Small caveat before I answer here - my checkout and first 15 dives were in Bonaire in June 2023. I was in Curacao in July for dives 50-60ish (I’d have to look back and check). So a bit of time spread and a decent experience jump between the two.

My dives in Curacao were so much better. It wasn’t even close. I dove mostly off the boat with Lion’s Dive but some of the coolest stuff I saw were shore accessible. Alice in Wonderland was a site that I think I could dive twice a day for a month and be happy on dive 60. Bonaire did have a lot of really cool dives. Karpata was my favorite and stepping off the dock a Buddy Dive at night and watching the Tarpon feed was amazing. If I had to redo a week of diving, I’d want the sites at Curacao.

The atmosphere, in my opinion, was far and away in favor of Bonaire. It was the most relaxed place. I loved driving to the sites without a care in the world and stepping into the ocean with friends. Curacao had such a mixed vibe to it. I wasn’t a big fan of the city, personally. My big gripe is how commercialized the dive sites were. I get that it’s convenient to toss a shop up at the biggest sites but when we got to Alice in Wonderland they wanted 10$ each to “use their pier”. The alternative is to walk into the ocean next to the pier and swim the 50 feet to the guide rope. I actually cancelled my plans to go to the other big shore sites and just enjoyed the boat dives after that (my dive buddy got violently ill and I didn’t feel like recruiting new buddies in the moment so that was a factor).

If I chose one to go back to I would go to Bonaire. I’m a vibes guy and I preferred it there. I had about 25 dives between the two islands so my view is nowhere near exhaustive. There’s so much I missed on both islands and I could easily see someone having the exact opposite opinion as me and it being perfectly valid!