Bon Bini all!

Michelle and I are now finally, and slowly, emerging from the ultra-mega-super-relaxed state of bliss that we had achieved by the time our way-too-early-in-the-morning flight lifted off with a dual-prop hum from Flamingo Airport.

Thus, this is the first installment of our trip report... Since photo development and scanning is still at least a few days off, we'll start with just some summary details. Expect us to get more verbose in follow-up posts.

TRIP DATES: 15-23 June, 2002. Coincidentally the same period as the Dive Festival.

BOTTOM TIME: Just shy of 13 hours on 13 wonderful dives. More on the sites seen below. Could probably have put in more effort and made it to an average of 3 dives a day, but then we would have missed our chance to savor the laid-back pace of the island.

ACCOMODATIONS: Casa Oleander / Coco Palm Gardens in Belman. *****

AIR TRAVEL: American Airlines. *** (no trouble with arrival/departure or hassle factors, thanks to lots of good data found here on BT! Just wish departure time could have been a few hours - or maybe days - later.)

GROUND TRANSPORT: AB rental. *** Initially resisted our desire to reject CDW, but ultimately were reasonable. Wilfredo (sp?) at Lisa Gas (****) pulled MULTIPLE cactus needles from our flat tire and applied two patches for a mere 8 guilder (try getting service like that in a U.S. service station!)

FOOD:
deTuin (****, reasonable fare for reasonable fee plus e-mail access well after dark),
CoCo Palm Garden (*****, by reservation only and not advertised - the proprieters of our holiday apartments, formerly operators of Beefeater, prepare a variety of culinary art and serve it in their beautiful garden courtyard. One might even take a swim between courses.),
Garden Cafe (****+, Lebanese flavors and Raja's personality make this a unique treat for lunch or dinner - worth 2 visits),
Bongos bar/grill (*** decent food and prices with nice beach and a view of Klein Bonaire),
Victory Cafe (***, near the movie theater, an inexpensive stop, in town, with a menu of local dishes. Can't compare with Maiky, however, b/c we did not get there),
LaMaSe Grocery (*** in Rincon, a "must stop" for a light, flavorful dish of ice cream when taking "the long way" back from Karpata.)
Harbourtown Mall walk-ups (*** good for a fast-food fix with a decent quick Italian counter on one side, KFC on the other.)
Taste of Bonaire event (*****, can't go wrong with the best of the Island all in one place for a just few guilder a plate.)

DIVING SERVICE: Dive Inn (****+); personal and flexible service - our second time to rely on Babs' shop. Only glitch was a missed evening dive when the shop closed a little bit before its posted time; quite excuseable given that it is the off-season. Note that if you stay in her adjoining studios, I believe that access to fresh tanks is 24/7.

DIVES (note that in this category, *** is "fantastic", **** is "outstanding", ***** is "amazing")
GENERALLY: Despite not finding a seahorse, glimpsing dolphins or chancing upon a whale shark (another couple at Dive Inn did report one at Angel City - drat that we missed this moment!) there are still plenty of uncommon experiences to be had: small jellies, reef squid, eels, trumpet and cornetfish, drums, tarpon, barracuda, brilliant reef species of all sizes, and ever-present parrotfish in at least 5 color schemes.

DAY 1:
ChaChaCha Pier (***, Dive Inn's house reef)
Karpata (****, waves and some surge to get past on a windy afternoon, but worthwhile; squid in 5-10m area and medium sized spotted Moray at 15-20m)

DAY 2:
Aquarius (***, easy entry, adequate fish)
Salt Pier - day (****, eels galore plus tarpon and barracuda patrolling 10-15m areas)

DAY 3:
Capt.Don's - Klein boat dive (***, sloping, curving terrain highlights corals, lots of small places would make for a good use of a macro lens.)
Small Wall - (**** Reefcam stop plus a wall dive, good photo ops of larger than average angels)
Salt Pier - night (****, while cruising the pilings don't forget to look around for what else might be lurking nearby. A totally different experience from the daytime dive)

DAY 4:
Playa Funchi (***, Iguanas and other lizards seek snacks on the beach. Noticable damaged/dead coral, but many adult reef fish congregate here.)
Boca Slaagbai (****, large green Moray, perhaps 2.5m long, found easily at about 18-20m; better coral than most sites, but still some damaged spots)

DAY 5:
La Dania's Leap to Karpata drift (*****! Entry is an easy giant stride, but there is no turning back. It would seem hard NOT to find turtles here - we saw 4 in just 30 minutes. Fabulous coral in the fingered terrain.)

DAY 6:
Angel City to Hilma Hooker and back (***** Go out across the second reef, follow the anchor chain shorward, peer at the tarpon lazing about in the wide-open holds, then head up the inner reef after rounding the upturned rudder. An hour-long tour - but watch your air!)
Ol' Blue (***, Good terrain, coral and fish count. Spotted an example of the less-than-ubiquitous adult midnight parrotfish - a perfect shade of blue.)
Town Pier - night (*** Concentration of critters -worms, eels, shrimp, etc., but quite crowded with divers.)

Day 7: Surface interval - snorkel at Bachelor's beach. (***, Spending some time poking around above the dropoff reminds you that juveniles are often worth as much attention as the adult fish that live lower on the reef. I would suggest scouting for a location with more new growth in the <10m range, though, to find better variety and quantity. You might even find an all-purple anenome.)

More to come later: miscellaneous notes and anecdotes, "the many things that went wrong but never bothered us", credits and *photos*...

-LS

too cool

actually, i am partial to the casa oleander, the angel city/hooker dive, and driving around in the national park (the only thing the cactus stuck in was my knee - like a cartoon)...so of course i enjoyed your report. also dove with dive inn once - they were not gonna let me take tanks if i insisted on continuing to dive alone;) ...anyway it was pretty good and thanks for the report!

