Bonaire Trip Report (LONG...)

[raxafarian]

you would need to sink 5 submarines, an aircraft carrier, a couple of planes, and 2 cruise ships just offshore to make "good diving" for O-ring.

 

[O-ring]

#4 I have also dove the Bahamas. No way can you compare Bonaire to the Bahamas. This offends me. LoL

I knew you pro-Bonaire types were going to show up to the party. What is the main difference in the two then? I saw sharks in the Bahamas, but none in Bonaire. The Bahamas had wrecks, there was one in recreational depth limits in Bonaire. We pretty much boiled it down to people that like hanging over a coral head for a long time and looking at really small stuff would love it in Bonaire (the micro-photography crowd). Was it the small stuff that we missed that was the big draw? We thought it was cool, but not worth making this the premiere dive location in the world.

Where did you eat dinner? We gave you a list of good restaurants and were not costly. I don't see that you went to any of them.
Oh well, live and learn right?

Yeah, we had too many trip reports to choose from when picking restaurants. I think we went to most of the big ones, but may have missed quite a few.

I guess we should have done more dives on Klein Bonaire then...as it was, we saw a nice huge lobster on our dive, but that was about it. And I couldn't even bag him.. . On the plus side, a one tank dive was only like $15 and the boat ride was on the order of 10-15 mins.

As for the nightlife, well, the people ain't the most open and friendly in the world and the locals and Dutch seemed pretty cliqueish. Maybe that's because we haven't been to the island 20 times to know people, but someone who has been there that many times wouldn't need a trip report for info and would dismiss me as a crackpot "one timer".

 

[O-ring]

raxafarian once bubbled...
you would need to sink 5 submarines, an aircraft carrier, a couple of planes, and 2 cruise ships just offshore to make "good diving" for O-ring.

Drop those suckers right on the reef and we would have some world class diving going on! Seriously though, there is a lot of truth to your statement and I mentioned this in the original post. Wrecks are what I love and Bonaire is a bad choice for wreck diving. I like the other stuff too, don't get me wrong, but the other stuff seemed the same on every dive regardless of site. The aquatic life was pretty much uniform throughout all the sites and we talked to a couple people who said Coz had much more life/diversity.

For the record, we did talk about sinking stuff when the Dutch cruise ships pulled into port. We wondered how cool it would be if one of them sank right in between the reefs like the Hooker.

Oh well, different strokes for different folks. I am sure a lot of the people who dig Bonaire and have been 30 times are the same people that think one rusted chunk of metal on the bottom looks the same as any other and don't understand the fascination with wrecks.

 

[ckharlan66]

Tell Iggy not to go over there.


Watch for iguanas in the north and on the road back through Rincon (unless you like the crunching/popping sound of a lizard hit at high speed). It is easy to speed here since there are no police and the lizards are hard to avoid if you are exceeding 70-80 km/h.

 

[O-ring]

ckharlan66 once bubbled...
Tell Iggy not to go over there.


Watch for iguanas in the north and on the road back through Rincon (unless you like the crunching/popping sound of a lizard hit at high speed). It is easy to speed here since there are no police and the lizards are hard to avoid if you are exceeding 70-80 km/h.

I think he was #4 on the road to Rincon...oops. I think SG confirmed the kill..he said the squished one had a tiny keyboard it was carrying.

 

[Natasha]

You broguht up Coz. Big difference between Coz and Bonaire. But still not a wreck mecca.
Sadly most Caribbean destinations only have one or two wrecks to dive. It's really more about reef diving. And as you said, it is a micro heaven.
You probably needed to relax, go much slower and see the shrimp, seahorses, eels, and such. All difference kinds at each spot. But true not many big fish, which is why Cozumel is still my #1 place to dive. And my favorite wreck is in Coz too.
But hey, this is a Bonaire thread!

 

[cyklon_300]

Small fish, look-a-like dive sites, and frequent theft don't sound all that appealing.

Your review helps confirm that I made the right decision to book the Turks instead of going to Bonaire.

 

[O-ring]

Natasha once bubbled...
You broguht up Coz. Big difference between Coz and Bonaire. But still not a wreck mecca.
Sadly most Caribbean destinations only have one or two wrecks to dive. It's really more about reef diving. And as you said, it is a micro heaven.
You probably needed to relax, go much slower and see the shrimp, seahorses, eels, and such. All difference kinds at each spot. But true not many big fish, which is why Cozumel is still my #1 place to dive. And my favorite wreck is in Coz too.
But hey, this is a Bonaire thread!

I am following you in Coz in May...if I don't see something cool, hit me with something until I look.

 

[PK]

Good trip report. I have been trying to figure out where to go for my first caribean dive trip. Everyone says great things about everyplace, it seems. Bonaire seems to be the mecca for so many divers. Too bad it's not the haven I imagined but I'm glad to know what it's really like.

I've heard Turks and Caicos is good.

