My wife and I returned yesterday from our first trip to Bonaire - it was incredible! This website was invaluable helping us plan and prepare for the trip. I found some good information that helped us pick where we stayed (Hamlet Oasis) and from reading a number of strings under several topics, we decided we wanted to dive a couple of days with a guide. Prior to this trip, we'd only done a handful of shore dives and we wanted to make sure we were both safe and environmentally friendly.

We got in 20 dives over 7 days and they were wonderful. We scheduled our checkout dive, along with several other dives with Bas Noij. I don't want this to sound like a paid advertisement (because it's not), but we just wanted to thank Bas for all of his help and information. We did several dives and saw things with him that we wouldn't have been able to do on our own. Bas lead us on a dive from LaDania's Leap to Karpata - he pointed out "the grid" and the anchors that help identify the exit at Karpata. We dove Something Special and found both a frogfish and a seahorse. And he took us on a night dive with ultraviolet flashlights - it was a very new twist to night diving....

Between dives Bas told us more about the island, he gave us some good restaurant recommendations (we liked most of them... and without his guidance, we never would have found Maiky Snack.) and he offered some excellent pre-dive orientations.

Anyway - in the event there are Bonaire newbies, or others that just want to get better oriented with the island, we give two thumbs up to Bas.

More thumbs up for Bas Noij. Dive trips with him are not just for Bonaire newbies. On our fourth annual trip- we learned a lot from him both above and below the water. The UV night dive is not to be missed!

Thanks guys. My pleasure!!!

July 11th will be our third trip to Bonaire. We haven't used a Guide , but it sounds like we are missing stuff. I am going to talk to our group about getting a guide at least once.I have never seen a seahorse :-(

BAS is the best! I would highly recommend him!

Stephanie Baranko
PADI MSDT Instructor