Well now, after three trips to Bonaire in six months and after all the help and wisdom we’ve received from experienced BTers, the time has come to give back, so here is our first trip report. This report will cover our July 4-14th 2004 trip. We will talk about the great (almost everything), the bad (very little but not insignificant) and the ugly (one little frog fish, who actually was quite beautiful, warts and all).
We traveled the Jamaica Air route from Atlanta via Montego Bay – third time on the airline/route – and they have great service and have all three times arrived at Flamingo Int EARLY! Seats a bit cramped for room but the trip down has never been more than half full so we can curl up for a nap (that free champagne, you know).
We stayed, as we have on previous trips, at Sun Oceanfront Apartments on Kaya Grande. We like this facility for its location (across the small one-way street from the water), its friendly helpful management, its convenient onsite dive facility (Toucan and the soft-spoken, very cool DM Bert), its close proximity to several restaurants – Donna & Giorgios, It Rains Fishes, Bobbejan’s, all the stuff around Karel’s, Lost Penguin, and all the other town spots – all walking distance, the price, and the security. The rooms are adequate, cleaned daily (except Sun), and there is a great view from all the rooms except those on the ground floor.
We used ABCarrental (part of the package at Sun Oceanfront). They have been very easy to work with, and when we returned from a dive at Atlantis (on the far south end of the island) to find our battery was dead, a call (on our rented cell phone) to Sun Oceanfront soon had the ABCarrental manager and his mechanic arriving with a new battery which they installed. We use the normal precautions and have not yet been car-burgled.
We now have over 60 dives on Bonaire and a specific “Bonaire diving style” has begun to emerge as a result of our experiences there. The more-or-less natural profile for this kind of diving is about as safe as you can get. We enter the water, submerge in about 4 feet and begin swimming out (a compass heading will help those who are easily confused, but in most places the shelf is not very wide and you can keep an approximate heading by minding the sun angle and/or the direction of the wind-waves on the surface. Besides, it’s really quite simple to see the next “zone” from where you are at any moment, i.e., from the mid-shelf zone of staghorn and/or rubble you can see the fore-reef, and from the fore-reef you can see the reef crest. So we swim out, gradually and easily equalizing, until we reach the reef crest. Then depending on our plan and if there is any current present (usually not anything significant), we go down the reef slope to our pre-decided depth, turn to the left or right, and gradually work our way along the reef slowly moving up to the crest and reaching 25-30 feet at around 1000-1200 psi. At that point we begin a very slow, meandering diagonal across the shelf, off-gassing/safety-stopping rather “automatically” and finally arriving in 3 or 4 feet of water more or less right in front of where we parked. We can tell you that the last thousand pounds of air pressure lasts a LONG time this way – we have had a number of single tank dives that reached over 120 feet of depth yet lasted over 90 minutes – surfacing with surprisingly little residual nitrogen according to our two very different algorithm computers. The crest and the shelf, so full of diversity and numbers, are perfectly suited to SLOW diving. We can’t begin to catalog the incredible things we’ve witnessed on the shelves of Bonaire’s western coastline!
We would like to second the suggestion posted elsewhere on BT about not parking on sandy areas adjacent to the water (mostly in the south, spots like Atlantis and Fish Hut) where turtles may have buried their eggs.
Northern sites or southern sites for beach diving? There are significant differences – a bit more steepness in some of the northern sites, double reef system in the central southern sites, and so forth – but another thing to think about is the lighting. South and immediately north of town the sun moves in a path more-or-less perpendicular to the reef line while in the more northerly sites the sun moves closer to parallel to the reef line. This creates a variety of lighting from morning to afternoon that creates one of the more significant differences between the sites. The mood, the lighting for photography, the shadows – all this is affected so that a late afternoon dive on Karpata looks quite different than a late afternoon dive on Margate Bay.
That said, late afternoon (and perhaps early morning, but we’ve never done one of those) is by far the most active time on all of Bonaire’s reefs – feeding, reproductive activity, and the fabulous “rivers of fish” – what we like to call rush hour – mostly creole wrasse but we’ve also seen brown chromis and blue tangs “streaming.” The creole wrasse movement is without a doubt one of the top ten most amazing fish phenomena we’ve witnessed on Bonaire. This flow of fish varies, sometimes doesn’t happen at all, but when it’s at full force the numbers are staggering – thousands and thousands of these blue (with various yellow and black mottling) swim past as fast as their pectoral fins will take them. They virtually ignore divers so you can stick your face right into the approaching stream and let them flow around you inches from your eyes, or you can swim along with them to experience the afternoon as they do. It is also possible to find a “staging area” where they amass and begin their streaming. The best place we have found for consistently seeing this amazing phenomenon in Buddy’s reef.
The sites we dove during our 30 dives (in 9 days of diving) this trip were (we have yet to take a boat out to Klein – we will some day I suppose, as soon as we’re willing to conform to boat schedules, go to second dives on shore sites that we could have driven to, and fit into crowded boats): BOPEC, Karpata, Oil Slick, Andrea 1, Buddy’s, Eden Beach (webcam and junk wreck – nothing else), Dive Inn reef, Angel, Alice, Margate Bay, Atlantis, Lac Cai. Clearly we dove some sites multiple times, befitting of our desire to become intimately familiar with our favorites.
