookings with the deepest traveller histories on the island, and what earns each of them the slot.
1
Klein Curacao Day Trip with Premium Open Bar and BBQ-Lunch
Sail from Zanzibar Beach to uninhabited Klein Curaçao aboard a catamaran with an onboard restroom, snorkeling gear, BBQ lunch, and a premium open bar. Plan on a long ride each way, roughly 1.5 to 2.5 hours depending on conditions. Captain Max and the crew keep the day friendly, relaxed, and lively, with music and dancing often featured on the return.
From · $131
Read our review →
2
Aquafari Tour in Curaçao
from $159
3
Swimming with Sea Turtles meets Sea turtle beach
from $99
4
Klein Curacao Adventure Day Trip
from $120
5
Discover Diving in Curacao
from $125
6
Curacao Helmet Diving-Walk the Ocean Floor, No Swimming Required
from $150
7
All West Beach Hopping Tour
from $85
8
Guided Tour at the Curaçao Liqueur Distillery
from $20
The dry half of Curaçao is where the island stops looking Caribbean.
Inland is cactus, divi-divi trees bent flat by the trade wind, abandoned plantation houses and limestone terraces full of caves. It is hot, dusty and best crossed in something with big tyres. The north coast at the end of it takes the full force of the Atlantic.
- 1Curacao Beach and Hato Caves Tourfrom $69
- 2Curacao Half Day ATV East Adventure Tour
- 3Best Highlight Island Tour – Perfect Day Tour. Small group Tourfrom $109
What a day out on Curaçao actually costs.
Every tour on the site, grouped by price. The town mornings are cheap, the water is where the money goes, and the gap between the two is wider here than most islands.
Walking tours of Punda and Otrobanda, tuk-tuk runs, the distillery tasting and the short snorkel hops.
- 1Guided Tour at the Curaçao Liqueur Distilleryfrom $20
- 2The best walking tour Willemstadfrom $28
- 3Willemstad Shore Excursion:from $35
The standard island day: west-coast beach runs, turtle boats, discover-scuba sessions and the Klein Curaçao crossings.
Private charters, certification courses and the buggy days that come with a driver and a cooler.
Three things that happen on Curaçao and nowhere else.
Reef and rum exist all over the Caribbean. A liqueur distilled from a bitter orange that only grows on this rock, a cave you swim into, and a desert island run as a day trip do not.
Blue Curaçao, at the house that makes it
Spanish settlers planted Valencia oranges here in the sixteenth century. The dry soil and the salt air ruined them, and what grew instead was the laraha: inedible fruit, intensely fragrant peel. Senior and Co. have distilled that peel at Landhuis Chobolobo since 1896, in the same copper still. The liqueur comes out clear. The blue is added afterwards, which is the first thing the guide tells you.
- 1Guided Tour at the Curaçao Liqueur Distillery★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 589 reviews
- 2Sunset Sailing Cruise with premium drinks and bites★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 141 reviews
- 3Curacao Private Food Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 119 reviews
Hato Caves and the Blue Room
The island is old coral, lifted out of the sea in terraces, so the rock is full of holes. Hato is the walkable one, with stalagmites, a colony of long-nose fruit bats and Arawak petroglyphs near the mouth. The Blue Room is the opposite: a sea cave on the west coast with an entrance below the waterline, and you get in by holding your breath for a stroke or two.
- 1Curacao Beach and Hato Caves Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 440 reviews
- 2Hato Caves, Turtles & Beach★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 372 reviews
- 3Island Treasures: Caves, Turtles and Turquoise Beach Break★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 244 reviews
Klein Curaçao
A flat scrap of sand and coral with a ruined lighthouse, a wrecked oil tanker rusting on the windward shore and no fresh water. It has been a guano mine, a quarantine station and a graveyard for sailors. Now it is a beach that boats reach at nine and leave at four, and in between there is nothing to do except swim, which is the point.
- 1Klein Curacao Day Trip with Premium Open Bar and BBQ-Lunch★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 1,302 reviews
- 2Klein Curacao Adventure Day Trip★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 944 reviews
- 3Klein Curaçao Full Day Boat Trip★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 178 reviews
The trade wind decides which side of Curaçao you swim on.
The wind comes out of the east almost every day of the year, which is why the trees lean. It puts a heavy swell on the north coast, where Shete Boka throws water out of blowholes and swimming is genuinely dangerous, and leaves the south-west shore flat and clear. Everything you book in the water happens on the leeward side. The north coast is for looking at.
Four Curaçao bookings that will not wait until you land.
Most of the island can be sorted the night before over a beer on the Pietermaai seafront. These four cannot. They run on single departures, fixed capacity and calendars that take no interest in your flight.
- 01Klein Curacao Day Trip with Premium Open Bar and BBQ-LunchOne sailing a day, leaving around seven in the morning. Miss it and the next one is tomorrow, if there is space.
- 02Aquafari Tour in CuraçaoA handful of scooters and a handful of slots per departure. The morning runs go first because the water is clearest early.
- 03Curacao Helmet Diving-Walk the Ocean Floor, No Swimming RequiredThe number of helmets on the boat is the number of places, and there is no standby list.
- 04PADI Open Water Course in CuracaoA certification runs over consecutive mornings, so it has to be blocked out at the start of the trip, not squeezed in at the end.
By the hours you can spare
Willemstad, the west coast, Klein Curaçao: the week almost everybody ends up doing.
The west coast
Klein Curaçao
The dirt roadsThe newest Curaçao tour reviews.
More new Curaçao reviews →
Taste of Pietermaai: Self-Guided Food & Culture Tour
Read our review →
Cultural and Historical Audio guided walking tour Tour of Otrobanda, Willemstad
Read our review →
Curacao Willemstad Distilleries and Brewery Tour
Read our review →
Taste of Otrobandai: Self-Guided Food & Culture & Murals Tour
Read our review →
Guided Snorkel Tour at the Best Reef from shore on Curacao – Blue Bay Beach
Read our review →
SNUBA Adventure in Curacao – Guided Shallow Dive
Read our review →
Curacao Food Tour at 3 type of restaurants that the locals enjoy
Read our review →
Tour to the best beaches; snorkel with fish and turtles
Read our review →
Exclusive 4 -Hour Private nature Tour: West Curacao’s Best
Read our review →