Hello all,
My wife and I are headed to Bonaire the 3rd week of July. The issue is this. She is a little nervous about diving with just me with her. She wants to be certain that there will be other divers in the vicinity while we are under the water. As I have never been to Bonaire I really don't know what to expect. We're going to be staying at the Sand Dollar, I'm I correct in assuming that we could fairly easily find dive spots that have others underneath the water?

Craig

I can certainly understand your wife's concern. You might have a challenge solving this one. A major +plus+ to diving on Bonaire is that it is wide open and uncrowded. On my previous visit, our group of 4 only ran into other divers once in 6 days of diving.

Check with your dive operator for suggestions as well. Or possibly start off the week diving the "house" reefs at the resorts and as the confidence grows, venture out to others north and south of town.

Also, if you have any issue that comes up while underwater, go ahead and surface. You will only be a few hundred yards from the shore at the max.

Enjoy your visit!

You might try to hook up with another BTer to show you to ropes for a dive or two, or someone at the resort you are staying at. We shore dove first with another couple and it helps to demystify it.

Another approach is to ask to have a dive guide go with you on (at least the first few) dives. You can arrange this through Sand Dollar's associated dive op Bonaire Dive & Adventure just south of the property. This will cost a few dollars but it could be well worth the investment.

Or book boat dives and ask the divemaster if you can dive with him

I concur with all of the above suggestions. I would like to add that Bonaire was the first place my husband and I dove without an instructor or divemaster. We each had about 16 dives and were a bit nervous about being on our own. However, the ease of Bonaire diving and the fact that we had to depend exclusively on each other gave us the chance to develop our confidence and we felt much more comfortable by the end of the week. We probably looked pretty funny on the first few dives as we were so close together you might have thought we were joined by duct tape!