TRIP REPORT (April 30th – May 13th )

Travelers: Tom & Becky Starkweather (Sandy, UT) - 2nd time visitors to Bonaire.
Johnny Porter (Clear Lake, TX) from 4/30 through 5/7. New visitor.
Travel:
Getting There: Delta Salt Lake City to Miami, ALM Miami to Bonaire
Getting Back: ALM Bonaire - Curacao - Miami, Delta Miami to SLC
All flights were on time with no problems with luggage. Maybe were lucky. We have never
experienced problems with ALM (4 for 4)
Rental Car:
Hertz – S10 Crew cab with a lock box in the bed and tank holders. The lock box is a great
idea from Hertz that allowed us to secure items at the dive sites.
Accommodations:
First week we stayed at the Divi Flamingo time-share units that our friend Johnny
traded for. The time share unit had new appliances, yet our unit had maintenance
problems such as the refrigerator thermostat failing (repaired) and an inoperable
ceiling fan that was not repaired after two repair calls. The room was always
cleaned and there were adequate kitchen utensils and cookware. The fact that there
was no TV was not a problem. The fact that there was no room phone was an issue for
us. The location is great though to walk to town and we received permission to night
dive from the pier. The accommodation was free to us (except for the tax) so we
really could not complain. It appeared the other side of the Divi Flamingo Resort
was the portion that was renovated.

Second week we stayed at the Caribbean Court. This was the other end of the luxury
spectrum from the Divi Flamingo. Our one bedroom apt. could easily sleep 6 people
and the appliances were top notch. There were racks to dry your clothes and although
the kitchen had minimal appliances, all you had to do was contact Clark or Bert and
they would get anything you needed. The reason for this stocking of minimal appliances
was due to thefts from tourists (this includes an American stealing the Dutch flag from
the Flagpole). The location was nice as you could walk to the beach at the Plaza Resort
and it was convenient to Photo Tour Divers. We are staying there on our next visit in
August.

Restaurants:
We ate in for the majority of our meals. We had fresh barracuda several days which
was awesome. The restaurants that we ate at included:

Luigi’s – Our favorite breakfast and lunch spot. Great Antillean food at a great
price. Luis’ specialty is conch stew and Chester Chicken. The also do
a lot of takeout business with the local workers.

Garden Café – Another great spot for lunch. Great Lebanese food. You can meet
Santa Clause here and ask to see the owners photo album.

Cappricio’s - Great dinner place. Many people say this is a bit pricey but to
me dinner for 4 with wine for under 100.00$US is a great value.
We treated Ronald and John for dinner for doing a great job!
This is a great place to treat your favorite dive instructor.

Blue Moon – Food was great and there was live entertainment. They mix awesome
drinks here.

Pasa Bon Pizza – Best pizza on the island and the owner is a really nice fella.

Intenet Café – Worked out great for eating and checking e-mail. Great place to meet
Local young people. Excellent salads.

Rum Runners – Great to watch the fish at night and the night dive lights.

General observation: All the restaurants that we have eaten at have been superb. The prices
are not cheap but they are not expensive either.

SEE FIRST REPLY FOR PART 2

PART 2

Dive Operator:
Photo Tour Divers (Ronald, John, Pascal, Saska, Michael, and Chris) The home of the
Dive Bus. We loved the Dive bus! Parking by the Dive Bus guaranteed our vehicle would
not be tampered with and a cold coke was waiting for us after the dive. The Dive bus
runs daily from 9-4:30. Monday – Angel City/Tuesday-Hilma Hooker/Wednesday-Margate bay
/ Thursday-salt Pier or Jeanne’s Glory/Friday-Alice in Wonderland/Saturday-Windsock/
Sunday-Pink Beach. There are signs by the shop and the Windsock as to the location
of the bus.

Photo Tour Divers is also an excellent place to rent dive camera equipment. I planned on
taking photographs, but opted to just dive with my friends. John had to make some minor
equipment adjustments to my personal equipment and was able to do them on the spot!
Saska also works as a researcher for the STCB (Sea Turtle Conservation Bonaire). She
compiles all of the data from the turtle sighting sheets that divers are supposed to
fill out (I do as I see a lot of turtles). She invited us to the Turtle Show at
Captain Don’s and the Beach cleanup.

My wife got her advanced certification from Ronald Addicks. We also hired Ronald again
for some night diving and wreck diving. We had dove with Ronald when he had worked for
Green Submarine and followed him to Photo Tour Divers. He is a top notch instructor.
We opted for the unlimited air package for $99 which also allowed us to boat dive for $15/tank.

The boat diving was excellent and Chris is a top notch boat captain. Not only was he lending
a hand to everyone with their gear, he provided daily updates on a variety of sites to choose
from (like where the seahorses) and provided an excellent pre-dive briefing about the sites
and markers underwater to know how to locate the boat. It was nice to have the freedom to
choose where to go. An added bonus was the fact that his wife is employed by REEF and Jessie
allowed Becky to dive with her on one of her fish I.D. dives. Becky opted to moon Larry from
the Carib Inn to get even for a joke he told her at coffee that morning.I guess us Americans
are the only ones who are humored by the mooning among boats. We highly recommend Photo Tour Divers
for diving.

