TRIP REPORT – JULY 6 – JULY 13, 2002

Travel: Air Jamaica from Miami to Montego Bay, Montego Bay to Bonaire. Most pleasurable flight to Bonaire yet. Good food, free champagne, wine, or beer. All luggage arrived with us. Trip back went well also. Breezed through Immigration and Customs both times, (and felt very fortunate!).

Transportation: AB Carrental, standard 5 pack pickup, no mishaps.

Accommodations: Black Durgon Inn. There were 19 people traveling in our group, and we took up all 10 rooms at the Inn. The rooms are very basic, but the grounds are great! Breakfasts were included by the Inn, eaten in the big open air dining area, just a few feet from the water. Meals were eaten while watching the colorful parrot fish feeding in the shallows. The biggest asset of staying here is that one giant stride off the dock puts you a short 5 minute swim to the Small Wall! Snorkeling was also great here, with a wide variety of sea life to enjoy.

Dining: Most of our lunches and several of our dinners were provided by our Dive Instructor/Travel Planner Extraodinaire, prepared in the open air kitchen at the Inn. We did eat at Donna and Giorgio’s twice, both times with a large group, which flustered them a bit, but we knew the wait would be worth it. Excellent! I highly recommend the Lobster Pasta! We went to Gibi’s on Tuesday night, and I fulfilled my personal goal for this trip – I tried the goat stew! It was very good. I enjoyed meeting several of the BT Talkers and can now put faces with names! (Yes, Jake and Linda look soooooo young!) Tried both City Cafe and Old Inn for lunches, and enjoyed both. Very plentiful portions, and very tasty food.

Diving: We did the majority of our dives right off the dock at the Black Durgon. Depending on the time of day, each dive could be quite different. We saw the resident octopus near the small wall mooring – who’s really pretty good sized, squid, turtles, tarpon, garden eels, schools and schools of everything else too numerous to list. (Why go anywhere else when paradise is in your back yard!) I sat down one afternoon, midweek, with the fish ID book, and started writing down the names of fish that I positively identified right off shore. Just the large and mid-sized guys (5-6 inches & up) were over 50, and I didn’t even list any of the little guys. My favorites were the schools of Blue Tangs, and the teeny, tiny baby puffers that looked like a swimming black ball with yellowish spots!

We did 4 boat dives, to Rappel, 1000 steps, Bonadventure (Klein Bonaire), and South Bay (Klein Bonaire). It was pretty windy all week, so mostly the boat dives were all a little bit rough on the reentry! Encountered very little current below, even as rough as it was topside. Rappel is an incredible coral garden!

We also drove out to the Hilma Hooker, but I babysat the truck while my husband and friends dove. I wasn’t up to the long swim out. I did a total of 15 dives, but my husband did several more, because he also did a few night dives.

Special treat: We ran into an old friend in town on Thursday, who had been on the trip with us 2 years ago. (Now what are the odds of just running into someone from home on Bonaire!) Anyway, he’s working on the Windjammer ship that was docked in town, the Polynesian, and a few of us got to tour the ship and have dinner on board that night, while watching the sun set across the harbor. Very lovely setting for dinner!

All in all, another wonderful week on Bonaire! From watching the herd of goats roaming through the airport parking lot, to the occasional donkey trotting down the middle of the road, to the beautiful flamingo sightings, to the plentiful, colorful birds, to the delightful colors of the homes and buildings. The charm of the island simply can’t be found anywhere else. “Til I return......!

Nice trip report. Thanks for sharing it with us. We do the same thing at Sand Dollar, we dive Bari Reef a different way each time. We can go a whole trip with out diving any where else. That's the beauty of Bonaire, you can dive the same site again and again and always see something new.

Gail thanks for sharing. The simple pleasures of Bonaire are its greatest treasures....

Gail, Thanks for the beautiful trip report!!! I so-oo-oo want to be there right now!!

Gail,

Great report! Will be returning from 7/31 through 8/14 - 6 days and not counting. :-)

We will be staying a few hundred yards from small wall and be doing a lot of dives there. We haven't dove small wall yet. Is the resident octopus near the mooring with the webcam? My son and I would like to encounter him/her while diving there. Maybe my wife could catch a glimps also while snorkeling.

Yes Tom, when we saw it, it was right near the mooring where the boats tie up at Small Wall. That was my first octopus sighting so I was really happy to add that to my Fish Id list! The week we were there, the squid were very plentiful too.

Thanks Gail. We saw one in March on a night dive at Town Pier. Can't wait to find this one. Hopefully the squid will still be there next week. They seem to be pletiful on the reefcam the past few days.

Gail,
I loved your report. We will be there in 12 days.
First visit, hope we have a great time as it seems you did.
Ida

gail,
we were at the durgon at the same time as you. i'm trying to place which one of that group you are. you're not the one that had the little problem at the small wall are you? i agree that the durgon has just about everything one could ask for. going back again in oct.