My new dive buddy/wife, @ebb&flow, and I returned to Bonaire with our now usual group of travel friends for a two week stay at Den Laman. Last year’s stay ended with a big surprise from my wife when she said “Maybe we should come back for 2 weeks next year” to which I replied “Booking it right now!”.
We flew from Boston to Bonaire, via Miami, on American Airlines. We had originally made reservations with United to fly out of Providence. This changed when they moved the second leg of our return flight to leaving Newark the next day at 5 PM. They had also changed all of their flights into Boston so that they were all overnights, as well. Our flight was timely and smooth, arriving in Bonaire around 2:45 local time.
Our automatic truck was rented from Prins, thank you @drrich2, as I can’t drive a stick for too long due to a bad knee. After collecting our bags, we followed the directions that they had left for us on WhatsApp, found our truck and took off.
Next stop, Den Laman, where we were greeted by one of their representatives who let us in and gave us the particulars. We were staying in Parrotfish this year, and it was looking a bit tired. The woman who met us explained that there had been issues with the AC in several of the units, causing leaking. You could still see water marks on the walls, and breaks in the walls where the AC units had been removed and remounted. While it was still a really nice unit, it just looked like it needed a good deep clean and some freshening up. Our friends were in the same unit as last year, Yellowtail Snapper, and felt the same.
We decided to wait until later to check out Zhung Kong Grocercy, so we started at Van Den Tweels. We discovered some good vegetarian/vegan options in the frozen counter of the produce section. Zhung Kong was very convenient and had some great options for us as well. As a side note, there are two container units that are set up for recycling at Zhung Kong.
We planned on eating most of our meals at the condo, but ended up eating out more than we expected That being said, we had some wonderful food out and about, most of the locations having been suggested in the “best restaurants on Bonaire” thread. The hits were Joe’s, Cactus Blue, @scubadada’s recommended Pita Madre and Pizza Mare Bonaire, and the surprise find of Tandoor Palace. Breeze ‘n Bites was a good pick this year. Last year we found it just ok, but convenient. The mixed results was Yhanni’s Arepas. My wife really liked hers but mine was ok. I think it was just because of what I chose, so it’s on the “give it another try” list. Also, Drinks at Buddy Dive. Good but not great. The not worth going backs were Stoked food truck and Ocean Oasis. Ocean Oasis was 2 fold. The food was just ok, and the lighting made the chicken appear undercooked. It wasn’t, but I kept second guessing it.
Top side activities were minimal, but fun. After 2 previous trips I finally made it to the donkey sanctuary! It’s a great one-and-done. We also went to Boko Onima, which had some other worldly scenery as well as some caves with Indian inscriptions, and to Cruz Seru Largu for amazing southern views of the island.
Now, the diving! We only did 23 dives, 12 of which were on the house reef, Bari. Of the rest, 8 were boat dives and 3 were shore dives.
We knew we would be doing at least a few on Bari, but it was better than we remembered. Yes, we saw the effects of SCTLD and bleaching, and it is terrible. That being said, the diving is still good. It seemed more fishy to us. We saw 3 types of filefish on Bari, 3 scorpionfish, goldentail, spotted and sharptail eel. On the last day of diving we found the resident octopus on 2 different dives. We discovered, early on, that a dive around 4:30-5 PM would be filled with fish. So, this became a group favorite.
The other shore dives were Pink Beach, Salt Pier and Tolo. All three were fantastic! Pink Beach was our first octopus find. We came across 2 within a few feet of each other. This was also a fantastic reef dive. Very different than the other dives I’ve done on the island, which have mainly been central and north. Salt Pier never disappoints with eels, turtles and another 2 scorpionfish. My wife loved the shallows of Tolo. Very different topography than what she is used to.
For boat dives, we did 6 with Dive Friends and 2 with Bonaire East Side. Our experience with Dive Friends was mixed. They pick you up on the Sand Dollar dock, which is shared with Den Laman, for all of the boat dives. On the first that we did I asked the local person if we should start getting our wetsuits on before the boat arrived I was told that we would have plenty of time. We didn’t. It was a rush to get everything together as it was a very short ride to the first dive. This was on Tiki, which is their large boat. We had about 20 divers, all of whom were to follow one DM. Fortunately, we broke into 2 groups for the second dive, which was much better. The other 4 dives were on one of the small boats, and there were only 8 divers. This made for a nicest dive of all of them. We hung back behind the group, which didn’t seem to bother the DM at the back of the group at all. One thing that did bother us is that they would ask for requests, but come up with some reason why they couldn’t do the site that was requested. So, we dove where they wanted to go.
Bonaire East Coast is a whole different type of diving. Amber, our DM, was great! We did Funchi for our first dive. Quite a few turtles (one of which was huge), a large green moray, and an eagle ray. The blue water assent was interesting, but fun. Our second dive combined White Hole and Turtle City. There were at least 30 tarpon swimming around White Hole. I found a VERY large porcupine fish under one of the ledges. We then ascended to “the bridge”, which is a field of sea fans that starts at around 8’ depth. It took about 10 minutes to traverse, dropping to 23’ at Turtle City. I thought there were a lot of turtles on Funchi until we got here. At one point there were at least 75 turtles in view, mostly to our left. This was an area Amber referred to as Downtown Turtle City. This dive ended with a large hogfish.
I was very glad that I wore a patch on this set of dives. Even with that, I started getting a bit queasy on the second ride out, and again on the way back in.
