Dive Trip Bonaire 2008
May 10-17th
Single Divers.Com

Accommodations

We stayed at the Divi Flamingo. Nice hotel just south of town. It’s easily within walking distance of local restaurants and shopping. We had an Oceanside room with balcony that provided awesome sunsets. Staff was great. Two negatives: intermittent hot water. Never knew when you took a shower whether hot water would be available or not. Second was an air conditioning leak left the floor of our room wet the last couple of days of the trip.

http://www.diviflamingo.com/DiviFlamingo/


Meals

Had breakfast and lunch at Divi Flamingo. Served buffet style, had eggs and style and pancakes available for breakfast. Lunch always had hots, hamburgers and fish available in addition to a main dish that varied. We had a nice bbq one night as a group meal. We also at a Chibi Chibi one night for dinner. We also ate dinners at La Luna, La Salsa, Swim with the Fishes and Casablanca. All but Casablanca I would repeat. While we didn't have dinner at Mona Lisa, we did have dessert as they were serving an outstanding Mango Cheesecake.

Dive Operations

I did 18 dives on this trip. 15 were boat dives through Divi Flamingo. SingleDivers had three boats for the week. I was on boat #3, Sunrise. Our Divemasters, Orlando and Enrique were outstanding. We dove the following sites

Bachelor’s Beach
18 Palms
Just a Nice Dive
Boka Spelunk
Windsock
The Cliff
Callabas Reef
Mi Dushi
Knife
Jerry’s Sponges
Hilma Hooker
Alice in Wonderland
North Belnam
Petrie’s Pillar
Small Wall
Tori’s Reef

http://www.geographia.com/bonaire/bondiv04.htm


The marine life in Bonaire is amazing. And the consistency from dive site to dive site is very impressive as well. In comparison to Australia, I'd put two of the sites we dove in the Great Barrier Reef superior to these. My next 15 would probably come from this trip.

Before this trip, I had never seen a sea horse. Probably saw a dozen on this trip. Including one at Alice in Wonderland where we saw it swim and stop to eat!
Lots of turtles, eels, rays, all sorts of fish, including frog fish, scorpion fish and many others. Did see one nurse shark.

In addition to the boat dives, we dove the house reef at Divi. We did a check out dive and a night dive there. It was nice to just pull your gear out of your locker, grab a tank on the dock, do a giant stride off the pier, swim about 15 feet and you were at the reef.

Another night dive we did was the Town Pier. In this case, Orlando picked us up at the gate behind the dive shop and drove us the few blocks over to the pier. This dive was surreal. Only 17 feet, but all of the columns have been painted multiple colors over the years and the marine life has adopted to its surroundings. Bright clams and different colors of coral in yellows, reds, purples and oranges come out under there. Lots of eels, & snakes add an eerie feeling to the whole dive. Very creepy & very cool.

We also did a dive with Larry's Wild Side diving. On the windward side of the island, they take you out to see big stuff, like golden eagle rays, huge turtles, etc. The downside was you were diving in the surge. Rocking and rolling through the entire dive, I was getting sea sick during the safety stop. Getting back on the boat into 10 foot swells was an adventure too. It was a cool dive. I'd recommend it, but doubt I would repeat. Too much cool stuff on the leeward side.

Other

We had performances by Michael Morse, the Scuba Diving Cowboy. His first CD is being released in July and he played for us multiple nights at Divi. Great songs and great entertainment. He is playing on future trips, and his CD should be excellent.

Captain Don came and gave a talk of history of diving on the island. He has written short stories that relate back to the naming of many of the dive sites around Bonaire. Here is a website link to his stories.. http://captaindon.booksyarnsfairytales.com/


The Donkey's were worth visiting. I give the woman who runs it quite a bit a credit. They have gone from hundreds of car accidents involving donkeys to 4 last year. The Sanctuary has quite a bit to do with that.

Seasigns – Diver Deb Norris taught this class. I have never had such an entertaining class in my life. I doubt any of us will ever forget how to swear in sign language at least. But it did improve our ability to communicate underwater which was the goal. I do recommend this class, even if you don’t have as entertaining an instructor as deb. Thanks!

http://www.seasigns.com/




(Message edited by georoc01 on May 19, 2008)

George thanks for the trip report.
Enjoyed comparison of Great Barrier Reef dives and Bonaire dives. Doubt I'll get to GBR so it is good to know Bonaire ranks so well.

If you are looking for sharks, that was something that Australia has that Bonaire does not.

But I didn't see a dozen sea horses in Australia. Nor anything that compared to dives like the town pier.

I'm interested in what you said about taking a Sea Signs class. Is this offered where you stayed??? I'll be in Bonaire next week, and it would really be fun for my sister and I to take this class.

Seasigns was taught by an instructor on our trip. I am not aware of a local instructor on bonaire.

AAAArrrrggghhhh!

Thanks. I have the information from the SeaSigns website. Maybe I'll just have to hook up with the local dive shop out here and teach the class myself!!! I'm always looking for a new challenge.

I liked the way you put together your trip report. You Rock!

George, thank you for your trip report. I read with great interest, as my husband and I were at Divi May 3-10. I have yet to write a trip report, but promise I will. Do you remember your room #? We were in 108 and shortly before leaving on May 10 the air conditioner started leaking water as if someone were pouring water from a bucket. That aside, we loved it at Divi and would go back again.

We were in room 115..

Bonaire has sharks - I have photos.

We did see one Nurse shark sleeping under a rock in 18 dives. We really had to search for them.

Quite a contrast of Australia where we had reef sharks on just about every dive!

Welcome George,
Thanks for the reports and links; very interesting.
Skip

Baby sharks have been seen in Sept. in the shallows off of Klein. Hopefully, new babies will be there this year!

Last April we saw 5 black tips off the coast of Klein. I have to sift through my photos, I took a picture of them, it's not very good but you can see them lurking about.

Here's the pair we saw off of Klien last year...