 

[sillygrendel]

I'll try and weigh in here a bit. Just remember that this is all just my opinion based on a 10 day stay in January!

raxafarian once bubbled...


I've walked thru town late at night and have not felt in danger. There is nobody begging on the street... no street vendors...

has it changed that much? Or have I just been lucky?

I did not fear for myself at any time on Bonaire. And from talking to some of the girls who work there, they felt the same way. It is not violent crime - I think the woman who was injured while her bicycle was stolen was a rare occurance. It is more that petty, and not so petty, theft run rampant and unchecked on the island.

#1 Stay at the Plaza next time. You alreaady know it was a mistake not to do this.

Maybe, but... If you need to stay at one specific resort to make the non-diving aspects of the island fun... Well... Guess I don't have to say any more

#2 The Plaza has a casino and there was night life there on New Years. I think there was a party too, I'll check and come back to this.

No. We stopped at the Plaza on New Years and the gaurd at the gate told us everything was closed and nothing was going on. If that is where everyone was, and I doubt it, it was not publicly accessable. Of course, we got in there at 10 in the evening on New Years Eve... I didn't even occur to me that we'd have trouble finding something going on. Instead we went in to town and everything was closed! One of the strangest sights I've ever seen!!

Maybe I'm picky about food... (and I am) But the food on the island was pretty generally crap. We did not eat at a single place that wasn't recommended by one person or another! (besides julios... But that was because everything else was closed!) When you have 9 nights and 15-20 recommendations and you don't know the tastes of those doing the recommending, you have to roll the dice and try your best. It got to the point near the end of the trip where I was dreading going out to eat, wondering what barely edible dish I'd have to stomach next! Of the places we ate, I would only actually recommend one of them to anyone else (Mona Lisas, which really was quite excellent). For me, the food was probably the most dissapointing aspect of the island.

The nightlife could be described as terrible if you could describe it as nightlife at all... If I had a GF right now, and she dived, Bonaire might not be such a bad place to take her for a relaxing, romantic vacation. (If it weren't for the food ut: ) I think part of our problem with the nightlife, I don't know if o-ring feels the same way, was that for the first week I was just in shock of what wasn't there. Also that things move at a fairly slow pace, which is refreshing in a lot of ways, but also means it takes longer to catch on to whats happening.

Remember... No place is perfect for everything!!! Any good trip report should point out the good as well as the bad.

The diving was good. Of the places I've been (NC, Keys & GBR) Bonaire has the healthiest coral life I've seen. It really is quite good. On the other hand, it loses in terms of numbers of 'visible' fish. I'm swimming along the reef and I look out in front of me into the blue.... I don't notice many fish, schools of fish, or larger fish. You can still find plenty lurking in the holes and crevices of the coral and sponges, as well as shrimp, crabs, nudibranches and stars - I didn't see any seahorses but I was searching the soft coral for them. Some things seem to like to come out at night, which is fun. The second reef on "The Lake" and "Alice in Wonderland" have some pretty spectacular coral formations. The 'coralscape' is amazing in itself apart from what it contains.

Hee... The pufferfish seem to be attracted to the lights at night! That or are positively curious about what you're doing! Whenever I spotted one it would swim up withing a foot or so of me and look with those strange big eyes bobbing up and down... (Yes... I was careful not to blind them!) The starfish come out at night and coat the sponges. The urchins come out and coat the coral. Some of the sponges seem to glow gold at night but are almost unnoticiable during the day. All the night dives were quite a bit of fun! I also quite enjoyed some of the shore exits. Kind of fun to hover just about the sand in 7-8' of water and see the water just above you and the white sand just below! (surging back and forth with the occasional flounder, chunk of coral, fish, seasnake, etc...) Sometimes it seems that all the coral on the reefs almost makes for too much... It can't all hold your attention at once and at times seems to blur together unless there are odd structures or other bits to catch your attention!

The diving is exceptionally easy and there is very little variety in the many dive sites. I have to admit that after a couple of days I was itching to do something a bit more challenging... I also would have liked to see some wrecks to break up some the reef diving. I think on our 3rd or 4th day of diving we went to see the tugboat "New York" Which is this little tiny old tugboat lying upside down in 100' of sand on Edens Rubble. It was nice to see something different. It wasn't a long dive because there wasn't much to see besides the tiny tug, but I think it ranks on one of the top 7 of the trip I would guess. In my limited experience, my favorite dive to date though is still in NC!!

Most of the Dutch are pretty cool. And they sure have some damn fine women! And their singing... Well... That should not be missed.

The little fuzzy bastards are pretty cute. The southern half of the island was flooded for sea salt harvesting which made for a fairly interesting & colorful landscape. There seemed to be all sorts of abandoned construction projects on the island, and a couple of abandoned resorts... Which struck me as fairly odd... It also struck me as odd that 5000 people have left the island in the last 5-10 years, reducing the population to 2/3 of what is it was 5 years ago.