We spent one day with Bas: diving Boca Spulunk and Cai on the east side. Shore entry and exit were well planned and the execution shows Bas knows these sites and his stuff.
We saw an great underwater cavern, six foot blacktip reef shark, tarpon by the dozen, turtles, eagle rays as well as all the usual Bonaire locals on the reef. Surface interval was spend in a dry cave and post dive was late lunch at Maiky's Snack (seek this out for great local food/atmosphere).

Send him an email if you want a great guide.
loonybin@bonairelive.com

Absolutely second your statements about Bas - he's great!

Tried to email Bas at the email address in the post but it got bounced. As many times as I have been to Bonaire, I have never tried the other side and would like to. Any ideas??

Hi Emit, Go to the "Topics" page and under "Diving Bonaire" go down the list of threads until you see "Eastside Diving" for a lot of suggestions about shore and boat diving. It's really great diving over there.

Ok, I am sold on trying it. Several individuals have been mentioned. How do I contact someone, like Bas, to set it up?? I tried the email at bonairelive.com but it came back.

Here is the email I used to contact Bas as well as his phone number:

loonybin@bonairelive.com
tel 717 8830
cel 786 4917

Hi Rob:

It was great diving with you & Chi Chi! The email you have for Bas is correct, as I just got an email from him this morning.

The next day we saw 2 nurse sharks, a 4' and a 5'. The 5' was mottled, not just brown. It looks like it had some pigmentation "disorder" like albinoism or something. It was very beautiful.

I spent the week with Bas and saw some amazing things.

Emit: On East side diving, you still do need to understand that it is NOT for everyone. You do need to have a good deal of skill and capabilities. Bas is very good about making sure everyone is safe and only doing dives appropriate for their skill set.

Thanks for the response, I understand that the east side is not for everyone. I had planned on limited participation of the group. Bas sent an email that he will not be available so I am rethinking the adventure.

Bas - try emit@coloradodivers.org. I tried to respond to you directly and got:

The following addresses had fatal errors:
loonybin@bonairelive.com: 550 [PERMFAIL] destination not valid within DNS

Erik, you can do the east side by boat. Both Menno at Deep Blue View, and Larry, from Larry's Wild Side and make day boat trips to the east side. I can look up their contact info if you like.

Emit,
When I was there, Wannadive was doing guided dives to the east side (Cai). It was a signup dive just like their boat dives. I suspect other shops may offer this as well. Larry is always an option if you don't want to dive it from shore, but there really is no substitute for Bas!

Smack