Great report...can't wait for the rest. We'll have to try the Angel City/Hooker dive and La Dania's Leap drift...3 days and counting down.
Masha danki, Debbie

Hi Michelle & Leif,
Good stuff! Nice to read your report. Also very happy our 2 dives together got 5*'s :-))) Come back and we'll try for a 6* dive!!
I owe you guys a few drinks too... ;-)
Thanks for the fun!!
Bas

Bas:
Not at all... We feel like we got the better end of our friendly exchanges altogether. How can a the cost of couple of rounds of mere food and drink compare to a pair of wondrous diving experiences? As we post additional "chapters" into this thread over the next few days, you might watch for the Jake photo - one of my favorite surface pics of the whole trip.
-LS

Leif,

Great trip report! We will be in Bonaire in early August and I am really hoping to see some turtles. I noticed you mentioned seeing turtles on your Day 5 dive (La Dania's Leap). You also mentioned an easy entry, but no turning back. How would you rate the exiting difficulty for this shore dive?

Thanks,
Laura

Laura:

Exiting at Karpata looks worse than it is. There is a concrete block at about water level, measuring just over a meter wide and a couple meters front to back. Two divers at a time can sully up to it, floating in above the rocks in the shallow bit just before you reach the platform. One diver can assist the other - one keeping a foothold while the other climbs out. Entry at Karpata is the trickier task, as you have to go against the incoming waves in a very uneven shallow area.

Concerning the stride from La Dania and the "no turning back" aspect of this dive, realize that once you hop in there is no exit, and thus LaDania is marked on the divesite maps as a boat dive. If you do something silly like intentionally poking a hole in your BC with a sharp stick right after entry, jumping in with an empty tank, or just aborting the dive for no good reason, it becomes a long, but scenic, snorkel - albeit with some mild but noticable waves. I can certainly image more boring things to do after bailing out of a dive than suffering the runner-up activity of drifting over this pristine marine vista.

These warnings would apply: (a) do not attempt this dive without appropriate experience and/or an experienced guide [wave action can push you back into the jagged coral cliff if you don't step off confidently and then promptly kick out into the clear], (b) watch your depth and air - it is a fairly long dive unless your are a real speed demon [we invaded our reserves during a nice safety stop with the reef squid and ended with a mere couple hundred psi in our tanks] but at least we knew we could SAFEly ascend from 5m if we sensed any low air crisis coming on), and (c) wear hard-soled dive boots. 'Dem rocks be sharp!

To find the LaDania's Leap entry from the road you have to be able to spot the correct pile of intentionally stacked rubble, just before the last 2 curves along the way to the Karpata parking area. Going with someone familiar (like we did) will save exploring time finding the starting place, as it has no yellow stone marking it. There is a reasonable path to follow from the road to the ledge, though you could drive by it a few times before noticing it. You know you are there when you find that you have walked down to the ledge: 2m wide and 1m front to back, tiered so that you can step down to it fairly easily. The ledge is about a meter below regular ground level, and just a half to one meter or so above the water level. It sits directly opposite the mooring that marks the site as a boat dive. Indeed, if you see a dive boat moored below (south of) Karpata, that is the place - only you can't quite see any boat from the road. The mooring is only perhaps 30m from the shoreline (if that), so the kick out to a good descent point is miniscule.

How do you get back to the car or truck? Certainly you don't expect to walk a quarter mile in wet SCUBA gear, so unload all the gear and send a driver to park the vehicle at Karpata and walk back to the entry point to gear up.

By the way, a very easy navigation exercise is the pinpointing of where to turn towards shore from along the dropoff at Karpata. A large old anchor lies nestled in coral formations on the early part of the dropoff, almost directly out from the entry/exit point. You should be able to spot it as you approach from the south if you are moving along at anywhere from 10 to 20m.

There is a good write-up about this site at www.shorediving.com, where it is identified as "La Diana's Leap." This site also includes some background that connects the site to Capt. Don (uh, like I think at least half the sites on Bonaire have sort of Capt. Don story to go with them!).

As you are <60 days from arrival, I'll wager you have a bad case of "PBDTS" (Pre-Bonaire-Dive-Trip Syndrome). Symptoms are similar to the more well-documented "PBD": (a) obsessive surfing of BT, the reefcam and diving related sites in general, (b) failure to realize that most people where you work do not speak Papiementu and thus look at you funny when you say things like "Bon Bini" and "Ti Bon?" and (c) fishy daydreams.

I will await the chance to read your trip report in late August...

-LS

Leif,
Thanks very much for the in depth report on the dive site. We are planning to do mostly only relaxing dives as we will be on our honeymoon and not all that interested in maxing ourselves out with dives. Don't get me wrong, we can't wait to get u/w. Your're right I am suffering from "PBDTS" real bad!!
Thanks again,
Laura

Laura:

This sounds like a job for "Super-BAS" (a/k/a LOONYBIN)! Although I cannot volunteer him... he would probably be glad to meet you during your trip. With BAS suggesting the dive and then joining us (as an extra buddy, although not as a "guide" per se) the dive was a cakewalk and well worth it. We didn't even mind that we didn't get to make another dive until the next morning (more about that in the "what went wrong" post that is coming soon). If the number of dives you intend to make will be limited, I hope you find ways to make each one special.

(Duh, that's a self-fulfilling wish - EVERY dive on Bonaire is something special...)

Congrats and bon chance - Michelle and I are just months from the 10year mark, and every trip we take is still a honeymoon - as it should be!

-LS