The sky was a brilliant blue, the water calm, and the sun warm. There we were lazily snorkelling 1000 steps when suddenly we saw it. A sea turtle. About 5 feet below us and heading straight towards us. It continued on course, passed directly below us, gently climbed to take a breath and then was gone out to sea.

This magical monent fully sums up our first experience on Bonaire.

We live in Kelowna BC, Canada and flew Air Canada/Canada 3000. Air Canada managed to send our luggage to Victoria instead of Toronto, but we got it the next day.

We stayed our two weeks at the Divi Flamingo Timeshare. Yes it was aging, but the kitchen was completely restocked with all new appliances and the daily maid service and linen change was a real treat for a timeshare!

The Divi staff were friendly and fun. We really enjoyed them and the whole resort experience.

We are snorkellers and we snorkelled a number of south sites, north sites, hotel reefs (Divi, Carib Inn, Plaza, Sand Dollar etc) Town Pier and Playa Funchi. We also tried night snorkelling (loved it) and took the Woodwind.

We found Hertz at the hotel great, willing to waive the CDW and give a discount or upgrade and very reasonably priced compared to the others.

We definately rate this as one of our best vacations and we have travelled a lot - even seen the legendary Timbuctu in West Africa.

We spent two years in the Pacific recently and snorkelled Fiji, Samoa, Tahiti, Gilbert Islands etc. I expected marine fish to be marine fish but was surprised to find the Caribbean fish are NOT the same as Indo Pacific - except baraccuda and squirrel fish. I had taken my Indo Pacific fish books with me and found them useless. The fish are the same families but different species. So, we had to buy the Paul Humann book.

We found the Dive shop at the Carib Inn well stocked and the prices very good. Bought a bunch of stuff there. Kitty is a great resource.

Being there for carnival weekend was a great bonus - lots of fun. Just the luck of the draw - not planned.

We took our wetsuits and were really glad we did. We took the hotel dive boat out a few times and were excited to see a Yellow Seahorse at Bonaventure and the grandfather of all lobsters at Nearest Point!! His tail was 6 inches wide! NO KIDDING. That tail would not fit on any plate!

We also saw lots of turtles, played with two squadrons of squid, once found ourselves circled about with a polarized school of scad and one day ended up part of a late afternoon school of brilliant blue wrasse. Evidently a manta ray passed by the Divi one day, but we did not see it. We were next door at Carib Inn looking for a precious little juvinile Queen Angel fish. (we found it)

Some shore sites we really enjoyed were Windsock and Margate Bay but for sheer abundance of both coral and fish, our dive boat experience at Nearest Point was exceptional!!

I was excited to find this website before our trip. It was both fun and useful reading other peoples trip reports etc. I want to thank you for your contributions and hope ours will be useful for another "first timer".

We will definately go back. I was already planning that before we left. In fact I have already called my mother to see if we can get our inheritance early so we can take all our children and grandchildren with us next time!!!!

We loved Bonaire for its simplicity and really hope that it does not change. We feel it is just right when the tail of a 747 is the tallest thing on the island!

Arriving back in Toronto on the 5th in the middle of near blizzard conditions was painful! Real quick reality check!

Thanks all of you for your contributions.

Joyce Findlay

Wonderful trip report Joyce...brings back instant memories...thanks for sharing!!

Joyce, Great meeting you and "Tex". I was hoping we would run into you after our trip on the "Woodwind". We will see you when you return....

Great trip report and what great u/w finds you accomplished. Glad your luggage didn't stay in Victoria but decided to join you on the trip.

Yes Gail and Dominica we had a great time thanks. And Susan - what a blast to hear from you. We too were hoping to run into you again. Especially after our snorkelling session at Playa Funchi. Now Susan, we snorkelled all the places you suggested and they were all superb - until Playa Funchi. We must have gone to the wrong part of that one. Actually, the water was quite rough the day we were there and we stood on the shore with a couple from Winnipeg trying to decide if we really wanted to go in or not. When we finally went in, we found it quite disappointing.

Where did we go wrong? We pretty much stayed in the bay - should we have gone out further - past the buoy? It was kind of disappointing after all the great sites we had seen. Enlighten me please.

And, it was actually at Karpata that we had the turtle experience I wrote about in our trip report - we played with squid at 1000 steps. Thanks so much for all the good advice.

On our last night there we followed Renee around for a night snorkle. We sure learned a lot! Much more than night snorkelling on our own.

So, please help me out Susan. Thanks