We arrived in Bonaire early on the red-eye from Houston. Our luggage was unloaded quickly, we found Poppy from Telerin car rentals, signed the paperwork and were on our way to BelMar. We did most of our dives at sites we didn’t get to last year, with a few exceptions. Here are a few of the highlights from each site:
BelMar house reef: Check-out dive. Saw a turtle, octopus, and lots of fish. We also did a night dive and saw a parrot fish inside its mucus cocoon. My husband pointed it out to me & truthfully, I didn’t know what I was looking at until he told me afterward.
Invisibles: School of barracuda, flamingo tongue cowries, …
Jung’s Place (we met a man who told us about an unmarked site that he liked, so we named it after him): Thick forest of elkhorn coral upon entrance, very nice dive!
The Lake: Saw a spotted eagle ray as soon as we entered and large groupers in the sandy channel. To top it off, we got to watch the sunset when we surfaced. We dove this site a second time and saw a free swimming octopus. It was very fun to watch.
Witches Hut: Very nice dive! We did a second dive here in a quest to find the two seahorses that have been seen here, but we weren’t able to find them. I did find a bearded fireworm, which was a first for me and we saw a free swimming spotted moray eel.
Karpata: Beautiful dive! We saw the anchor and a free swimming eel, among the many other fish and coral. There were many donkeys and goats roaming about on the drive back through Rincon.
Larry’s Lair: Two peacock flounders, three eels, and flamingo tongue cowries.
Alice in Wonderland: Schools of black durgon, two scorpion fish, arrow crab, and cleaner shrimp.
Red Slave: It was a little rough getting in, but not too bad. Saw a spotted eagle ray upon entrance. There were a lot of anemones at this site.
Salt Pier: I really enjoyed this dive. Upon entrance we got to enjoy a gigantic school of silversides. It was amazing watching them. Also saw four scorpion fish, three peacock flounders, a turtle, chain moray, tarpon, barracuda, etc…
Ol’ blue: Sharp tail eel, baby scorpion fish (very cute), peacock flounder. Very nice dive!
Dave’s Den: Two spotted moray eels and a very large turtle. A kiteboarder almost took my husband’s head off when he surfaced.

We snorkeled with our kids at Aquarius, which they really enjoyed and my husband did a night snorkel with them on the BelMar house reef. Thye’re both looking forward to the day when they can dive too.

We ate at the following places:
City Café: I had the beef salad. It was very good, although its name is a little misleading because there was very little salad, mostly beef.
BobbeJan’s: We enjoyed the ribs, but now I know to order French fries with it next time instead of the rice. Luckily, my son let me have some of his fries.
Patagonia: I had the calamari dinner. The calamari was soggy, so I didn’t really enjoy it all that much. The sides were great though. We had planned on going to Casablanca, but they were closed, so we thought we’d give Patagonia a try. I think next time we’ll go back to Casablanca.
It Rains Fishes: Wahoo with pesto. Mmmm mmmm good!!!
Papaya Moon: Fish tacos. Very tasty.
Pasa Bon Pizza: Fish pizza (my favorite meal of the trip).
We had a wonderful trip!

Sounds like a great trip, Martha... sorry to hear about your hubby's close call. Where exactly is Dave's Den... I've not heard of that site before?

The food you described is making me very hungry and not helping my PBD at all!

(Message edited by morgans4me on December 26, 2006)

I hadn't heard of Dave's Den either. A very nice couple we met at Belmar (thanks Bob and Ann) told us about it. If I remember correctly, it's located after Pink Beach and before White Slave, right before a white house. It's not on any maps that I've seen, but it does have a yellow stone marker.

It's also called English Garden...