First a big thanks to all posters here who have provided us so much useful information and made our Bonaire vacation so much smoother and easier than it might otherwise have been.
Our family of 5 (children 15, 13, and 10) included 2 of us planning to do OWC dives and all of us wanting to snorkel. We live in Vermont about 3 1/2 hours from Logan Airport in Boston.
The trip started off on a frustrating note as AA 401 from Boston to San Juan was canceled 1 1/2 hrs before takeoff, after we had checked in 3 hrs ahead of time. The best AA could do got us into SJ too late for the only daily flight to Bonaire, so they put us up at the Condado Plaza Hotel overnight. Ordinarily this luxurious place would have probably been delightful, but we really just wanted to get to Bonaire. We did get some time the next day hanging around the pools and lagoon, practicing snorkeling, swimming, etc, but the reality is the canceled flight cost us 24 hours of our precious vacation time.
So we arrived 8 PM the 23rd and took a taxi to Hato, where we stayed at Ultimo Cas. We found Cheri's spacious rental home to be very comfortable, clean, airy, and convenient. But the best part was the fantastic variety of fish at the reef and coral beds just off her private beach (broken coral beach, not really sand beach, for those who might be interested). Just north of Small Wall, we saw a large reef squid (at night, about 2 feet long total), spotted moray (about 4 feet long, in the open and watching us back very intently), huge parrots (I'm sure one or two were over 3 ft long), angels, damsels, etc.
Next day I picked up the rental truck from AB CarRental, whose office at Captain Don's was very convenient to Hato (1/2 mile walking distance).
We did our OWC with Wannadive. Bart and Bob have a great operation and we enjoyed the 4 dives under Bart's watchful eyes and tutelage. We saw a seahorse and an Eagle Ray the first dive. My son and I both had problems clearing our ears during the first two dives, and the congestion didn't let up the next day, so we took a few days off, which was a disappointment at the time, but turned out to be a great opportunity for the whole family to enjoy some non-diving activities together on Bonaire. We spent a day at Lac Bay snorkeling the reef (saw an octopus), renting sailboards, and generally playing in the water; spent another day driving through the W-S Park, including fantastic snorkeling in the shallows at Wayaca; spent a good part of one day on a boat trip to Klein on the Woodwind; and generally relaxed and floated face down in the water a lot.
Monday 4/29 we were able to clear our ears again and did the final two dives with Bart before noon. Then we took 4 tanks and in the afternoon dove Small Wall off Cheri's beach and Andrea I off the shore further north. Drifting north along the Wall at about 55 feet, in our first dive without an instructor, was pretty magical for me. At Andrea we witnessed a seemingly endless "migration" of what I later learned were Creole Wrasse; must have been 1000's of them in a steady stream that lasted at least 15 minutes as we swam slowly the opposite direction.
Tuesday AM we had time for one last dive and went to Angel City. The double reef formation and bridging coral along the sandy bottom between the reefs were very different from the other areas we saw. After we had passed over the second reef we found ourselves trying to maintain about 45 feet depth as the bottom dropped off over 50 feet below us, which was a very odd feeling after formerly being basically either near the surface or near the bottom most of the time. At 1500 PSI we turned around and swam back, putting our new compass skills to the test (when we came up near the shoreline we were only about 100 yards north of the truck, much to my relief).
Tuesday PM we did a final snorkel drift up and down between Cheri's place and Petrie's Pillar. We decided to miss the big Rincon celebration for Queen's Day, because it just seemed too hot to drive inland and stand around in the sun. Maybe next year...
Food:
We mostly bought and cooked our own food and made sandwiches for lunch. We did have dinner out 3 times, once at Capriccio and twice at Lion's Den. Both were good food and very enjoyable. To me prices seemed about 50% higher than what you'd find in the states.
Airlines:
I really don't want to fly AA again. The return flight (A. Eagle on May 1) to SJ was delayed 2 hours because of mechanical problems the night before. So of course we missed our connection to Boston and ended up getting home after midnight instead of the originally planned 6 PM. Kind of tough on kids who have to go to school the next day. I'm going to look into AJ next time. I realize it's generally a crap shoot, but I'm still angry about AA canceling the BOS-SJU flight, for reasons I'm sure had to do with underbooking (there appeared to be only 50 people or less booked on the canceled flight).
What's next:
Nick and I are going to do some diving here in Lake Champlain, but we're already talking about when we could possibly go back down to Bonaire for more. This afternoon I downloaded the NASA satellite photo of Bonaire, cropped and rotated it, and am using it as my desktop wallpaper.
If you've read this far I hope some of this has been useful.
Regards,
Peter
PS: I posted one of Kim's sunset shots in the Community Chat section. Nick took underwater shots too, but we don't have the film processed yet. |
By Peter Domenicali on Friday, May 3, 2002 - 12:07 am: 
