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Divi Village Golf and...
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The fabulous Divi Village will rise above the white sand beach and sparkling blue waters to...
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Aruba: Search Dive Areas
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Palm Beach, West Aruba
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Some people believe that when god created paradise he hid a place just like it somewhere in the Caribbeans. After a look at the island of Aruba one will come to realise that the quest for this peace of heaven on earth has come to an end. It is here, that everything comes together one could wish for: The hot Caribbean Sun, pristine white sandy beaches that curve like an Aruban smile along the western shores as they are gently sloping toward the calm transparent turquoise of the Caribbean. Meanwhile, the play of the tides that clash constantly against the windward coast like incessant thunder have created both carving high, arched coral bridges and deep, dark secret limestone grottoes.
And if that weren’t enough already, Aruba boast with some spectacular dive sites. Here on the western shores of the island, friends of wreck dives will find yet another reason to call Aruba truly a paradise on earth.
In 1939, the Germans secretly deployed numerous submarines across the Atlantic to the coast of South America. Five of these submarines where deployed to make the ABC Islands (Aruba, Bonaire and Curacao) their base for later attacks. Their aim was to attack Aruba’s and Curacao’s refineries and to torpedo tankers carrying crude oil to the refineries from the Venezuelan oil fields. In order to supply these submarines, the Antilla, a 122 m (400 ft) long freighter, was disguised as a peaceful commercial freighter working in neutral waters of the Dutch islands. The truth however was that the Antilla secretly housed a deadly arsenal of torpedoes, mines and other ammunition for these submarines. When Germany officially declared war on Holland in 1940, Aruba’s Dutch powers demanded the surrender of the Antilla. The Antilla’s captain chose another alternative and scuttled the freighter on Friday the 10th of May 1940 only two years after the ship had left its dock in Hamburg. Referred to locally as the ghost ship, the Antilla is the largest wreck in the Caribbean. The wreck offers excellent opportunities for penetrations due to its large compartments, where the light plays through the portholes. These compartments are inhabited by swarms of silversides that fill the cargo hull. Over the course of time the freighter was covered by giant tube sponges and coral formations providing shelter for numerous lobsters and several kinds of tropical fish such as angel fish and yellow tails. Lying on a bed of perfectly white sand, not far away from the coast and most importantly protected from the swell, the Antilla truly is a wreck divers dream, both at daytimes and at night.
Going a bit further south along the western coast of the island will get you to Blue Reef situated about 8 minutes by boat off the coast of Palm Beach. Spread over a wide area, this typical bottom reef offers a very nice selection of leaf and brain corals. If you are lucky, you will see stingrays or lobsters that occasionally visit this site. To add to the sites attraction the 36 m (120 ft) long fuel barge Debbie II was scuttled in 1992.
If you continue to go further south you will visit another silent witness of what happened during World War II. The wreck of the Pedernales, an oil tanker torpedoed by a German submarine, is a paradise for unexperienced divers. Spread out between coral formations are several large pieces of the wreck such as the complete wreck cabins, lavatories and wash basins. What can be found here is only a part of the former tanker. Still during the war, the wreck of the Pedernales was cut into three pieces by the U.S. Military. The center piece that was damaged by the torpedo was left behind. Today, this segment of the Pedernales offers refuge to many types of groupers and countless angelfish. For the rest of the Pedernales the U.S. Military had some other plans then to rot in the depths of the sea. After the dissection of the oil tanker the two endpieces where towed to the U.S. and welded together into a smaller vessel, a vessel that later was part of the Normandy invasion fleet.
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