@CraigBHB - apologies in advance for the stream-of-consciousness style.
keep in mind I'm a relatively new diver. I did about 40 dives in Bonaire over the 3 weeks I was there last December (did my OW checkout dives the first 2 days). My experience in Bonaire was a week at Divi Dive resort doing boat dives and 2 weeks at 2 other hotels diving with my shop and instructor that certified me. I did about another 10 dives over 3 days in Bayahibe and ended up doing 2 dives in Punta Cana. I was in DR in March so can't really comment on the time of year aspect. Overall the diving in DR was not as good as Bonaire but the diving in Bayahibe was still worth dragging my gear down for and glad I did it. Scuba Fun was a great shop and I left feeling like friends for life. They can transport you down and back each day from Punta Cana but it's like an hour to an hour and a half each way if I remember correctly. I chose to rent a little apartment and stay in Bayahibe for 3 days before meeting my friends at an AI in PC. One day while we were at the resort we booked a trip with their whole family and Scuba Fun transferred us all down to Byahibe, took us out, had the kids and grandparents snorkel, while I dove and my buddy and his wife did 2 discover scuba dives, and then lunch on an island. All in all a great day.
Bayahibe is a great little town. Easy to walk around and find good food and drinks. Great locals beach with lots of culture. It was about a 10 minute walk from my apartment at the back edge of the town to the shop downtown and the restaurant/bar area. Boarding the boats was unique for me, there was a small beach where all the boats for the dive shops backed up to and you boarded via a ladder after a couple of steps through the water. I think there were 3 shops in town so it wasn't a long process. I would meet at the Scuba Fun shop each morning at about 8, let them know I was there and drop my gear, walk over to a little shop and grab some coffee and come back. Once everyone else had their rental gear fitted, they would load our gear in a trailer behind an ATV and would take it down to the beach. The divers walk the couple blocks down to the beach, grab your bags, and board the boat and you're off. Reverse that at the end of the day. They let me rinse my gear there and leave it hanging in their storage area so I didnt have to drag it back and forth each day. These were bigger boats that held about 20ish people.
There were a few sites I wanted to do in Bayahibe that I didn't get to do but I did 2 fun wrecks and a bunch of other sites and a night dive. Some good shallow dives along with a couple of deeper dives. IIRC one of the wrecks was at about ~100 ft. We did a swim-through of that which was cool. Good sealife overall. Plenty of fish and creatures and healthy reefs. One day I wanted to do some afternoon diving so they sent me and their DM out in a little runabout with another guy manning the motor and staying on board and just the two of us did a couple of dives. That was really fun too.
I really enjoyed the small-town local vibe and the easiness of that. In fact, I enjoyed it so much that, when I go to Cozumel next month, I decided to mimic my Byahibe trip by staying in an Airbnb several blocks back from downtown and pick a local dive shop for the first week and then move to an AI and use their in-house shop for the second week.
I met several other divers who were staying in Bayahibe and we all became friends and ended up in PC around the same time. We ended up doing a 2 tank morning dive together up there. Not the best of experiences with the dive op (don't recall their name but could figure it out) but overall it was still a valuable experience. Much rougher waters up north on the Atlantic side. The first dive we did was fairly far offshore and we went down to about 80-90 feet where there were tons of nurse and black tip reef sharks. That was my first time seeing sharks while diving. One came right at me and turned about 5 ft from me. GAH. lol. Really fun dive though. That dive was also a bit of a drift dive. For our second dive, we did a wreck that was close to a reef and in about 30-50 of water (guessing from memory without referencing my logs). Lots of stuff to swim through in the wreck in addition to some caves in the reef. Very cool. However the surge inside the wreck and caves/swim through was insane. There were multiple times when I couldn't really move much, no matter how hard I kicked, because the surge was so strong and working against me. So with no gloves, I was holding onto metal or rock until I could ride the surge forward and then grab something else and hold on for the back surge. Otherwise, I was getting bashed into stuff by the surge. Definitely came out with a few scrapes but then again I dive in a rashguard and trunks so that's kinda my own dumbass fault. I'd never experienced anything like that. It was intense for me. Was there part of that that wasn't enjoyable, sure, but overall the experience was super unique, especially for a new diver and I took a lot from that! There was one point when we were going up to the wreck, I stopped to look at a really cool metal formation trying to figure out what it was. Only for about 15-20 seconds. I turned around everyone was gone inside the wreck. I happened to spot them through a hole but decided not to follow since I was exactly sure how to get to them and just hung out outside and waited for them. Blame that on the DM though. In general, he seemed a little off to me. Not necessarily paying enough attention to the group as a whole and at one point the group was going to leave someone else behind and I ended up dropping back and budding up with that guy so he didn't get left behind like I did. And while we were on the shark dive I was starting to get close to my NDL, so I went up about 15-20 feet and just hovered there also wanting to consume less air. I didn't want to end the dive early for everyone. He seemed to get irritated at that and kept motioning for me to come back down. So I finally did and then showed him the NDL time on my DC and then he finally got it and left me alone. Yes, I know those two comments contradict each other. On the first dive he was all up in my **** and on the second dive, he wouldn't have noticed I was gone until trying to get back on the boat. weird. Also, when were heading out to the shark dive he was like "oh I got a secret spot in my GPS: and then pulls out his GPS and the batteries were dead :/ I gave him the battery out of my backup Perdix and the spare I had for it so we could get to the dive site. We get there and it's pretty rough and he's like "anyone got a DSMB?" uh no. So they fashioned a float out of a plastic jug and he dragged that along the entire first dive. lol. I mean I applaud the ingenuity but damn I was seriously questioning if I was going to make it back to shore that day. lol.
If I get a chance when Im back by my desktop I'll try and post some pics.
