I came back home last Monday, from my first trip to Diver's Paradise... and still can't help thinking about Bonaire almost all the time. Those 8 days seemed a long time when we just arrived and yet, they passed like a blink.
I got a lot of help from this forum when I first asked about shore diving compared to boat diving. So, I offer this trip report as my pay back.
How we got there:
I organized a trip for a group of fellow divers, 10 in total including my 16 year old daughter plus 2 non divers (my sister and husband), all from Chile. We found a quite convenient connection for such a remote destination: a flight from Santiago to Lima (3,5 hours) with TACA and then Lima to Bonaire (3,5 hours too) with KLM. It was rather cheap too. The inward connection in Lima was not the best: 10 hours! But, better 10 than 4, as we had the chance to rent a Van with driver for $80, that agreed to take the 12 of us together for a full day City Tour, including a stop at a very good restaurant and the Archaeological Museum. At 6pm we were back at the airport for the KLM flight at 8pm. We had a rough time there as KLM had the flight overbooked and they tried hard to leave two of us behind for the next day. At the end we managed to get all on board including 2 upgrades to business that we assigned through a raffle (I was not lucky). We arrived to Bonaire at 2am on Sunday 22nd and besides us, about 4 more passengers went to Immigration. All the rest were heading to Amsterdam and stayed in the Transit lounge. We felt sorry for them. The return trip was much shorter, departing at 4pm on Sunday 28th, with a bit more than 2 hours connection time in Lima. However, the fog in Santiago de Chile that night was so thick that our TACA flight was diverted to Mendoza, Argentina. We were sent to a nice hotel and then flew back at noon on Monday, back to winter weather in Chile. My daughter was happy to miss another day at school...
 
Where we stayed:
We got a special group rate at the Sand Dollar Resort. I must thank again Mary Di Sanza at Sand$ reservations for the great help she provided in settling everything down in the best way. The 12 of us stayed in 3 two-bedroom condos. The Sand Dollar, contrary to other resorts I have stayed, has a home like appearance. Since the condos are privately owned, they are all differently decorated, with the owner's touch. You find shelves with books, a stereo with lots of CDs, a kitchen with more appliances and utensils than you can use, framed photos on the walls, etc. They are not luxurious but very nice, with plenty of room space, and you really feel at home. The air conditioning in each bedroom keeps you sleeping like a baby and the mosquito mesh in all windows allows you to enjoy the evening breeze without fear of being eaten alive. To have dinner at the terrace while watching the sunset was just the icing of the cake. The beds are done and the rooms and bathrooms cleaned daily, just like an hotel room.
Where we ate:
Most of the time we ate at home: breakfast, a snack at lunch time and a full meal at dinner. We tried once the in-house restaurant by the pool for breakfast, but I must admit that being so far away from the sea side, made us to prefer going to Dan Leman's (just by the sea)or to Kralendijk. We dined out a couple of times, the first being Casablanca. We asked for "parrillada mixta"... 3 of them for the 12 of us were more than enough, even having some leftovers to carry back home. At just a bit more than $12 per person, we came back a second time of course. The rest of the group from the other two condos went to other restaurants, but with my sister (non diver) doing some cooking while we were diving, we did not need to go out any more.
The diving:
We had booked a dive package together with the condos, and that was with Bonaire Dive and Adventure, the in-house dive operator. They all were very friendly and helpful, solving all our little and big problems right away. Since we arrived at a very unusual time, they accepted to do our orientation class and dive in the afternoon of that Sunday. All about Bonaire diving was explained under a heavy rainstorm that lasted for about half an hour. We kept teasing the dive master about the rain, saying that we were told that in Bonaire it never rained... Fortunately, the rain lasted only for a few times on Sunday and the rest of the week was fine, though with very little wind during the first part of it. It was so unusually calm that the international windsurf contest scheduled for that weekend was cancelled. We could even go diving the east side with almost same water conditions as the west side. The lack of wind made the 29 to 32C almost unbearable... but it was much better when the breeze returned by the end of the week.
 