Some highlights:
Karpata – a very friendly green turtle, squid
Oil Slick – a HUGE loggerhead and an orange frogfish (the first we’ve found in three trips (found without help, sez m’pride)
Lac Cai – Bas led us on this drift dive (local knowledge is a must in this area of low viz and currents) where we saw so many big snappers and parrot fish in the bay’s channel followed by a southern sting ray, then lots of tarpon first over us then another group below us holding their places as we drifted rapidly past, followed by a big grouper, 5 gorgeous eagle rays, and a giant green moray eel.
Angel – the double reef system actually merges here to form an extensive level reef full of “hobbit houses” and “mushrooms” – and there was an immense school of horse-eye jacks just horsin’ around above the second reef.
Alice – squid, streaming brown chromis, rich “life centers” of huge coral heads on the first reef
Buddy’s – besides the streaming creole wrasse phenomenon, we watched a beautiful passionate embrace between two soapfish that culminated in a vertical rush almost to the surface as they caressed one another the entire way. We also were entranced by a very large (6’) spotted eel hunting with such voracious animation it took our breathes away (e.g., eel dives in hole, muscular body writhing and entirely exposed as an octopus flees out the other side of the hole, eel backing out and racing around the head but too late), the giant tarpon that frequent that area (we call it the tarpon rodeo), bait balls up by the pier, two groupers and two eels working the twilight shadows under the pier, huge puffers…
Margate Bay – a close encounter with the largest green moray I’ve seen in 45 years of diving (in a cave on the crest in 25 feet of water), eye-to-eye with a huge southern sting ray, an evening dive where the fish were ALL going crazy-dozens big snappers, 7 scrawled file fish, tang raiding parties (whooping and hollering was all that was missing), chromis moving rapidly in the grooves and valleys instead of the water column, multiples of French and queen angle fishes, dozens of trumpet fish, and so many others – all swimming around frenetically. We thought at first it was a feeding frenzy but none were eating that we could see. We went back at the same time the next three days and while we saw much of interest every time, that wild scene was not repeated. We also saw mixed swarms of butterfly fish (four eye and striped) above the staghorn gardens one afternoon (I stopped counting at 40 – those were just the ones right around us – many more in the near distance), many groupers at cleaning stations with mouths agape and gills flared, five barracuda down at “ground level” with their stripes on, large squid that played with us in the water column, and the most friendly hawksbill turtle we’ve encountered yet – this youngster stayed with us until we decided to leave. And clearly we’re not the only ones who appreciate Margate – we came out after one midday dive to find divers everywhere – no less than 12 trucks were parked where we had been the only ones when we descended!
Minor negatives:
Trash – We filled a shopping bag with discarded plastic bottles and such detritus at the parking area of Margate. If all divers would a) not leave trash (sometimes it’s the “wind’s fault” but we’re still responsible for leaving nothing behind and b) pick up the trash we find when we arrive, this beautiful and near-magical place would remain more-or-less pristine.
Kite Surfers who set up just south of Atlantis and at Fish Hut – I don’t know what can be done about this but it IS becoming a problem. In Oct 2003 we saw only one kite surfer there, but in July there were 7 plus their chase boat. One kite surfer went right over us while we were in about 12 feet of water at Margate and two different ones sailed to Margate. This means that from south of Fish Hut to Margate it is dangerous for divers on the surface and from Fish Hut to Atlantis on most days the kite surfers have literally taken over. Hopefully some sort of accord can be reached that would allow each group to practice its chosen sport without endangering or driving out the divers and without involving the “authorities.”
Noise – the main coastal road downtown is showing the vehicular (cars and motorcycles) exposition that seems to be genetically programmed into young people the world over – just seems louder in a place like Bonaire.
Thievery – you’ve probably heard it all – we thought we had but then we learned of several more significant dwelling burglaries perpetuated against visitors that we had not read of on BT. Unfortunately, it seems smart to select your housing with an eye toward security.
Personal eating establishment faves: Donna and Giorgios (yes, with their single menu, but most nights it is sufficient), Pasa Bon Pizza (Joe is a New Yorker – what else do I need to say), the outdoor table on the “point” at Don’s Habitat (the food was okay but the location is absolutely superior), Gibis, Jan’s (pronounced Yawn’s) Rose Inn in Rincon, and the island’s best burgers (The Rib Factory). Honorable mention goes to Casablanca, Crocatinos, Lost Penguin, and the Garden Café.
Another cool thing – the ATM across from the Lost Penguin will give you crisp US dollars if you wish, with no fee either!
By the way, DO NOT use the pay phones that invite you to slide your credit card and call home – between US$24 and 35 per short call – and they don’t tell you the cost until you get your bill 2 months (for some reason) later.
We’ll post some pictures soon.
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By Bill and Donna Goodwin (BonaireTalker - Post #16) on Thursday, July 22, 2004 - 12:39 pm: 
