rottielover
Contributor
Hi all,
Sorry for the long delay, after returning from Bonaire, I had a pile of work on my desk that went from the desk to the roof!
I started out writing a long trip report in Word, planning on copy/pasting into a post here, but then I realized that I really couldn't say much about Bonaire that hasn't already been said before, so instead I'll just give my random thoughts about my trip, and hope that others get something out of it...
Random Thought 1 - Check for local holiday's when booking your trips
None of us in the group realized what a big holiday Good Friday is on Bonaire, until we're all standing around downtown, wondering why all the shops are pad-locked and the island is locked down tighter than a drum. Turns out that Good Friday is a major holiday on Bonaire, and downtown was a ghosttown... Thankfully, a couple in our group know a local, and our entire group went on guided island tour for our "no diving" day! It was a total blast!!!
Random Thought 2 - My deepest apologies to Susan Porter
Susan, I don't have your email address, but I know you read the boards, and I wanted to apologize. Susan stopped by Buddy one morning too meet my wife and I, and I'm not a morning person at all. I could hardly remember my own name when we met, and I'm sorry we didn't get a chance to chat a bit more.
Random Thought 3 - The Red-Eye
This was our first trip outside the USA, and I know many people have said that the red-eye flight is the way too go, however, I highly suggest you think though other flight options if you cannot sleep on a plane... I can't and we started our day the 30th at 7:00AM local (6:00 AM Bonaire) and we arrived in Bonaire the next day at 5:50 AM Bonaire local. I did not sleep a wink between. However, my wife had the only working pair of Bose noise headphones and one of those neck pillow's and she was able to get a few hours of sleep in. So next time, I'm either going to A) buy a pair of those headphones for me, or B) seriously consider other flights, even if they are a bit more hassle, as jet-lag really sucks you down.
Random Thoughts on diving
My wife and I ended up only doing 1 "real" shore dive, which was a specially arranged night dive at the salt pier. Thank you too the Buddy Dive staff, and our trip leaders for getting this worked out. We almost had a problem with the security lady who was waiting to meet our group at the pier, she wanted to see our ID's, and of course not one of the group had brought our passports along, those were safely locked away in the room safes. Fortunatly our local DM's were able to smooth things over, since we had all shown our passports to the buddy dive staff who had written down our passport numbers on the forms. We had such a large group (26) and so many of us wanted to do this dive ($25 each extra btw) that we split into 2 "teams". Team 1 did an afternoon dive and team 2 (of which I was a member) did a twilight/night dive. Many of our team, including me, felt that this was not a good dive, for various reasons. However, team 1's report was "spectacular dive"! So I have to conclude that if you want to do the salt pier, try and go for a day time dive there.
The rest of our diving were boat dives and shore dives from buddy's dock. Our package included 6 boat dives, so the Buddy Staff worked with our group leaders and arranged for our group to do 2 tank boat dives over 3 days (Sun. Tues. Wens.) The other days we spent doing dives at Buddy's Reef.
The Hooker - As a first timer, if your planning on going to the Hilma Hooker, I highly recommend you do this on a boat dive. Many of our group did this as a shore dive and have the "war wounds" to show from the entry. By all accounts the shore entry should not have been that bad, but on this day for some reason, there were many scrapes and brusies. My AOW group opted to do this from the boat, and It was a very nice boat dive. I'm also of the opinion that you'll get more bottom time doing this as a boat dive, since your not using your gas swiming out over the reef, but rather you get dropped nearly on top of the wreck. Our max depth on this dive was 95 feet (I even tried the "shove your gauges into the sand at the bow trick, trying to get my first 100 foot dive, but I could only ever get 95 on the computers). I am told that another group that went later in the day managed to get 99 feet on thier computers, maybe a tide thing? We saw a hudge tarpon and a giant barracuda hanging out around the wreck, I'm told that it's unusual to see such a large barracuda there.
Many of our group noticed that the sites around Bonaire seemed to be really good for fish, but not so great for corals, with the exception of buddy's reef. We also noticed that sites off Klien Bonaire seemed really good for corals, but not so great on fish. We never did figure out why, or if it was just "luck".
Other randomness -
Buddy's has a nice dive setup, and it's well thought out. If you dive Nitrox you won't have to worry about bringing an analyzer along, as Buddy's has 3 seperate places you can analyze your tanks (unless your REALLY worried about it). All the nitrox at buddies is 32% (most of our fills came out more around 31%), and seems to be the perfect mix for the diving around Bonaire. I would also suggest that if you plan on diving air to save money, you can purchase 1 tank ($9) for doing the hooker dive, as our profile on that dive would have sent us into deco on the air tables (probably would not have if your diving a computer), where as we were well withing the EAN32 table limites and will within our computers limits. I should note that our dive on the hooker had several "firsts" for my wife and I. It was our deepest dive to date, the first time we've ever dove a big wreck, and the first time we ever "busted" the air RDP tables on any dive. All of our prior dives, even on nitrox, were all well within the air RDP limits.
