Am I Missing Out?

[CanadaDan]

Your 'wish list' made me think of Fantasy Island in Roatan (I've never been but friends have and said it was nice enough) I put in my bookmark folder for future trip research.

Unlimited and unscheduled shore dives all day... you can book boat dives if you want but otherwise you can just grab a tank and walk into the ocean. No guides needed.

I'm sure there are other places like this in a variety of places.

 

[Mr. Sunday]

I love Bonaire for all the same reasons and plan to continue to return. But diving in the Coral Triangle is too good not to explore in my opinion.

Lots of great diving to be had the world over. Life experiences too.

 

[drrich2]

Sounds to me like what you like is independent shore diving, and Bonaire is the best regional option to make that easy. I agree, and Bonaire is my favorite dive destination. But my only dive destination? No way! Though it was my first few Caribbean trips!

Bonaire is great for what it is, but it doesn't have the best of everything. It has nice sloping reef wall, especially way south, but if you branch out, you may find...

1.) Better reefs - as in Little Cayman's Bloody Ball Wall/Jackson Bight region, or the outer atolls of Belize via live-aboard. More variety.

2.) Some big grouper (aside from the few skittish tiger grouper I've seen in Bonaire, or the little ones like coneys) - Cozumel, Little Cayman, Belize, the Florida Keys.

3.) Sharks. Bonaire is not known for them, and I like to see some.

4.) Ease - live-aboard diving is typically easier than shore diving Bonaire.

5.) New species - whether it's kelp and sea lions out of California, splendid toadfish in Cozumel, the sharks and grouper I already mentioned, sea stars in some places...it's nice to see something different.

6.) A new topside experience. I liked St. Croix. No, the shore diving didn't match Bonaire, nor the reef Little Cayman, but St. Croix is its own special kind of overall funky, and the family had topside fun we wouldn't have had on those other 2.

As others mentioned, some places offer afternoon dive boat trips. Oh, and yeah, Curacao's a good place. Curacao Trip Research Notes
Curacao Trip Report with SB Surge Jan. 2019

 

[ljwillia]

My husband and I also hate being on the clock during vacation. That is one of the reasons we love Bonaire. Sipping coffee on the porch until WE decide we're ready to go do something. Are you missing out? Maybe. Before we discovered Bonaire our favorite place was Cozumel. But we've tried Roatan (CoCoview) and Utila. We've enjoyed all of the adventures but look forward to the ease of Bonaire

I noticed you are from NY. If you are boat diving, the saving grace for us is the time zone difference. It's easier to meet the boat when it's 1 hour later our time While you're still diving with people we may not know, we've met some really great folks over the years. We stick with the smaller operators so it's not quite so crowded.

Wherever you choose to go it will be a great adventure!

 

[undrwtr1]

Excellent input, as always. I guess that when you have limited vacations you want to go somewhere where you know what to expect and know what you are getting for your money. I know we will head elsewhere once our youngest heads off to college, but it is hard to beat the allure of laid-back Bonaire diving. Like going to a restaurant you like rather than spending $ on that new place in town. We are trying to figure out availability next year, but I think we may try something different - Little Cayman or Cocoview.

 

[rmorgan]

Gerry, if you get serious about Little Cayman, I agree with Damselfish that it's well worth considering Pirate's Point vs. LCBR. PP very small, has a great view, is food-focused, and you don't leave for the boat until about 9:00 (it's a short van ride, not a big deal to us). You can putter on your own if you want but there are usually two DMs, so "groups" are loose and small. As to Little, there are basically three operators on the island (LCBR, Pirate's, and Southern Cross, all three have outstanding dive operations) and so there's none of the craziness of Grand, the sites are a little less shopworn, and the Wall is all that. You might consider adding Saba to your list; it's a very different island, and the diving's different too--pinnacles, e.g.

But Bonaire's where we hope to be diving when we're 80 . . . and where we're headed in a month. Not bored yet!

 

[maadJurguer]

Sounds to me like what you like is independent shore diving, and Bonaire is the best regional option to make that easy. I agree, and Bonaire is my favorite dive destination. But my only dive destination? No way! Though it was my first few Caribbean trips!

