You can download the slide show at
http://www.ece.clemson.edu/crb/dawson/scubareports/scubareports.htm
We made our fourth trip to Bonaire during the first week of August, 2006 – we departed on July 28th and returned on August 5th. We had a great week of beautiful weather and nice diving and experienced no problems during our stay.
We flew on Air Jamaica from Atlanta through Montego Bay. The trip was not too bad, though planes were filled to capacity and the return flight was about 2 hours late leaving Bonaire. Fortunately, the plane from Montego Bay continued through to Atlanta, so we were fine, but others who were headed to Chicago and other final destinations missed their connections in Montego Bay.
We stayed at Den Laman Condos for the first time and really liked our apartment. Den Laman is a new small condo complex adjacent to the better-know Sand Dollar condominium complex. We found Den Laman to suit our needs particularly well because of its family-friendly features since we took our 8-year-old daughter with us on this trip. Specifically, the on-site dive operator, Bonaire Dive & Adventure (BD&A), offers a morning Ocean’s Classroom program for children so that parents can dive. The program includes crafts and activities as well as snorkeling every day, and it is very reasonably priced ($90 for the week, I think). Also, the property has a small sandy beach that our daughter really enjoyed, as well as an on-site restaurant that served smoothies and milkshakes (for $5 US), though not much other kid-friendly food – no hot dogs or chicken strips, etc. We also liked being within walking distance of Sand Dollar grocery, Lover’s Ice Cream, and Chat-n-Browse.
Our truck rental with the Den Laman package was through Hertz. The truck we received was a bit beat-up but okay. The vehicles we have rented from AB in the past have definitely been better.
On two of our past trips to Bonaire, we stayed at the Belmar. I will have to say that I actually like the interior and balcony of the Belmar better than Den Laman, which is decorated in a very modern style. The furniture in Den Laman has some type of suede fabric which they ask you not to sit on in wet clothing, and it’s a bit too modern and uncomfortable for my personal taste (see photos in slide show). However, the apartments are fully air-conditioned, and they have DVD players and nicely equipped kitchens. The other thing that I like better about the Belmar is that you are much more isolated and have more privacy – at Den Laman the apartments are located above BD&A dock and the on-site restaurant, both of which also serve the Sand Dollar guests, so there is a lot more activity going on down below the apartment. On the plus-side, the dive on the Bari Reef at Den Laman/Sand Dollar is actually very good, while the house reef at the Belmar is mediocre at best.
With regard to diving, we did 3 sets of morning boat dives with BD&A. Staying on-site made this very convenient. We went to Klein Bonaire for all of our boat dives, which was nice. However, BD&A boats do not depart until 9:00, so we often did not have first choice of our dive sites on Klein. Also, the boats are not well-suited to diving. You have to set up your gear once you get to the dive site – the DMs pass out tanks and you set up with the tank in front of you on the floor, then you enter the water via a backroll. The DMs are very helpful, but it’s just not a good system. Also, there is no camera rinse tank on board, though there is ample space on shelves in the dry storage compartment in the front hold for cameras and other dry goods.
The sites we dove on Klein included Just a Nice Dive, Southwest Corner, Forest, Sharon’s Serenity, Carl’s Hill and Sampler. We also did shore dives at Karpata, Thousand Steps, Andrea I in the north, as well as Soft Coral Garden on the south end. We did quite a few afternoon and dusk dives on the Bari Reef. I won’t go into extensive detail on each dive site since so many other reports are available in that regard, including our previous reports. We saw the usual great variety of critters and reef fish, lots of juvenile fish, occasional turtles and a pair of seahorses. We didn’t find any frogfish on this trip. One particularly interesting sighting was a school of huge parrotfish in the shallows at Soft Coral Garden (noted to be a common sighting here in the Bonaire shore diving book).
Our daughter, Jacklyn, did the bubble-maker course with DM Ilse from BD&A, and it was great. The course consisted of two afternoon sessions where Ilse took her diving in the shallow water off the dock. The price was very reasonable - $50US for both sessions, including all gear rental. Jacklyn absolutely LOVED it, and she says she wants to go back and get certified when she’s 10. The on-site photographer/videographer made a neat DVD video of Jacklyn’s dive experience, which was very nicely done, for $35. Jacklyn also enjoyed snorkeling with us on the Bari Reef.
With regard to meals, we ate in for breakfast and lunch and ordered take-out for dinner almost every day. As usual, we really enjoyed the mixed grill and the chicken from Casablanca and the pizza and calzones from Pasa Bon Pizza. We also tried ribs and chicken from Bobbie Jeans and found them to be quite good. We ordered several dinners from Captain Don’s because it was so close, and they had good chicken fingers and pizza for Jacklyn. I thought Captain Don’s was pretty good and reasonably priced – the sate was especially good. We ate at the Den Laman restaurant one night – I had soup and a chicken ceasar salad, which were very good, but Darren’s scallop salad was pretty light. We brought a pizza from Captain Don’s with us for Jacklyn to eat and they had no objection to that.
All in all, we had a great time on Bonaire, as usual. We enjoyed perfect weather, great accommodations, relaxing diving, and good food. We’ll be back!
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By darren dawson (New BonaireTalk Poster - Post #1) on Thursday, October 26, 2006 - 10:05 am: 
