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My wife and I recently made our tenth trip to Bonaire and, like the last six visits, stayed at Den Laman and dived with Dive Friends.
Reservations: We made all of our reservations online, Sunrentals Bonaire for Den Laman and our truck from PB Car Rental, Dive Friends, and American Airlines. Reservations worked flawlessly.
Travel: Our Philadelphia flights to and from Bonaire worked perfectly, with one stop in Miami. Our return through Miami was unexpectedly smooth, very glad we have Global Entry.
We picked up our truck from PB, based in one of the airport kiosks. Smooth, quick pick up and drop off, truck was fine.
We paid our Bonaire Visitor Entry online and breezed through the check prior to immigration. We obtained our STINAPA park tag online prior to travel also.
Accommodations: We stopped at Sunrentals on the way to Den Laman and picked up the keys to Flyingfish, a one bedroom ocean front on the third floor. We have previously stayed in the very similar Parrotfish and Yellowtail Snapper units on the second floor. Flying Fish was equally nice, a bit more updated, best of all, a great bed. The unit was very nicely supplied and the kitchen well equipped. The large balcony overlooking Klein Bonaire was great, the sunsets did not disappoint.
The park between Den Laman and Chogogo is still under construction. We heard no noise from the site and there was no dust, an improvement over the old dirt parking lot. I’m not sure there is currently public access for diving Bari Reef.
Meals: We were in Bonaire by ourselves this visit and prepared nearly all our own meals. We did most of our shopping at the very conveniently located Zhung Kong. We did get take out dinners twice from the food truck out on the circle, Pita Madre. The chicken gyros and the satay chicken pitas are wonderful, as are the fire fries with jalapeno mayonnaise. The owner/cook, Marnix, is a very friendly guy we met on our visit in 2022.
Dive Operation: Dive Friends Sand Dollar/Den Laman is located between the two resorts. Divers staying at either resort have access to the gear storage room, and to the pier, with easy access to Bari Reef. The pier has a sun shade over the middle setup benches since our last visit.
Dive Friends boats pick up at the pier. We did eight morning boat dives, six on the larger catamaran, Tiki Diver, and two on the smaller Pascal.
Dive Friends is currently one of three locations in the world offering the Recreational Avelo Diver course. We took advantage of the offering and did the certification, two additional guided dives, and then rented gear for three independent dives one day. The Avelo activities are based out of the Retail & Dive Shop, very close to Den Laman. I reported this experience separately Review - Diving the Avelo System
Diving: We had very good weather on this visit, sunny and warm, but cooler, much more pleasant than our last visit in August of 2022. There was some wind and a little rain, mostly overnight. Water temperatures were 81-83, mostly 82. Visibility was generally quite good, something like 60-80 feet. Currents were generally mild though we had a few afternoon dives on Bari Reef with brisk south currents, making the dive north strenuous and then flying back. Dive Friends fills were good, average 2966 psi (2746-3274). Nitrox ran 31-33%. We did only 2 dives per day the two days we did Avelo training and the guided dives. We did 3-4 dives per day all the other days, for a total of 37 dives on this visit.
And now for the bad news. There was a lot of white coral on all of our dives. The water was very warm earlier this year, adding coral bleaching to stony coral tissue loss disease. It was heartbreaking. With the water temperatures down now, I am hoping there will be good recovery from the coral bleaching.
On the other hand, sea life seemed to be normal. There were massive rivers of creole wrasse and large schools of brown and blue chromis, bogas, tangs, and horse-eye jacks. Green, spotted, and goldentail morays were common and we saw several chain morays. There were at least a half dozen eagle rays, several turtles, two seahorses. I saw my first reef shark in Bonaire at Country Garden as well as a very large tiger grouper. We saw only one frog fish, a small dark red one at Bruce’s Rappel, the nicest dive site of the trip. We saw a gorgeous long snout butterflyfish and several slender filefish. Tarpon were out prowling. All the usual reef fish, angels, butterflyfish, parrotfish, filefish… were abundant. We spotted a small octopus at the start of the Bari Reef dive on several occasions.
We are hoping that there is good recovery from the coral bleaching, we will see when we make our eleventh visit later this year.