Bonaire is great for what it is, but it doesn't have the best of everything. It has nice sloping reef wall, especially way south, but if you branch out, you may find...

1.) Better reefs - as in Little Cayman's Bloody Ball Wall/Jackson Bight region, or the outer atolls of Belize via live-aboard. More variety.

2.) Some big grouper (aside from the few skittish tiger grouper I've seen in Bonaire, or the little ones like coneys) - Cozumel, Little Cayman, Belize, the Florida Keys.

3.) Sharks. Bonaire is not known for them, and I like to see some.

4.) Ease - live-aboard diving is typically easier than shore diving Bonaire.

5.) New species - whether it's kelp and sea lions out of California, splendid toadfish in Cozumel, the sharks and grouper I already mentioned, sea stars in some places...it's nice to see something different.

6.) A new topside experience. I liked St. Croix. No, the shore diving didn't match Bonaire, nor the reef Little Cayman, but St. Croix is its own special kind of overall funky, and the family had topside fun we wouldn't have had on those other 2.

As others mentioned, some places offer afternoon dive boat trips. Oh, and yeah, Curacao's a good place. Curacao Trip Research Notes
Curacao Trip Report with SB Surge Jan. 2019

Not to hijack the thread, but can you expand on the St. Croix experience and the special kind of overall funky? So intrigued.

 

[drrich2]

Kind of hard to describe. I went in Summer 2017 -
St. Croix Research Report Aug. 2017 - St. Croix Research Report Aug. 2017 The trip report sums things up, but look at the last post in the thread since there've been changes and another poster listed them.

It's got shore diving, but Davis Bay and especially Cane Bay have really long swim outs. Frederiksted Pier is a unique experience; it's huge and long.

The jeep tour with Tan Tan tours was pretty wild; expensive, but the guy showed us a lot on our tour. Including the (non-alcoholic) beer-drinking pigs. Our daughter liked feeding French fries to tarpon off the Christiansted boardwalk, and playing on the little sandy beach over a Protestant Cay. Diving on the left side of the road is 'different.' Didn't see many obese people at all.

When I went, you could either do 2 tanks on a morning trip, or an afternoon trip, or both. I did both to wrap up my boat diving fast so I could spend some time with my family (and minimize the dreaded wifely stink-eye, with 'I thought you were going to spend more time with us').

 

[divezonescuba]

Cayman Brac is Bonaire on steroids. Shore dive when you want where you want and how long you want. There are boat cuts, docks, and ladders. The accessibility to the water is way easier than the average Bonaire shore dive. The reefs are more varied and the visibility is way better.

The downside is it’s somewhat more expensive than Bonaire and there is no unlimited nitrox diving. You also take a risk shore diving in Dec-feb time frame. During that period, you may be restricted to boat diving on the south side.

 

[lmorin]

The tactic my wife and I used before buying a condo on Bonaire was to go numerous places including multiple locations in the Florida Keys, Turks/Caicos (2), San Salvador in the Bahamas (2), a live aboard out of Belize, Curacao, Cozumel (2), Roatan (2@CocoView) and Little Cayman@LCBR. Yes, it is worth going to multiple locations because each has its own special qualities.

On the other hand, because we now do almost all our diving on Bonaire and have Bari Reef right out front of our condo, we have learned that every dive is different. If you look for sameness, you will probably find it. But if you take the time to repeatedly investigate an individual dive site in detail, from 1 ft depth to 130 ft, you will, guaranteed, learn that each site has many many navigation routes with different things to find and see along each route. But you have to look, especially for the small fish or shrimp which are all over the place, but not really visible without looking closely. And you have to learn and search for the individual niches in which the various species live. We've been diving Bari Reef for 15 yrs now and are still finding novel and exciting organisms almost every dive. It really depends on what you find interesting. For example, I like diving a foot or two from shore and a foot from the surface, spending 2 hr looking for 1 1/2" gobies or blennies. Lots of people probably wouldn't even consider that diving. That's OK, but I'm happy doing it.

There are countless diving options geographically or locally. Enjoy those you like; ignore those you don't.