Trip Report – Bonaire – April 28 – May 12 (sorry for the length) Travel – absolutely no problems with either leg. We flew Delta from Denver to Atlanta to Miami then ALM direct to Bonaire. Although the first leg to Miami was long, leaving Denver at 12:40am and arriving in Miami after a short stop in Atlanta at 8;30am. We spent the day in the Delta Crown Room – actually visiting the Bonaire-Talk site – until our flight at 1:40pm. We arrived, baggage intact, at 4:30pm. Our rental truck was waiting for us and we were off to Sorobon by 5:15 or so. Our return flight was also smooth – our fight was at 1:55pm again direct to Miami so we arrived nice and early and were one of the first to check in. The flight left on time and this was the fastest we have ever gone through Customs & Immigration. Our direct American Airlines flight from Miami to Denver also left on time and we arrived in Denver on time around 9:30pm. Week 1 – started off with a great BBQ at Jake & Linda’s. Once we finished dropping off packages requested by J&L including books and heartworm pills and once we gave the kids some gifts from Denver we hit the patio, the bar and started meeting a lot of the Bonaire Talk people as well as friends of Jake & Linda’s who live on island. Pascal filled us in on his Pink Bus enterprise and gave us some ideas for dive site musts. Caren has her own company (I believe called Sea & Discover). We dove the town pier with her on Wednesday (more in the dive section on this). The spread that Jake & Linda put on was outstanding. The ribs & chicken were so good I think we all did “seconds”. The remainder of week 1 was spent idling around Sorobon, sea kayaking, walking from shore out to the reef every day and just laying around in the sun reading. The winds in the area made the kayaking a challenge at times. We tried to go over to the mangroves and made it about half way going up a few inlets. This is a fun thing to do because you get to see some bird life and lots of juvenile fish life. The paddle back was very strenuous due to the winds and I was very glad that the water in the area is shallow so I could get out and walk and pull the kayak. Week 2 – we moved over to Joan & Alan Zales condo at Sand Dollar Resort. Their 2 bedroom until is beautiful very well appointed with a king bed in the master bedroom (we got that one) and twin beds in the second bedroom. The shower in the bathroom that the 2nd bedroom uses could have held all of us it was so big. Had we chosen to cook the kitchen is fully equipped. The patio is fully screened in so the breezes kept the unit nice and comfortable. We did not use the air at all. We would keep the front door open when we were sitting around and had perfect cross breezes. Dining – we ate out every night (see above – we don’t cook on vacation). I had kept a running chart of all the comments made on the site over the 6-8 months and decided to try as many of the restaurants with good comments as possible. We did: Capriccio, Chibi Chibi (for drinks only), It Rains Fishes (2 times), Kontiki, Richard’s (2 times), Zeezicht, Lion’s Den (3 times), new restaurant at Sand $. The Beefeater was closed for vacation. I’ve probably missed a couple. I would have to say my favorite was Lion’s Den. Another couple staying at Sand$ recommended it so we decided to give it a try. The manager (Kirk), the cook and some of the waitstaff are from the original Green Parrot and most recently from Den Laman. The food was superior to any of the other places we went including Richard’s. Second place would go to It Rains Fishes. Their fish of the day with mustard sauce was great and the servings huge. The fish at Richard’s on both nights was dry. Third place would have to be Capriccio. Bob & I don’t eat much so we didn’t do lunches most of the days. Bob & Beth ate almost every day of the 2nd week at the new restaurant at Sand Dollar and found the food to be good with large servings. We ate there a couple of times for lunch (Bob & I shared) and one night (Saturday for the BBQ). Even though I don’t eat red meat very often, their burgers are very good and the other time we shared a club. The BBQ was “adequate” but I would probably not choose it next time. Grocery Shopping – we ended up going to Cultamara for our happy hour food & snacks. We did check out Warehouse Bonaire but didn’t find the variety that Cultamara had. We never did find a good liquor store. We took our own tequila and bought Grand Marnier at Cultamara, beer at Cultamara and wine through Antillean Wine http://www.antilleanwine.com. They were great – I e-mailed them prior to the trip with the wine I liked and they had it delivered to Sorobon for our arrival. I called Marijolein towards the end of our trip to pay for it and had her deliver one more bottle. They are a warehouse but apparently sell to the public by delivering the items you request. They were great. Diving – Bonaire is by far the BEST place I have ever been. We have been spoiled with liveaboard diving for the past 4 years and were not sure how we would cope with shore diving especially carrying a camera but it worked out great. We did 23 dives, 6 boat dives (8:45am) and unlimited shore diving for the remainder of the day and evening and took around 20 rolls of film. One comment here – if Sand Dollar Condos and Sand Dollar Dive & Photo do not get together and agree on having a dock built this once “Number One Dive Resort” will lose that status. Even now we saw a decline in this status. While the people working at the dive shop were great there was no one diving with them. I believe they had perhaps 20 people diving all week. That was great for us because there was never more than 6 people on a dive boat with most times only 4 of us. We got to request the dive sites all the time. One site – Forest – we had tried for 3 times to get to. On the 3rd time the dive boat arranged to leave 20 minutes early so we were able to get their before any other resorts could moor up. It is inconvenient having to drive over to the marina to get the boat but it was something we got used to. Picking up tanks for shore diving was very easy. The entry site at Bari Reef (Sand Dollars reef) was easy. There was a set of stairs you had to walk down to get to the small beach they have and you entered the water between rocks (it was a sand bottom around 10-15’ wide). I would carry my fins, mask and camera down first, set them on the bench they have and then go up and get my gear on. Bari Reef was probably one of the best sites we dove and we did it 7 times including 3 night dives. We ended up doing the Town Pier twice – once on Monday with Sand Dollar – there were 5 of us. Then on Wednesday Beth & I went with Caren of Sea & Discover after the larger groups had gone. It was nice both times with the small groups but especially nice on Wednesday by going later (8:30), plus with Caren we went beyond the pier and saw some really neat things including turnequettes. Some of the fish life we saw included: seahorses (3), frogfish (6 on the Town Pier alone, 1 on Bari and I believe a couple more on other sites), free swimming morays (including a couple of HUGE green morays which were serving platter size around and more than 6’ long), lots of other eels including goldchain, sharptail, spotted, lots of scorpionfish, trunkfish, post larva drum right up to full adult size, scrawled filefish, cowfish, goatfish, queen angels, french angels (no gray angels this time), pufferfish, lizardfish, coneys, yellowtip jawfish, anemones, arrowcrabs, flatworms (bristleworms), only one octupus (on Bari Reef), sargeant major egg spores, decorator crabs, segmented sea cucumbers, (chocolate chip) sea cucumbers, 3 different turtles, squid of various sizes. We watched a Spanish Hogfish that Bob & Beth found eating a spiney urchin (very interesting). I’ve probably missed hundreds of other fish/sea life but there were SO many I stopped writing them all down in my log book. We did Small Wall on Friday the 11th and it reminded me of a nursery – every imaginable kind of fish/sea life most in their infant and juvenile stages. Saw a lot of smaller squid on this dive site. I saw Charlotte, Napoleon, and what I thought was Tweety at the webcam. All in all I would go back in an instant – this was actually the first vacation that I can remember not being ready to go home. I will post some pictures once the slides are developed and I’ve been able to scan some of them. |