Sorry, no underwater photos from this trip, my camera housing is in need of service.
Reservations: We made all of our reservations online, Sunrentals Bonaire for Den Laman and our truck from PB Car Rental, Dive Friends, and American Airlines. Reservations worked flawlessly.
Travel: Our Philadelphia flights to and from Bonaire worked perfectly, with one stop in Miami. Our return through Miami was unexpectedly smooth, very glad we have Global Entry.
We picked up our truck from PB, based in one of the airport kiosks. Smooth, quick pick up and drop off, truck was fine.
We paid our Bonaire Visitor Entry online and breezed through the check prior to immigration. We obtained our STINAPA park tag online prior to travel also.
Accommodations: We stopped at Sunrentals on the way to Den Laman and picked up the keys to Flyingfish, a one bedroom ocean front on the third floor. We have previously stayed in the very similar Parrotfish and Yellowtail Snapper units on the second floor. Flying Fish was equally nice, a bit more updated, best of all, a great bed. The unit was very nicely supplied and the kitchen well equipped. The large balcony overlooking Klein Bonaire was great, the sunsets did not disappoint.
The park between Den Laman and Chogogo is still under construction. We heard no noise from the site and there was no dust, an improvement over the old dirt parking lot. I’m not sure there is currently public access for diving Bari Reef.
Meals: We were in Bonaire by ourselves this visit and prepared nearly all our own meals. We did most of our shopping at the very conveniently located Zhung Kong. We did get take out dinners twice from the food truck out on the circle, Pita Madre. The chicken gyros and the satay chicken pitas are wonderful, as are the fire fries with jalapeno mayonnaise. The owner/cook, Marnix, is a very friendly guy we met on our visit in 2022.
Dive Operation: Dive Friends Sand Dollar/Den Laman is located between the two resorts. Divers staying at either resort have access to the gear storage room, and to the pier, with easy access to Bari Reef. The pier has a sun shade over the middle setup benches since our last visit.
Dive Friends boats pick up at the pier. We did eight morning boat dives, six on the larger catamaran, Tiki Diver, and two on the smaller Pascal.
Dive Friends is currently one of three locations in the world offering the Recreational Avelo Diver course. We took advantage of the offering and did the certification, two additional guided dives, and then rented gear for three independent dives one day. The Avelo activities are based out of the Retail & Dive Shop, very close to Den Laman. I reported this experience separately Review - Diving the Avelo System
Diving: We had very good weather on this visit, sunny and warm, but cooler, much more pleasant than our last visit in August of 2022. There was some wind and a little rain, mostly overnight. Water temperatures were 81-83, mostly 82. Visibility was generally quite good, something like 60-80 feet. Currents were generally mild though we had a few afternoon dives on Bari Reef with brisk south currents, making the dive north strenuous and then flying back. Dive Friends fills were good, average 2966 psi (2746-3274). Nitrox ran 31-33%. We did only 2 dives per day the two days we did Avelo training and the guided dives. We did 3-4 dives per day all the other days, for a total of 37 dives on this visit.
And now for the bad news. There was a lot of white coral on all of our dives. The water was very warm earlier this year, adding coral bleaching to stony coral tissue loss disease. It was heartbreaking. With the water temperatures down now, I am hoping there will be good recovery from the coral bleaching.
On the other hand, sea life seemed to be normal. There were massive rivers of creole wrasse and large schools of brown and blue chromis, bogas, tangs, and horse-eye jacks. Green, spotted, and goldentail morays were common and we saw several chain morays. There were at least a half dozen eagle rays, several turtles, two seahorses. I saw my first reef shark in Bonaire at Country Garden as well as a very large tiger grouper. We saw only one frog fish, a small dark red one at Bruce’s Rappel, the nicest dive site of the trip. We saw a gorgeous long snout butterflyfish and several slender filefish. Tarpon were out prowling. All the usual reef fish, angels, butterflyfish, parrotfish, filefish… were abundant. We spotted a small octopus at the start of the Bari Reef dive on several occasions.
We are hoping that there is good recovery from the coral bleaching, we will see when we make our eleventh visit later this year.
Sorry, no underwater photos from this trip, my camera housing is in need of service.
