More about food:

We had good dinners at Richard’s (twice), the City Café, Cactus Blue, Casablanca and Banana Tree. Prices were very reasonable (again, based on what we’d pay at home) with City Café being a really good deal. We passed on the mixed grill at Casablanca… just too much food. But Mike’s T-bone was excellent and I enjoyed the filet mignon with wine/pepper sauce – it’s got a good kick. Mike had a sort of a wrap-burger at City Café; I had the chicken quesadilla, and we enjoyed both. At Cactus Blue, Mike had the jerk chicken and I had mahi-mahi with creole sauce – both very good, although the jerk chicken was flavorful without much heat. On the other hand, the penne arribiatta at Banana Tree has a LOT of heat and great flavor… just the way Mike likes it. I had a good cheeseburger that night, and we can recommend their ice cream, too. Never did make it to the Tipsy Seagull at the Plaza. Their menu has changed; it’s considered their “fine dining” restaurant and the menu was just a little too esoteric for Mike’s taste.

In the water:

Toucan Diving has its orientation at 9am, and the check-out dive is on the Plaza’s house reef, 18th Palm. This year there’s a covering of mossy brown stuff (algae?) on the sand from the drop-off down to around 50 feet or so. Visibility was noticeably less here than at other dive sites (40 to 50 feet); there was considerable particulate in the water. Even so, it’s one of my favorite dives. What it lacks in soft corals and color is made up for with tons of sea life. This year we saw tarpon, barracuda and large puffers, along with the usual suspects. We were able to find the resident seahorse as well as the resident frogfish. Also, on every dive at 18th Palm we’d come across squadrons of squid – one group with more than 40, both juveniles and adults. We’d hover and they’d approach closely, posing for pictures. Water temperature all week was 82 degrees.







We snorkeled 18th Palm on our last afternoon, and while there’s considerably more coral rubble since Ivan upchucked on the beach here in 2004, there are also tons of fish. The sweepers are still under the steps at the Tipsy Seagull. There are large schools of fish surrounding the pilings at the Tipsy’s outer pier, and several friendly French angelfish.



I saw the only scrawled filefish of the trip during this snorkel.



We visited these other sites:

Hands Off – Visibility out on Klein Bonaire was much better than at 18th Palm, 80 feet or so. There was a seahorse not far from the mooring and a large midnight parrotfish cruised by – a treat, since we don’t see these too often.



Nearest Point – There were several queen angelfish here and they weren’t as skittish as queens tend to be.



Just a Nice Dive – It sure was! Our DM (Carolis) pointed out four (yes four!!) frogfish and a large green moray during this dive. The corals aren’t as lush here on the east side of Klein Bonaire and there’s some rubble, but there are tons of fish and other critters.



Rockpile – Inquisitive French angelfish here, plus a small turtle and a stingray in the shallows.

South Bay – Dark clouds and rough water with rain all around us… it was much calmer beneath the surface. I think the queen angels must have been having a convention on Klein Bonaire, because we saw several more at this site. Also several large groups of schoolmasters. On the boat ride back to Toucan Diving, a huge pod of spinner dolphins came to play. They rode the bow wake and jumped in the stern wake. Some leapt high out of the water and showed off their spinning skills. There were 14 or 15 dolphins at the bow alone, even more fanning out on either side of the stern. What a treat!

Andrea I – Our DM (Jenny) pointed out two seahorses on this dive, along with a frogfish. A large blue parrotfish cruised by, as well as a couple of rainbow parrotfish and an ocean trigger.

Punt Vierkant – There was a seahorse here, and many large schools of grunts and goatfish. Roving bands of blue tangs as well.

Hilma Hooker – We’ve dived this wreck several times, but others on the boat had not. So while they did that, we checked out the reef. There are very good hard and soft corals here, plus the typical tropicals. This part of the reef looks very healthy… perhaps because most folks skip it for the wreck?

Invisibles – The critters certainly weren’t invisible during our dive. We saw a frogfish, an octopus and a turtle who hung around for quite a while, eating and posing for photos.







Angel City – A large school of margates was swimming around a coral pillar, looking like a merry-go-round. We also saw a frogfish and a family of squid greeted us under the boat near the end of the dive. The squid were so inquisitive, even the 10 or so babies, they’d come up to our masks and flash their colors. This was the last dive of our week and extra-special.







Toucan Diving’s divemasters give good briefings with recommended depths for each dive site. There’s a time limit of one hour and divers can either follow the DM or do their own dive… no pressure. Most of our boat dives were just about an hour, but the squid at the Angel City dive were so cool, the DM and half the divers stayed down for an hour and 15 minutes. Tank fills were consistently 3,000 psi or a bit more. Water and fruit juice was available on the dive boats, but no heads.

I'll finish up with Part Four now...

We are going to Dive 18 Palms in about a 1/2 hour. We will be looking for the SeaHorse and Frog Fish.

It has beeen a great week of diving and we still have one week to go. (and possibly more depending on the Hurricane)

Hope you find them, Ron. We got good directions from staff at Toucan Diving.

In 2004, we were stuck in Bonaire for four extra days, due to hurricane Ivan. Yeah, that was really hard to take (NOT!)

We just dove Palm 18. We were visited by the Tarpon and the squid put on a show with there many little ones.

What are the directions to the seahorse and frog fish? We go in next to the activity center and swim due west.

It would not hurt my feelings at all if I was stuck here an extra week.

Any idea how to upload an image with ie7.0. Sould I use FireFox?

(Message edited by scubabubbles on August 31, 2008)

How can I post some of the photos I did while on Bonaire from 8/9/2008 to 8/24/2008??

To find the 18th Palm seahorse, we used the entry at the center of the beach (in front of the Coconut Crash and the volleyball area.) We descended at the outer buoy, dropped down to 40 feet and headed south. We found a tall coral pillar (still at 40 feet) with some rope sponges growing at its base. The seahorse was in these rope sponges... not in the exact same place every day, but always there. The seahorse is a grayish color, with darker and lighter bands, maybe 4 or 5 inches long.

The 18th Palm frogfish was about 20 feet south of the Tipsy Seagull mooring. (That's the "official" 18th Palm buoy.) From the mooring in the sand, we headed south on a line even with the mooring, and after approximately 20 feet we started looking around. There wasn't anything especially distinctive here to use as a landmark, like the seahorse's coral pillar. But the frogfish is bright, bright yellow, so first look for the color - that's how we spotted him.

Good luck!

I used the instructions on the main Bonaire Talk page (http://www.oldbonairetalk.com) for uploading photos. Look at the bottom right side of that web page for the explanation. Photos must be 50kb or less.

Thanks for the info. We will check out and send pics if we get lucky.

If this is the tall coral pillar the seahorse was sleeping. We did see a Green moray in that area this morning.

Thanks Debra. I finally figured it out. I was putting a space between \image {description}

Ron, that's the pillar. We saw the seahorse in the area below the diver's right knee (from your photo.) A couple of times he was tucked into the rope sponges around the base of the coral pillar, facing downward toward the sand - more difficult to see. But usually he was more out in the open. I guess it's possible the seahorse has moved on, although folks at Toucan Diving said it's been in that vicinity for more than a year.

I can't decide whether hearing about your dives makes PBD better or worse, but I'm definitely jealous!