Family Diving | Cenotes | Drift | Wreck |  Big Animal Encounters

• DIVING INFORMATION • WHERE TO STAY • OCCIDENTAL GRAND ARUBA PACKAGES
 

The Occidental Grand Aruba partners with De Palm Tours/Unique Sports of Aruba, a PADI Gold Palm 5 Star Resort and NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC DIVE CENTER, to offer their guests scuba diving packages and instruction.

Tucked away safely below the hurricane belt, Aruba is renowned for its beaches, nightlife and windsurfing, but divers know it for being a great dive destination as well. Unlike sister islands Bonaire and Curacao, the main focus of Aruba’s diving is not on its reefs, but on the shipwrecks and airplane wrecks. This does not mean however that the island lacks for reef dives! There are also several excellent reef and wall dives with abundant marine life, including stingrays, manta rays, moray eel, barracudas and nurse sharks. This combination of wrecks and reefs makes Aruba one of the most diverse dive destinations in the southern Caribbean.

Aruba’s stable weather pattern almost guarantees good diving and good visibility year round, as does the minimal variation in water temperature, which ranges between a toasty 75 to 80 degrees Fahrenheit.

Aruba is surrounded by a large, shallow sand plateau, meaning reefs need to be accessed by boat. Luckily the vast majority of the sites are only a short distance from Palm Beach, on the islands leeward western and southern coasts. Sites are marked with permanent mooring buoys that were established more than 10 years ago in order to protect the sites from damage from anchoring.

A sampling of Aruba’s most popular dive sites visited by De Palm Tours/Unique Sports of Aruba include the following:

The Antilla shipwreck, a German freighter that was sunk in just 60 feet of water just prior to World War II, is one of the most interesting wrecks in the Caribbean. The ship stretches over 400 feet, making it a site that needs to be explored over several different dives. Divers are allowed to penetrate several large open compartments, where they will likely share the space with tarpon, schools of silversides or any number of colorful reef fish. Having been sunk for more than 60 years, a wide variety of sea creatures have moved in to call the wreck home including tunicates, orange cup coral, purple tube sponges, and Christmas tree worms.

The Arashi Airplane, a twin-engine Beechcraft, is an excellent site for beginner divers and junior certified divers as it sits in only 33 feet not far from Arashi Beach. Though the planes propellers are no longer in tact, the cockpit has become the home for large numbers of schooling fish.

The Sonesta Airplane off of Sonesta Island is the final resting place of a Convair 240. The craft, which has since broken into three parts, lies on a sloping reef surrounded by soft corals and colorful sponges.

Another shallow water wreck of interest is the SS Perdernales, an oil tanker torpedoed by a German submarine in World War II lying off of Hadicurati Beach. The bow and stern were towed away and reconstructed by the US military, leaving large chunks of the torpedoed mid-section scattered along a coral reef in 25 feet of water.
Located a short distance away from the Grand Aruba, De Palm Tours/Unique Sports of Aruba provides our guests free transportation to and from the dive docks.

Whether you are an experienced diver or a relative novice, diving with De Palm Tours/Unique Sports of Aruba will be truly a unique experience.

They operate four comfortable, custom dive boats that depart for either one or two tank dives throughout the day to the island most interesting sites. All of their boats are equipped with DAN oxygen kits and full emergency first aid and rescue equipment. All divers are accompanied in the water by a qualified Divemaster or Instructor, with a boat captain who is also a rescue diver remaining on onboard.

Their multilingual dive instructors offers everything from Discover Scuba Diving to PADI Open Water Certification on through Dive Master.

Be you student, novice or expert, De Palm Tours/Unique Sports of Aruba's highly trained crews are there to look after you every step of the way, ensuring your diving experience with them is safe and fun!

Click here for information on hotel and dive packages at the Occidental Grand Aruba

and the weekly dive schedule with De Palm Tours/Unique Sports or Aruba

All rates and information is subject to change without notice. Rates are per person and include 3% sales tax.
All rates are in US$. Certain restrictions apply. Space is subject to availability.
 

If a product or service is not listed that you would like to inquire about please feel free to call our U.S. Reservation office at 877-348-3255. Our friendly and knowledgeable staff is available from 9 am to 5 pm EST Monday - Friday.

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