Hello! Great site, my wife and I are arriving Sep 18-25th, staying at Capt. Dons. This is our first trip to Bonaire, and would like some pointers on diving the various shore sites located at some of the other properties.
I presume a check-in at the "local" dive operator at a minimum, for permission to use the facilities, pier, shore access, etc.

Thank you for your advice.

Ross & Gillian Griffin

Oh, wow, a double!

I just asked the same question. You beat me by two minutes (sorry, I was daydreaming....).

Ross and Stan, I can't answer your questions since this will be our first trip also next week but I do have one suggestion. This board is fantastic and if you cram between now and when you leave you'll feel like you've already been there. Put your names on the "September list", I'm sure someone will steer you to it. They have BT night at one of the local restaurants "Gibi's"
maybe we'll meet you there.
Gary and Susie Thuillier

Ross, Gillian, Gary and Susie,

We look forward to meeting you at Gibi's Tuesday. Ross and Gillian we are also at Captain Don's when you are, lets try to meet up at some point, we'll probably be at he bar descalation from our flights on Sat early evening. See you Saturday...Tom and Julie Brennan

Ross, checking in at the house dive shop is what we do when diving any other resort's house reef. It's worked fine so far :-)

Rebreather Fiona! Nice. You must be able to get real up close and personal with the marine life.

That's a rental from Walt III at RecTec Scuba Bonaire. He has a one-day try-it-out course, which I did, and yes, you _do_ get really close to the marine life. On that dive we went from Buddy dive to Cliff and back, 61 minutes at 60 feet, just looking at everything looking back at us. The only thing that takes a bit of getting used to is the buoyancy contol: you have to use the BC with the rebreather for all buoyancy changes (because it's a semi-closed system) instead of the usual take a bigger breath in to go up, let a bigger breath out to go down that happens with open circuit scuba.
If you're curious about rebreathers, give Walt III a call; I really enjoyed the experience and he's a good teacher.

Thanks everyone for the info...seems like we'll be leaving any minute now. Can't wait.

See you there

Ross & Gillian