Originally Posted by
worldspan
Avoid Curacao, waters are shark infested, most beaches caged in. Further, the island is very sparse and arid looking, full of silos of oil brought in from Venezuela to be refined and shipped to further destinations. Much of the island looks like the area on the Jersey turnpike where all you see and smell are oil silos.
Aruba and St Maarten much better beach destinations. Aruba is a very "plastic" place, if it did not have casinos, I think its visitor count would be half of what it is. St Maarten between the Dutch and the French sides has a lot more character.
Worldspan
Naples, Florida
Sorry, but that is purely rubbish advice. As a master diver with 58 years and lots of worldwide shark diving, and who has dived Aruba, Bonaire and Curacao, I can attest one is extremely lucky to see a shark in the vicinity of Curacao (and I have not seen "caged in" beaches there at any time). And yes, there is an area of oil storage depots, but those exist on the other islands as well, since
no Caribbean island has its own oil (if they did, they'd still need refineries...)
By "St. Maarten" one assumes you mean the very touristy cruise area of Sint Maarten, part of the Netherlands Antilles, and St. Martin, a French overseas dependency and part of the French West Indies that shares the island with Sint Maarten? (An island that, unfortunately, has recently been experiencing an outbreak of chikungunya fever, not found in the A-B-C islands, which is pretty much the same for hurricanes as the ABCs are generally below the hurricane belt.) I'm pretty familiar with that one, too... (both island and "CHICKV" as well, unfortunately; you do not want CHIKV or the similar dengue).