The long-standing practice when shore diving is leave your rental truck doors unlocked with windows down (unless it's raining) so petty thieves can search the truck without breaking any windows, and leave nothing of significant value for them to steal (rental tanks are okay to leave). You'll need a way to take your key fob with you on the dive, that keeps it dry. I use
DryFob.
Okay, assuming you're looking at a week in Bonaire, I'll aim for a north-to-south selection of dives (but get a couple out of order). I may pair some, so you hit a couple in one truck trip.
1.) Tolo and Karpata - Karpata because it has interesting structure and good reef, Tolo because your trip to Karpata commits you to a one-way road with a long trip home, so you might as well get a good 2nd dive in from a site on that stretch.
2.) 1,000 Steps and Oil Slick Leap. 1,000 Because the staircase is sort of iconic, albeit you will feel the burn coming back up (it's as far north as you can go without hitting the one way strip). Oil Slick Leap's giant stride in is also iconic, and it's a nice reef really close to where you jump in.
3.) The Cliff - nice vertical wall stretch. The only site like it I've seen is Small Wall, and that's probably a boat dive unless you stay where it's a house reef. If you stay at Buddy Dive or Captain Don's, pair with the reef stretch they share; quite good.
4.) Bari Reef - you can get there from the round-about south of Sand Dollar and Den Lamen; good reef, well-known from some study that counted a whole bunch of creatures here.
5.) Something Special - can be tricky to find, but a fairly nice dive.
6.) Windsock - decent dive, and especially good for night dives because that big fueling pier you can exit beside makes it easy to see where to get out. A little to the south is the Cactus Blue food truck.
7.) The Lake - pretty easy entry/exit, you can circle a big patch of sand so navigation is particularly easy, and you can do both inner and outer reef on that route. The wall you enter and exit by would likely to useful for knowing where to exit on a night dive.
8.) Bachelor's Beach - sandy entry/exit, and there's a food truck here with French fries. Nice dive.
9.) Aquarius - rather easy entry/exit.
10.)
Hilma Hooker - the big wreck. Surprisingly good reef.
11.) Salt Pier. Multiple clumps of pilings; unique on Bonaire.
12.) The far southern sites where the reef is particularly lush with gorgonians - Margate Bay, Red Beryl, Vista Blue and (my favorite) Sweet Dreams. Kite boarders venture away from Atlantis; Margate Bay or Sweet Dreams may give you more space from them.
I skipped some good diving. Andrea I and II up north, and I didn't get into boat-only sites like on Klein Bonaire (I've only dove one site there). Then there's the east coast, with sites like Cai (highly recommend BasDiving.com if you want to try that).
My Research Notes for Bonaire -
My Research Note For Bonaire
8 Day Trip Report: Sand Dollar, Dive Friends
2022
Trip Report Bonaire Trip Report - V.I.P. Divers/Aqua Viva Suites