We had 6 boats dives plus unlimited shore diving during 6 days. We tried to do the 9am boat dive everyday and then went for shore diving. Boat dives were to Klein Bonaire of course, and we did shore diving mainly in the south, and a few north sites too. In total we logged 21 dives in 6 days (the last one being the 148th dive in my logbook). I took the Discover Nitrox course and enjoyed free Nitrox the whole week. Dive sites we enjoyed a lot where: Andrea I, South Bay, Joanne's Sunchi, Angel City, Alice in Wonderland, Pink Beach, Ol' Blue and Tori's reef. We also took advantage of the calm weather to book a two tank dive trip with Larry's Wild Side Diving on Wednesday. It was a bit pricey, I admit, but worth it. We had the chance to see lots of eagle rays, a big stingray, and many turtles and tarpons. We dove Lac Cai and Blue Hole. It was really amusing to experience Larry's way to handle a group of divers like a military operation in his especially conditioned boat. Everybody was carefully following his orders and all actions were perfectly synchronized. The best time was when our translator from English to Spanish (one of our group), misunderstood one of the instructions Larry gave when going to shore: instead of sitting on the side of the boat, he translated it as jump overboard... and suddenly half of the group was in the water when it was not supposed to. Larry and Martin could not stop laughing for a long while...
  
As of critter sightings, we were quite lucky: our BDA's DM found the famous and elusive frog fish in Joanne's Sunchi, and a red seahorse at the Hilma Hooker reef, together with big tarpons and barracudas, a little turtle in South Bay, thousands of garden eels at Pink Beach, the always accompanying tarpons during night dives at Bari reef, and many, many reef fish of all kinds.
    
Special mention goes for a dive I made with only one other diver of my group: we went diving from Sand Dollar to Eden Beach with the intention to pass by the ReefCam for recording some salutations. This was on Friday 27th afternoon (we went into the water at 2:00pm) and made a long swim out at around 8m depth, to the anchor site of one old sail boat that I believe is the home of somebody there. We were looking for a couple of dolphins that was playing around close to it. We did not find the dolphins, but when going back to the reef in the direction of Eden Beach, a huge manta ray appeared and started circling around my dive buddy. Unfortunately I was about 10m ahead of him and only realized it after a while, and had a view of it for a few seconds only, before it flew away into the blue. The visibility was not good, less than 20m perhaps as the water was full of plankton. It was the reason for the manta being there, and also big schools of fish that most probably attracted the bottle nose dolphins too. I am waiting for my buddy's photos (he was using film) as I had no time to shoot pictures of the manta. This encounter offset a bit the frustration of learning later that the webcams were all offline, for the first time in the year, during the time I was there, both at the reef and later at the beach. See my post about it here.
    
Other things we did:
In general, we enjoyed a lot the relaxed ambient in Bonaire. The people is so friendly, and since most of them speak Spanish, we felt very much at home, away from home. We went shopping on Saturday and visited most of the souvenir and diving stores. Everybody was relaxed and friendly... and after the shops were all closed (quite early for our standards) we had a round of beers at the nice bar at the downtown pier. It reminded me a bit of San Pedro in Belize, though with more infrastructure and services, but the same kind of easy going of the local people there. On Sunday morning we went to the Washington Slagbaai National Park, and saw lots of pink flamingos and nice views of the rough volcanic north coast of the island. We were lucky that it was the Park anniversary so the entrance was free (at least for my sister and husband that had not paid the Park Tag yet). In the way out, we stopped for a swim at Playa Funchi and then went back to the Resort for a shower and to pick up our luggage before heading to the airport.
For the shore diving, we rented 3 trucks for the group, one from Island Car Rental and the other two with AB Car Rental. I can definitively recommend Island as the rental was hassle-free and they even picked me up at Sand Dollar to get the car at the airport on Sunday afternoon. Everything that was agreed by mail was respected... and even accepted a couple hours more than the 7 days without extra charge. AB Car was not as easy, and if you have a mail agreement make sure you bring it printed as the attendant may not know about it. And beware that what is agreed at rental time may not be respected at return time (like a 1 hour extra time).
The only sad point of that marvelous week was a theft: while diving in Margate Bay the last day (Saturday morning), somebody searched down my open truck and spilled all my things inside looking for some valuables. The only things taken were a little Motorola 5620 two-way radio that was hidden below the seat cushion and my old and worn out rubber slippers... My dive-saving kit, full of o-rings and other diving spare parts, was spread on the floor but nothing taken. We were lucky that the thief(s) did not search the other truck (may be somebody came) as there was an expensive camera and housing which developed a water leak and could not go on the dive.
After this really long report, all I can say now is "I'll be back!!" Things I wanted to do but couldn't: appear on the webcams and do windsurfing... (the latter for lack of time).
Peter
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By Peter Sinclaire (BonaireTalker - Post #15) on Friday, June 3, 2005 - 2:59 am: 