We also played volleyball with the folks from Toucan Divers (this was a good time and had coffee
with Larry from Carib Inn & Diving. After talking with other divers on the island, we have come
to the conclusion that there are no unsafe diving outfits on the island and it comes down to a
choice in personal preference and/or price. One both of our trips we have yet to hear any dive
outfit speak negatively of another dive instructor or dive company. This island may be relaxed
and carefree, yet the dive outfits are run by professionals and employ professionals. This was
the opposite of my wife’s previous diving experiences in Cancun and Cozumel.

The Diving:
(As usual absolutely incredible) The majority of our dives were from the shore unescorted. All
of the dives were great. We tried to hit 2-3 dives per day on top of time spent playing volleyball,
windsurfing and looking at property. The visibility ran from 60 to 100+ feet. The water temperature
was ~80 deg F. I will list just the “special” things to me. We dove many more sites than are listed.
Once again if nothing is listed it doesn’t imply that it was a bad dive just a typical awesome
Bonaire dive.

Please note that Jessie’s book is indispensable. It was written after the storm and gives the best
advice on shore diving entries and exits.

Summary of some of the dives we did

Pink Beach – Turtles.
Margate Bay – Always a favorite site. Soft corals are great. Nice aquatic life.
Calabas Reef (night) – Eels and feeding tarpon. Some videographers from National
Geographic Magazine were filming while we dove.The lighting
brought in a lot of fish.
Divi Tree (Klien) – Great corals at all depths. 100+ visibility.
Angel City – Awesome dual reef. Great hard corals. Great aquatic life.
Hilma Hooker – Octopus, Tarpon, Garden eels, Scorpion fish, Giant Clam. Gets murky at
10 am as many people boat dive this site at 9am. We shore dove it.
Red Slave – 2 large spotted eagle rays
Calabas Reef (day) – Many spotted moray’s, large tarpon, large Grouper
Hidden Beach – Spotted eagle ray , 3ft+ Blue parrot fish , Large barracuda’s , Many
trumpet fish
Margate Bay – Huge free swimming green moray eel, several hawksbill turtles
Town Pier (night) – Octopus, Eels, Centipede looking thingy
La Dania’s Leap – Nice wall, great visibility. Great corals healthy at all depths
Hilma Hooker – The wreck, garden eels, large tarpon
Forest (Klein) – Large grouper, Schools of large amberjacks
Calabas Reef (night) – Spanish lobster, Hawksbill turtle,
Margate Bay – Another great dive. More turtles.
18th Palm (night) – Free swimming spotted morays, Free swimming octopus (we watched him
for about 5-10 minutes)
Bonaventure (Klein) – Schooling barracuda (ten of them).
Oil Slick Leap – In search of the sea horses. They were here but I did not see them.
Several people in the dive group did see them.
Baby Beach (East side) – A+++ dive, incredible, awesome. Saw 3 large stingrays,
other large fish, and me and my dive buddy were in a huge
school of fish. It was like being in a Sci-Fi flick. We
stayed neutrally buoyant while the fish swam around us
from all directions. This lasted for several minutes.
Jerry’s Reef (Klien) – Largest green moray that I have ever seen. I swear you could
put you whole head into it’s mouth. Several turtles were at
the surface.
Hidden Beach – Scorpion fish, Hawksbill turtle, large tarpon
Red Slave – Garden eels, hawksbill turtle
Town Pier (night) – Frog fish, Very large tarpon’s within inches of us. Very nice colors
Karpata – (Must Dive) Great hard corals, hawksbill turtle
Small Wall (web cam) – Web cam was cool. The Dutch American Bonaire Moonfish made an appearance
and we had signs for friends and family to see. We had e-mailed them
prior and most of them saw us on the web. However, we learned that Moon
fish aren’t welcome on the web, so our mooning is restricted to above
the water.
Non Diving activities:
We rented chairs at the Plaza beach for both weeks. The rental fee also allowed you to use their
pool. It was incredible watching the sunsets from the beach. We played beach volleyball with the
locals on Sat, Sun and Tue and took advantage of happy hour from 5-6 pm to socialize with locals
(including other Dive Shop employees) and other tourists from all over the world. The people
watching is the best on the island during the day.

Rincon Day - My wife danced behind the party bus, while Johnny and I walked. We ate a lot and
realized that Antilleans do not always bake off the alcohol from their rum cakes.
My wife also got some handmade items to take home for friends.

Windsurfing at Lac Bay – We rented from Jibe City and the folks there were very friendly and
helpful. We always retreated to hang out bar afterwards and chill.
This was a lot of fun even though I suck at wind surfing.

Real Estate shopping – We love this Island so we plan to buy some property here.

Klein Bonaire beach cleanup for STCB – We helped cleanup the day before we flew out. This was a
great way to meet a lot of the locals, Americans and Dutch living on the island.
There was a BBQ lunch afterward. We got quite a bit of advice about property and
met Jake (the web cam operator) and many other folks.
In General –
The people here are great. We are heading back THis Thursday (8-16-2001)

Thanks for a great report. We're arriving Aug 18th. Where would you suggest for snorkelers at this time?