I recently visited Bonaire for the 2nd time, this time staying for two weeks. My dive buddy Tom and I flew down for the first week and took TDI trimix training through Rec-Tek with Walt. My Wife and Tom's two daughters flew down and joined us for the 2nd week.

As expected, our Bonaire visit was absolutely wonderful. Tom and I were able to dive the Windjammer as part of our Trimix class with Walt. As with our first experience (October of last year), Walt was great. Everything went very smoothly and the island is lucky to have the knowledge of Walt Stark and Rec-Tek.

Through the recommendation of Walt, Tom and I hired a local photographer / Videographer to visually document our final class dive and visit to the Windjammer. Zsuzsanna Pusztai and her husband Leo joined us and produced an absolutely wonderful video of our adventure.
Video - http://www.vimeo.com/12372689
Zsuzsanna - http://zsuzsannapusztai.smugmug.com/

Zsuzsanna gave me some pointers for my photography and I believe it helped immensely. She is a wealth of knowledge when it comes to taking underwater images and video.

During the 2nd week, we got to dive a few sites that were new to us. Candy Land and Nukote beach were two of my favorite. It is definitely worth the extra drive and tricky entry to enjoy these reef systems.

After diving some of the North sites one day, we decided to go through Rincon and see if we could find some lunch. Be it fate, or just plain good old luck, we found LeMaSe. Norman and his family host this small restaurant. I can't say enough about how polite and just plain nice Norman is. The food was wonderful, and we paid Norman another visit for milkshakes later on that week. I would definitely recommend LeMaSe to everyone.

On Saturday, we stayed topside to assist with off gassing before flying. My Wife and I decided to drive the island to see what Bonaire has to offer above the water. We drove around and took some pictures. During this adventure, we visited the butterfly sanctuary. A nice little non-diving activity to enjoy, well worth the admission fee.

After being directed by a Friend that is a local, we visited Antriol Catering service for lunch. OMG! Amazing food. I can't believe I'm saying it, but I think I'm more excited to visit Bonaire again because of the food at Antriol than I am about the diving! (Ok, maybe not, but darn close). My Wife had the Sword fish and I had the Barracuda (Yes, I like to eat fish, even the ones I swim with). It was absolutely the best fish I have ever eaten. I will be back!

We stayed at Golden Reef Inn during this visit. Liz and Ed were very nice and were always able to answer questions. The accommodations were nice, and I firmly believe that I got my moneys worth during my stay. It's nice to stay somewhere smaller where you don't have a million people running around.

As always, everyone on the island was very nice to us and we can't wait to get back.

Here are some of the pictures I took during my stay.

Hilma Hooker



(Message edited by modfreddie on June 8, 2010)

Paul - great report - the trick to posting the pics is to format like this

\image {1} Just remove the space between the word image and the {

You can up anything you want in between the {}

paul please resize the photos to under 100kb.. if you need help you have the address

Would love to watch the video but you have it set to private.

Wow, I messed this posting all up! Ok, I have fixed the video, but I'm still having problems with the pictures. It's saying "The formatting code image does not allow other formatting tags to be nested inside it". Any suggestions?

Sorry

Paul just put something like the between the brackets \image{frogfish} the photos must be saved to your computer and not to snapfish for instance

Ok, finally figured it out.....

(Message edited by Paul Lenharr on June 10, 2010)

And absolutely worth the wait!!!!!!! Wonderful shots

Paul:

Between your pictures and DixieG's, I'm going to have to take an advanced course or just stay underwater until I get it right. I am so blown away by all of your pictures but I do have some favorites that were posted. Maybe the two of you should enter a contest. I think I'll put all my pictures back in the envelope until I get to the island in July. Wow. I am so, so jealous but my favorite still is the little blenny.

Man! Great stuff! Thank you for sharing with us

Great photos !

Well... those were certainly worth waiting for! Love them, please feel free to post more. Those of us with no trip in sight (at least not one to Bonaire) need this like fish need water Thank you for posting!

Nice pictures! What is in the last pic?

Caribbean reef squid
Thanks for all the kind words! I have 16GB more to go through. Will try to post more soon.

I have to work on my shots...be back in 40+days...

Great work Paul! Thanks for sharing!!!

Paul, nice talking with you on the plane ride down, glad you had such a great trip and hope you are able to return soon.

Patrick

very cool.. i feel your pain I have to many pics to sort through and video..may take weeks =)

Great macro !! Nice pics, Paul.

It is hard to describe on how I feel after watching the video--I went and got my wife from reading and made her watch it [she is just getting certified for our 4th return to Bonaire] and she was blown away!

To sum it up.....it was so good we nearly lit up a smoke after watching it a 2nd time!

Royce & Mary Balak