2nd trip to Bonaire Aug 16-30

Drove to MSP & stayed at the Country Inn & Suites.Homewood was booked solid,Republican convention.I prefer Homewood. Flight out of MSP was delayed 2 hours due to T-storms in Houston as was the the Houston-Bonaire flight.Ate at Pappadeaux in Houston,as good as before.

Booked with AB Carrental again a Mazda BT50 with a tonneau cover.Much better than their 2200 but the cover was a pain with gear & tanks.Will get one without next time.

On our last day we were T-boned on Kaya Grandi by an out of control scooter.AB & the Police were great.The scooter and its driver were fine but the truck's door was pretty scratched & dented.

I would like to say that if you do not have a motorcycle license OR have never driven a scooter OR have no clue how to stop AND steer a scooter you should never rent one. The gentleman who ran into me thought it would be fun,he could have been seriously injured or killed.

We stayed at the Carib Inn.Bruce and his place are both great.The best thing I can say is we will stay there next time. Yes like most here we are BA's(Bonaire addicts)now.

We ate at the following:
Banana Tree-OK nothing special
Bistro de Paris-Excellent
Brisa del Mar-Nice view OK food
China Nobo-doesn`t look like much but food was very good
El Fogon Latino-OK
Pasa Bon Pizza-Split a Veggie pizza with the better half(her choice),she loved it,I`ll reserve judgement until we try a pepperoni(my choice)
Richards-Spectacular
Rum Runners-OK nothing special
Salsa-Very good
Vespucci-The Amsel they served me was nowhere near cold,otherwise OK

Overall we`ve noticed the resort restaurants are nothing spectacular.The private restaurants are much better with favorites so far being Richards & Wils.

My better half got food poisoning for 3 days.I'm not going to make any accusations as it could have been one of 2 restaurants or even something she ate in the room. It cut into the diving though.

The Diving

I'll just hit the highlights;

Town Pier-First time for us.The best description I can give is there is so much color it looks like a pack of highlighting markers exploded down there.

Red Slave-Very strong current the day we went,reminded me of San Francisco reef in Cozumel.Better keep your eyes open or you'll miss what your trying to see.

Fish Hut-Did this a few times.The last time we encountered some current & Eagle rays.

Hilma Hooker-It was like diving in a snow storm the day we went.Viz was poor.

Esmerelda-Some suspicious looking characters hanging around here so we decided to go elsewhere

Jeff Davis-A couple of naked snorkellers here.Better hope the fish aren't hungry.

Tolo & Karpata-We saw dead spotted morays at both these sights.I have a picture of one.Disturbing.

Calabas-Night dive accompanied by a large tarpon.
Bruce has about 2 dozen small squid 1-2" hanging out by his ladder.

Nukove-This is quite the drive even in good weather.It started pouring rain on us.The dive entrance & exit were challenging from the mud washed in the water but the viz on the reef was good.

Here's the pics

Hi Rolf,
Welcome to BT. Thanks for sharing the report and photos.Good luck with your PBD.
Skip

Hello Rolf, Thanks for sharing your vacation with us, it sounded like you had a wonderful time. I am glad no one was hurt in the scooter mishap!!! Also WELCOME TO BT !!!

Rolf, thanks for the report and pics. Glad no major injuries in the scooter incident and agree with the Richards and Wil's assessment.

Sounds like you had a wonderful vacation. Great pictures! Was that eel really dead, or just playing dead.

The eel was dead.You can't see it well in the picture but the head(at the top of the pic) was at an unnatural angle to the body(even those super flexible eels don't do).Has anyone ever seen an eel playing dead?

Nope, but my wife and I did see two fight for about 15 seconds with the larger one moving away and yielding the hole to the smaller one. Neither looked to have suffered from the incident.