I just made our reservations for Den Laman and with Prins for a 2 week trip next year.
Erik
We flew from Boston to Bonaire, via Miami, on American Airlines. We had originally made reservations with United to fly out of Providence. This changed when they moved the second leg of our return flight to leaving Newark the next day at 5 PM. They had also changed all of their flights into Boston so that they were all overnights, as well. Our flight was timely and smooth, arriving in Bonaire around 2:45 local time.
Our automatic truck was rented from Prins, thank you @drrich2, as I can’t drive a stick for too long due to a bad knee. After collecting our bags, we followed the directions that they had left for us on WhatsApp, found our truck and took off.
Next stop, Den Laman, where we were greeted by one of their representatives who let us in and gave us the particulars. We were staying in Parrotfish this year, and it was looking a bit tired. The woman who met us explained that there had been issues with the AC in several of the units, causing leaking. You could still see water marks on the walls, and breaks in the walls where the AC units had been removed and remounted. While it was still a really nice unit, it just looked like it needed a good deep clean and some freshening up. Our friends were in the same unit as last year, Yellowtail Snapper, and felt the same.
We decided to wait until later to check out Zhung Kong Grocercy, so we started at Van Den Tweels. We discovered some good vegetarian/vegan options in the frozen counter of the produce section. Zhung Kong was very convenient and had some great options for us as well. As a side note, there are two container units that are set up for recycling at Zhung Kong.
We planned on eating most of our meals at the condo, but ended up eating out more than we expected That being said, we had some wonderful food out and about, most of the locations having been suggested in the “best restaurants on Bonaire” thread. The hits were Joe’s, Cactus Blue, @scubadada’s recommended Pita Madre and Pizza Mare Bonaire, and the surprise find of Tandoor Palace. Breeze ‘n Bites was a good pick this year. Last year we found it just ok, but convenient. The mixed results was Yhanni’s Arepas. My wife really liked hers but mine was ok. I think it was just because of what I chose, so it’s on the “give it another try” list. Also, Drinks at Buddy Dive. Good but not great. The not worth going backs were Stoked food truck and Ocean Oasis. Ocean Oasis was 2 fold. The food was just ok, and the lighting made the chicken appear undercooked. It wasn’t, but I kept second guessing it.
Top side activities were minimal, but fun. After 2 previous trips I finally made it to the donkey sanctuary! It’s a great one-and-done. We also went to Boko Onima, which had some other worldly scenery as well as some caves with Indian inscriptions, and to Cruz Seru Largu for amazing southern views of the island.
Now, the diving! We only did 23 dives, 12 of which were on the house reef, Bari. Of the rest, 8 were boat dives and 3 were shore dives.
We knew we would be doing at least a few on Bari, but it was better than we remembered. Yes, we saw the effects of SCTLD and bleaching, and it is terrible. That being said, the diving is still good. It seemed more fishy to us. We saw 3 types of filefish on Bari, 3 scorpionfish, goldentail, spotted and sharptail eel. On the last day of diving we found the resident octopus on 2 different dives. We discovered, early on, that a dive around 4:30-5 PM would be filled with fish. So, this became a group favorite.
The other shore dives were Pink Beach, Salt Pier and Tolo. All three were fantastic! Pink Beach was our first octopus find. We came across 2 within a few feet of each other. This was also a fantastic reef dive. Very different than the other dives I’ve done on the island, which have mainly been central and north. Salt Pier never disappoints with eels, turtles and another 2 scorpionfish. My wife loved the shallows of Tolo. Very different topography than what she is used to.
For boat dives, we did 6 with Dive Friends and 2 with Bonaire East Side. Our experience with Dive Friends was mixed. They pick you up on the Sand Dollar dock, which is shared with Den Laman, for all of the boat dives. On the first that we did I asked the local person if we should start getting our wetsuits on before the boat arrived I was told that we would have plenty of time. We didn’t. It was a rush to get everything together as it was a very short ride to the first dive. This was on Tiki, which is their large boat. We had about 20 divers, all of whom were to follow one DM. Fortunately, we broke into 2 groups for the second dive, which was much better. The other 4 dives were on one of the small boats, and there were only 8 divers. This made for a nicest dive of all of them. We hung back behind the group, which didn’t seem to bother the DM at the back of the group at all. One thing that did bother us is that they would ask for requests, but come up with some reason why they couldn’t do the site that was requested. So, we dove where they wanted to go.
Bonaire East Coast is a whole different type of diving. Amber, our DM, was great! We did Funchi for our first dive. Quite a few turtles (one of which was huge), a large green moray, and an eagle ray. The blue water assent was interesting, but fun. Our second dive combined White Hole and Turtle City. There were at least 30 tarpon swimming around White Hole. I found a VERY large porcupine fish under one of the ledges. We then ascended to “the bridge”, which is a field of sea fans that starts at around 8’ depth. It took about 10 minutes to traverse, dropping to 23’ at Turtle City. I thought there were a lot of turtles on Funchi until we got here. At one point there were at least 75 turtles in view, mostly to our left. This was an area Amber referred to as Downtown Turtle City. This dive ended with a large hogfish.
I was very glad that I wore a patch on this set of dives. Even with that, I started getting a bit queasy on the second ride out, and again on the way back in.
I just made our reservations for Den Laman and with Prins for a 2 week trip next year.
Erik