I did take a bit of offense one day... My wife picked up a nitrox tank with a 24% in it on one of our shore dives. So I told her to let one of the staff know and get another tank. (Name Withheld) told her, "use it, I don't want to waste a fill". Well that's when I got my hairs standing up on the back of my neck and injected myself into the conversation. I let him know that I paid a lot of money to get my butt too his resort, and I also paid even more for the unlimited Nitrox package. We wanted 32% and that's what we expected to get. I then told him, that if he wanted to use it, or have someone else use it that was fine, but that I wanted a tank with 32% in it. He took the tank back and let us get another. Now before I get 1000 flames for doing this, I just want to say that, yes I know it would not have hurt anything to do that dive with that mix, and perhapse I was out of line a little bit... But it was one of those things where I guess you had to be there to hear the tone in his voice, and I felt like, "damnit, I paid for this, I should get what I paid for". - flame away
Saftey Note about Buddy's - All the floors are smooth tile, rooms, walkways, steps, etc. We had several members of the group that slipped and fell (one hurting himself pretty good, but is OK). BE EXTRA EXTRA carefull when your walking around and the floors are wet. One day it sprinkled rain a little and several people fell.
Our room at Buddy's was pretty nice, and was clean and ready when we arrived. Most of the rest of our group were not so lucky. Most of the rooms were not ready (which was to be expected) but our group leaders were given the keys to thier room, told it was ready, and went up to find a filthy mess (I won't describe it here, I'd like people NOT to puke when reading my report). Additionally thier A/C was broken and the electrical panel in the room caught fire (which was quickly put out). By the 3rd day the Electrical panel was fixed and the A/C replaced, but the fresh coat of paint got on some shirts and pants when no-one told them they had repainted the room.
So I'm very thankful we didn't have all those problems, my trip report's tone would be much different if we had.
Food thoughts -
If your an Ice Tea drinker - Forgetaboutit... The only tea we could find on the island were canned and bottled tea's (which we both hate and refuse to drink) or hot tea's, which were good. So if you want Ice Tea, your going to have to find a way to make it yourself in the room. BTW, THANK GOD someone mentioned about taking powder gatoraid mix with you! I took one of those little containers that makes 5 Gal's and used nearly all of it while there. The water is very good right out of the tap.
Sorry for the long delay, after returning from Bonaire, I had a pile of work on my desk that went from the desk to the roof!
I started out writing a long trip report in Word, planning on copy/pasting into a post here, but then I realized that I really couldn't say much about Bonaire that hasn't already been said before, so instead I'll just give my random thoughts about my trip, and hope that others get something out of it...
Random Thought 1 - Check for local holiday's when booking your trips
None of us in the group realized what a big holiday Good Friday is on Bonaire, until we're all standing around downtown, wondering why all the shops are pad-locked and the island is locked down tighter than a drum. Turns out that Good Friday is a major holiday on Bonaire, and downtown was a ghosttown... Thankfully, a couple in our group know a local, and our entire group went on guided island tour for our "no diving" day! It was a total blast!!!
Random Thought 2 - My deepest apologies to Susan Porter
Susan, I don't have your email address, but I know you read the boards, and I wanted to apologize. Susan stopped by Buddy one morning too meet my wife and I, and I'm not a morning person at all. I could hardly remember my own name when we met, and I'm sorry we didn't get a chance to chat a bit more.
Random Thought 3 - The Red-Eye
This was our first trip outside the USA, and I know many people have said that the red-eye flight is the way too go, however, I highly suggest you think though other flight options if you cannot sleep on a plane... I can't and we started our day the 30th at 7:00AM local (6:00 AM Bonaire) and we arrived in Bonaire the next day at 5:50 AM Bonaire local. I did not sleep a wink between. However, my wife had the only working pair of Bose noise headphones and one of those neck pillow's and she was able to get a few hours of sleep in. So next time, I'm either going to A) buy a pair of those headphones for me, or B) seriously consider other flights, even if they are a bit more hassle, as jet-lag really sucks you down.
Random Thoughts on diving
My wife and I ended up only doing 1 "real" shore dive, which was a specially arranged night dive at the salt pier. Thank you too the Buddy Dive staff, and our trip leaders for getting this worked out. We almost had a problem with the security lady who was waiting to meet our group at the pier, she wanted to see our ID's, and of course not one of the group had brought our passports along, those were safely locked away in the room safes. Fortunatly our local DM's were able to smooth things over, since we had all shown our passports to the buddy dive staff who had written down our passport numbers on the forms. We had such a large group (26) and so many of us wanted to do this dive ($25 each extra btw) that we split into 2 "teams". Team 1 did an afternoon dive and team 2 (of which I was a member) did a twilight/night dive. Many of our team, including me, felt that this was not a good dive, for various reasons. However, team 1's report was "spectacular dive"! So I have to conclude that if you want to do the salt pier, try and go for a day time dive there.
