My wife and I made our first trip to Bonaire April 20-May 1. We had a great trip, stayed at the Coco Palm Garden. It was a clean, no frills, place with good hot water and nice cold AC. We really enjoyed not having a TV, telephone or reading a newspaper for those 10 days. That made it a real vacation, escape, just perfect. We used the kitchen to brew lotsa coffee and eat lotsa grainola cereal before doing our daily snorkeling . Each building is standalone, so you hear zero noise from the other guests, and no blaring tv's, Wonderful!! We'll definitely stay there again, if we have the opportunity. We did one drift snorkel, however due to a rare wind reversal, we had to actually swim against a slight current, not to difficult , no problem. We also did windsock (twice), 1000 steps, oilslick, margate(twice), andrea 1& 2(twice). Our second time at Andrea 1 & 2, we swam all the way up to Black Durgon and then drifted back to Andrea 1. Awesome!! That whole area from Andrea 1 up to Black Durgon Inn is great. Saw sea turtles, lotsa eels, huge parrotfish. Great beyond expectation. We spend about 4 hours everyday snorkeling, except for one rainy shopping day. The water was chilly so a shorty for the wife and a hooded vest for me, did the trick. Rented bikes the last night due to rental car return. Biking is awesome! After about 5:30PM, it cools off and its great! Will definitely do lots more early morning, late evening biking, next time. The Garden Cafe was our favorite restuarant. However the catch of the day(Durado??) at Great Escape was also excellent. I can't think of anything negative , other than a guard dog that jumped through a fence and chased us on our bikes. That was scary, but we out ran him. Thank god for adrenaline!! We left our backpacks on the shore along with hats ,cheap sunglasses and sandals. Nothing stolen. A fellow traveller told us about accidentally leaving his digital cam in his unlocked rental, front seat, plain sight, still there when he got back from diving. Didn't ever feel any negative vibes the whole trip. Maybe I'm a naive 52 yr. old, but it seemed like the safest place we've been, in the Carribean. So refreshing not to see bars on all the windows, like you see in other places. However, lotsa residents seemed to favor 2-3 guard dogs, so I guess that also says something.

Glad you had a great trip!!!

Those aren't guard dogs, they are Bonairian door bells.

Glad you enjoyed the island.

Dennis, sounds like you and your Bride had a good time on the Island. Happy to hear you didn't have any problems. We have been many times and yet to have an incident. The water this time of year is in the high 70's low 80's and if you snorkle for 4 hrs at a time you got cold with out a full wetsuit. We use 3mil polarteck full suits for diving and it seems to do the job. Did you have a camera with you? Sure would enjoy seing your photo's.... Ron

(Message edited by ronindiana on May 6, 2005)

Hi Ron:

We had the disposable underwater cameras. The pictures didn't turn out as good as we hoped, however, we'll go back through them and pick out a few, I'll scan and then post them. I also took numerous above water sunsets, etc. Whats the procedure to post pictures? I also have some unusual salt heap photos because of the way they reflected into the water because of a rare no wind day.

I'm going to try to show a photo of a sunset \image

this is a sunset: \image

Dennis add the squiggly brackets and you should have it looks like this without the spaces..
\ image{your photos name} remember the photo has to be under 50kb

Beautiful!!

Thanks Freddie:

They sailed into the photo as if on cue. I gonna post one more interesting Salt pile photo

Wow Dennis, great shot!

Good Pictures Dennis...... Ron

Dennis, is that last shot "touched up?"

very cool shot! What luck, no wind!

Thanks everyone for your compliments! Hi Cynde, all I did on the last shot was to crop the gravel road off from the bottom of the photo. It was distracting and not a lot to look at, not that there's anything wrong with a gravel road, most of my favorite roads are gravel :-). I actually have several more salt pile photos zoomed in differently, without the industrial equipment etc. They all turned out very good, very "otherworldly". I thought it very odd there was no wind. I think that area is usually always windy. Glad I followed my instincts and started shooting and I'm happy that you all enjoy the pix!

Both are incredible pics! I would really like to see some more.

Thanks Joseph. I'll go through them and post a few more!

We were on Bonaire during the calm winds on April 22,23. We dove Nukove and Lighthouse from shore. there was about as much surf at those locations as there usually is downtown.

Here is one of my pictures down at the salt works during that time. You can see how calm it was.

Great shot, Robert!

Thanks Dennis.

I love your sunset picture. Very nice composition.

Thanks Robert, it was a lucky shot. The sailboat got underway, just as the sun was setting and sailed into the the frame!