This was our first trip to Bonaire for my wife, Karen, and our adult children Sarah and Michael. We traveled with our friends, Nancy and Jim. We all found BT so helpful before the trip that we thought it would be good to add our impressions to aid others on the way to Bonaire.

Transportation was a bit of a problem from the Pacific Northwest. We were on American via San Juan, with 12 hours flying time and 6-8 hours in airports. American worked without a hitch, though. We rented the usual 4 door pick-up, and it worked quite well for us and yes, all 6 of us could travel well in it for the short distances necessary on Bonaire.

We stayed at the Sand Dollar, and found it quite nice, we shared a 3 bedroom condo, as usual with air conditioning only in the bedrooms, but this was not a problem, at least at this time of year. We did have to change condos the last day because of a plugged drain, a minor inconvenience. We loved the waterfront and new dock. SD is right in the same area as Buddy Dive and Capt'n Don's, I think any would be a good choice.

We had four divers and two snorkelers, and three of the divers are 60ish. After the required orientation and paying the Marine Park fee, we did our first dive right off the SD dock on Bari Reef. We were impressed with the diving right off the dock! The rest of our dives were boat dives. We were told by many that you don't have to do that in Bonaire, and that certainly appears to be the case, but for our first trip we didn't want to lug gear, and we appreciate having a divemaster. We used the dive outfit at the SD. It was a good decision for us. We did Karpata, Something Special, Hilma Hooker, Jeff Davis, Sampler on Klein, and Rappel. We really liked Rappel. The water was colder than expected, but a thin wet suit was fine, my son and I used 0.5 mm body suits, and our friends 3mm. The visibility was disappointing, and the currents moderately strong. The wind and the chop picked up later in the week. The dives were all great, however. We were lucky enough to have naturalist extrordinare Jerry Ligon as our divemaster on our first two boat dives. That was a great experience. Our other divemaster was Guido, also an excellent divemaster. They both made our trip enjoyable. Our whole group later did a nature tour with Jerry and learned a lot about the birds and plants. He is a dedicated naturalist, and a pleasure to learn from. We also drove just about everywhere on the island in our little truck, except to the Park on the North end.

We got some excellent tips on dining from Michael Gaynor at the Chat and Browse near the SD. Jim and Nancy ate at Mango's. We also went to Lion's Den, Gibi's, Croccantino's, Rendez-vous, and Casablanca. Gibi's is great local food, he said the BTers would be there the next night, but we couldn't make it. Croccantino's has great food, and a friendly owner. Food was great at Rendez-vous as well. My son and I shared the mixed grill at Casablanca, excellent, but enough for three or more people.

We took in the Karnival night parade on Fat Tuesday. That was a real treat. Sarah and Michael are veterans of the ethnic Caribbean in Trinidad and Jamaica, as well as the Caymans, so they added to their experience of Caribbean heritage.

Overall it appeared that tourism is down in Bonaire, which is a real shame as it is such a jewel. I hope it picks up. We will undoubtably return, I don't know when, but it is on our list.

Martin thanks for the trip report. Glad to hear all of you had a nice trip. Isn't the diving just great!

Martin, Great Report. Shame the vis. wasn't as good as normal. Someone stated that it might have something to do with the extra cold water.
Thanks
Ida

martin nice report,being as we live in the same town(tacoma,wa)would you be a little more specific about the vis comparded to here.I'll be going there in june,I also find these posts helpful

Michael, Although I certified in Puget Sound, I have given up cold water diving and sold my dry suit and other cold water gear. I'm a tropical diver only now. My experience in the Sound was that although you get occasional "good" visibility, maybe 30 feet, most is 5-15 feet. Believe me, Bonaire visibility, even when not optimal beats Puget Sound. We had probably 30-50 feet vis. down to 20 feet. The last day there was a lot of some sort of debris in the water. It was quite windy and the currents moderately strong, which the regulars and the divemasters said probably accounted for this, stressing that the visibility is usually much better than this. You are going to enjoy Bonaire whatever the visibility and whatever the weather. June should be an ideal time to visit. The BT reports sure helped us, and I'm glad you find them useful, that is why I decided to post our experiences. Feel free to call me if you wish, I'm in the phone book.

Marty

I much prefer tropical diving as well. Here in Oklahoma and area lakes and mines, you might have 5-10 ft. of visability and what you can see is uninteresting.