The rest of our diving were boat dives and shore dives from buddy's dock. Our package included 6 boat dives, so the Buddy Staff worked with our group leaders and arranged for our group to do 2 tank boat dives over 3 days (Sun. Tues. Wens.) The other days we spent doing dives at Buddy's Reef.
The Hooker - As a first timer, if your planning on going to the Hilma Hooker, I highly recommend you do this on a boat dive. Many of our group did this as a shore dive and have the "war wounds" to show from the entry. By all accounts the shore entry should not have been that bad, but on this day for some reason, there were many scrapes and brusies. My AOW group opted to do this from the boat, and It was a very nice boat dive. I'm also of the opinion that you'll get more bottom time doing this as a boat dive, since your not using your gas swiming out over the reef, but rather you get dropped nearly on top of the wreck. Our max depth on this dive was 95 feet (I even tried the "shove your gauges into the sand at the bow trick, trying to get my first 100 foot dive, but I could only ever get 95 on the computers). I am told that another group that went later in the day managed to get 99 feet on thier computers, maybe a tide thing? We saw a hudge tarpon and a giant barracuda hanging out around the wreck, I'm told that it's unusual to see such a large barracuda there.
Many of our group noticed that the sites around Bonaire seemed to be really good for fish, but not so great for corals, with the exception of buddy's reef. We also noticed that sites off Klien Bonaire seemed really good for corals, but not so great on fish. We never did figure out why, or if it was just "luck".
Other randomness -
Buddy's has a nice dive setup, and it's well thought out. If you dive Nitrox you won't have to worry about bringing an analyzer along, as Buddy's has 3 seperate places you can analyze your tanks (unless your REALLY worried about it). All the nitrox at buddies is 32% (most of our fills came out more around 31%), and seems to be the perfect mix for the diving around Bonaire. I would also suggest that if you plan on diving air to save money, you can purchase 1 tank ($9) for doing the hooker dive, as our profile on that dive would have sent us into deco on the air tables (probably would not have if your diving a computer), where as we were well withing the EAN32 table limites and will within our computers limits. I should note that our dive on the hooker had several "firsts" for my wife and I. It was our deepest dive to date, the first time we've ever dove a big wreck, and the first time we ever "busted" the air RDP tables on any dive. All of our prior dives, even on nitrox, were all well within the air RDP limits.
I did take a bit of offense one day... My wife picked up a nitrox tank with a 24% in it on one of our shore dives. So I told her to let one of the staff know and get another tank. (Name Withheld) told her, "use it, I don't want to waste a fill". Well that's when I got my hairs standing up on the back of my neck and injected myself into the conversation. I let him know that I paid a lot of money to get my butt too his resort, and I also paid even more for the unlimited Nitrox package. We wanted 32% and that's what we expected to get. I then told him, that if he wanted to use it, or have someone else use it that was fine, but that I wanted a tank with 32% in it. He took the tank back and let us get another. Now before I get 1000 flames for doing this, I just want to say that, yes I know it would not have hurt anything to do that dive with that mix, and perhapse I was out of line a little bit... But it was one of those things where I guess you had to be there to hear the tone in his voice, and I felt like, "damnit, I paid for this, I should get what I paid for". - flame away
Saftey Note about Buddy's - All the floors are smooth tile, rooms, walkways, steps, etc. We had several members of the group that slipped and fell (one hurting himself pretty good, but is OK). BE EXTRA EXTRA carefull when your walking around and the floors are wet. One day it sprinkled rain a little and several people fell.
Our room at Buddy's was pretty nice, and was clean and ready when we arrived. Most of the rest of our group were not so lucky. Most of the rooms were not ready (which was to be expected) but our group leaders were given the keys to thier room, told it was ready, and went up to find a filthy mess (I won't describe it here, I'd like people NOT to puke when reading my report). Additionally thier A/C was broken and the electrical panel in the room caught fire (which was quickly put out). By the 3rd day the Electrical panel was fixed and the A/C replaced, but the fresh coat of paint got on some shirts and pants when no-one told them they had repainted the room.
So I'm very thankful we didn't have all those problems, my trip report's tone would be much different if we had.
Food thoughts -
If your an Ice Tea drinker - Forgetaboutit... The only tea we could find on the island were canned and bottled tea's (which we both hate and refuse to drink) or hot tea's, which were good. So if you want Ice Tea, your going to have to find a way to make it yourself in the room. BTW, THANK GOD someone mentioned about taking powder gatoraid mix with you! I took one of those little containers that makes 5 Gal's and used nearly all of it while there. The water is very good right out of the tap.
I did not drive at all this trip, our room mates were much better at driving a stick and were nice enough to drive us around with them.
