Just got back from Bonaire and instead of shoveling the snow in my
driveway, I'm going through photos and dive logs today!

As is our friend's custom, we decorate our rental truck with Scuba
Barbie to make it easier to find out of a sea of white pickups:



This is our 2nd trip to Bonaire with our friends in two years. We were
there early March last year, but we all had the itch to dive earlier
this year. So... here's our trip report.

FLIGHTS

Travel from Denver to BON via Houston was uneventful. Flights were all
on-time and very full. I should have popped that Ambien before the
flight, but instead, I got to watch 200 of my closest friends sleep
peacefully, while I stared at the dude's head in front of me while
listening to my iPod and reading.

We were the LAST people in line to check in for the return flight on
Saturday morning, but no worries - they still get you checked in and
on the plane. I think Buddy Dive guests are shuttled to the airport at
like 6:00 am or something. No point to that, says me.

VILLA

We stayed at Crown Court 44A. Our friends have stayed here before and
were happy to find it open during our planned trip! The place is very
nice - close to town, on the water (diving off your back yard is
nice), pool, 3 BR, clean, internet, and flat screen TV (that we didn't
watch!) We enjoyed coffee in the morning and Polars in the evening
under the Palapa while staring at the ocean. Paradise!

I did get eaten alive by various creatures. My wife, however, has one
tiny bite. Not sure what they were. Found a few mosquitoes in our room
a few times. Maybe they were no-see-ums? I hope they weren't bedbugs.
They itch like mad and I look like an escapee from a Leper colony.
Nothing a few dozen Polars can't fix.









DIVING

We got 24 dives in during this trip. Average dive time was over an
hour. We were diving on Nitrox through Buddy Dive. Jinny from
Sunrentals (via Buddy Dive) delivered 8 nitrox tanks each morning and
picked up our empties. If you do the math, you'll realize that we also
had to use Buddy's drive-through service to get more tanks during the
day. All were 32 to 33 % O2 and 2800+ psi. We like the drive-through
option with Buddy, but I seem to run into the one Buddy employee that
always reminds me of the rules (only two tanks per person, no
exceptions, and unless you are diving from their pier, you have to get
tanks from the drive-through. Not a big deal, but she rubs me the
wrong way at times!)



Water temps were 76 degrees per my computer. We were all fairly cold
on this trip. I was in a shorty, my wife was in a shorty with a 0.5mil
full suit underneath, and our friends were in 3 mil full suits. Seems
to me that on some level, it doesn't make a huge difference in what
you wear to stay warm (within reason, of course). My shorty is 20
years old, and I almost bought a new 3 mil full suit before our trip,
but decided against it. It didn't take away from our dive times, but I
guess it would have added a small amount of enjoyment to the dives.
That being said, being on vacation in paradise is distracting enough
that I could care less about being "cold". :-)

We saw the usual suspects and were lucky to see seahorses, frogfish,
spotted eagle ray, turtle, and quite a few Tarpon and Barracuda.

We dove Karpata, Hilma Hooker, Buddy Dive, Salt City, Vista Blue,
Alice in Wonderland, Taylor Made, The Lake, Oil Slick, and a bunch of
others. My fave was the Lake for the beautiful view of the sandy
bottom. None of them are bad.

PICTURES

I only took my camera on a few dives. It's a Canon A620 with a Canon
housing and no strobe. I had constant battery problems and later
realized my "rechargeable" batteries were actually non-rechargeable
regular batteries! I'm such a dufus. I did learn that those Costco AA
batteries are quite good. They lasted for two full dives taking lots
of pictures. Even when the camera shut off on "low batt", you could
turn it back on a few minutes later and snap off 2 or 3 more pics and
keep doing that 4 or 5 times!

So, here are a few interesting topside pics and a few of the only good
underwater pics that I took:











The world's worst picture of a seahorse:



I nominate the Soapfish as the most lame fish in the ocean:







FOOD

We had very nice meals at Unbelieveable (very nice), Richards (very
nice), Bobbyjans (a crowd favorite), Mi Banana (always good - and
local "feel" to the place), Paradise Moon (great flavors to steaks).
Richards gets mixed reviews, but we had great food (with homemade
sauces) and some interesting discussions with Richard. He hustles
around to try and keep good service. It seems that he's the only one
serving with one or two helpers. The helpers aren't as "on top of it"
as he is, but he seems to have passion for the restaurant.

We also stopped at Lover's ice cream once, and that was, of course,
great.

I guess that's about it. Now... gotta get to that shoveling....

Nice Pics!

(Message edited by Martindeweger on February 14, 2010)

very nice H20DOC.. worth waiting for [I cleaned it up for you }

Pictures are worth the wait....thanks!

Awesome! Thanks for great pics!

PBD is settling in. 2 deg F this morning in Colorado. Ouch!

H2O Doc..Wonderful report & photos of your trip. We were on the island last year this time & remember seeing Scuba Barbie on your truck. I saw that & said "WTF was that"?
At any rate our trip is less than a week away and your photos have certainly whetted my appetite. Thanks for posting.

Nice report, I'm laughing my butt off at the soapfish nomination

Yea - that Soapfish is really a lazy one. I mean, all these fish are scurrying about making a living, making a home, procreating, and the Soapfish just lays there on it's side.

Take the Seargent Major for example - they spend all day making a purple spot on some chunk of concrete or the hull of a wrecked boat and defend it like its somehow valuable or worthy of protection. The thing can't weigh more than a few ounces, but it sure chased my 170 lb mass away from the sacred purple dot more than a few times.

Quite frankly, I'm a little tired of those Sgt Majors chasing me around. I'm brining a tennis racket with me next time, and see how far I can swat one. :-)

H2ODoc. Funny - with the tennis racket. I had one of those little buggers attack my fin when I floated over it's area. It made me LOL.

LOL, I think I saw a soapfish on one of my dives. We just thought it was a fish that was near death laying on the ocean floor. Had no idea there was a fish that acted like my two dogs.

Why soapfish?

H2O - do what I do - spread some squid juice on your dive buddy and sit back and laugh your a$$ off.....

Ok, how were you able to download those onto BT? I have tried and even my plainest pics are too large. Is there a trick to this?

Mac or PC?

If on a PC, I used Image Resizer (free download from Microsoft that integrates nicely into XP, google "power tools windows" and you'll find it). After installing, Just right click on the pic from windows explorer, and choose "resize" and choose a smaller picture size.

If on a Mac, from iPhoto, click on the pic you want to resize, and click File, Export. Choose medium jpeg quality and medium size, and I think you will be good.

If you have just a few that you'd like to upload and don't want to do the above nerdy stuff, email them to me, I"ll resize them, and reply with the pics in the thread!!!! And... I'd do all of this for an IOU of a few Polars!

Great report and PICS!!!!! Thanks!!

BTW, Glad to see that Barbie is still around...I remember her from last year!!!

Soap fish are much more active at night.
On our last trip our dm friend had to keep shooing a soap fish aside and then actually was grabbing and gently throwing it out of the way, underwater ofcourse, because it kept swimming in to the area he was trying to focus his flashlight on to show us something he was about to take a picture of. At first I was shocked, but then was laughing into my reg. That silly soap fish just would not stay away.