Bonaire Dive Trip

[Jetwrench]

There's a great little book called Bonaire Diving Made Easy --it's a little yellow paperback that you will probably be able to find at your dive shop on Bonaire. It describes each shore dive and rates each according to difficulty. It will often give you tips on how and where to enter most easily and safely. I highly recommend it. You're going to love Bonaire.

This book is actually titled "Bonaire Shore Diving Made Easy" and has been edited for 2005-2006 by Susan Porter. It now has a photo on the cover of a pickup parked at one of the southern sites. You can find it at Chat n Browse right down the street from Buddies and it has just about everything you will need to know for a successful trip.

Have a good pair of hard sole boots, rent a truck and go!

Jet

 

[TheRedHead]

Buddy's Dive Shop also carries it.

 

[scubaaaronh]

Some other tips, if you are shooting digital and need a place to burn discs city cafe in town has a cyber cafe in it that was reasonable and they had newer quicker and more machines. They also have very good food there, great burgers and fries for about 6 bucks U.S. My wife and i would go there oder our food go burn the discs and by the time we were done the food was there. Killed two birds with one stone that way at lunch.
Also richards was very good for fresh fish. the shrimp bisque was out of this world there.
Bistro De Cafe was also very good for itiallian food, and good conch chowder.
Make sure you get GOOD hard sole boots not inexpensive one or they might not make the cut.
Leave nothing in your truck while diving there is petty theft there and leave the vehicle unlocked, we never rolled up the windows even.
There is a little place by Plaza's main entrance called Old Inn, the had very good subs at lunch time.
If you have a chance to do a dive with Dee Scarr it is worth every penny. I wish we had done the three dive trip with her at the beginning of our trip instead of the end. Here is a link to her site:
http://www.touchthesea.com/
She does about an hour talk before the dive and you really learn a lot from her.
Have a great time there we did and can't wait to go back wish i was going with ya.

 

[ScubaLuke]

The only other thing I can add to the excellent advise given so far is to bring a solar shower. You can pick one up cheap at Wal-Mart. Leave it in the car while your diving (we've never had one stolen) and use it to rinse off after the dive.

And does everybody know about the Bonaire Reef Cam?
http://www.bonairewebcams.com/BonaireReefCamLarge.php

Luke

 

[herman]

The only other thing I can add to the excellent advise given so far is to bring a solar shower. You can pick one up cheap at Wal-Mart. Leave it in the car while your diving (we've never had one stolen) and use it to rinse off after the dive.

And does everybody know about the Bonaire Reef Cam?
http://www.bonairewebcams.com/BonaireReefCamLarge.php

Luke

Sure, what would you like to know? It's located at Eden Beach resort. The UW cam is in about 60 ft of water and the beach cams over look the beach by Bongos bar. It is fairly easy to dive it. It refreshes pictures every 2 (3?) minutes. Lots of times diver photos are posted on Bonairetalk.

 

[herman]

I like a solar shower as well, really nice after a dive. If you don't want to buy/take one, I use a 2L drink bottle. I put 3 or 4 small holes in a spare lid to use as the nozzle. Fill 1 or 2 empty bottles and leave them in the back of the truck in the sun. When you get out, swap lids and rinse away. In some ways the 2L bottle works better because you don't have to get it very high to make it work well, you can just squeeze it instead. If you want a head start you can fill them with hot water but I find they get plenty warm after an hour or so in the sun.

 

[scubaaaronh]

We did like you said herman with the 2 litre bottles and it worked great. just filled them amd left them in the sun

 

[tarheeldiver]

Thanks for all the posts everyone great info please any more suggestions are appreciated also thanks Herman & Rich for the pm's
thanks again

 

[miesemer]

Here's one...

The cylinders are used hard in Bonaire. Always grab an extra or two to take with you shore diving. Check the air pressure in your cylinder before leaving the drive through fill station which you'll automatically do if your analyzing nitrox at Buddy's.

You'll find at the drive through fill station that the compressor in the Nitrox shed runs all day long and is quite loud. It can be very tough to tell if your cylinder valve leaks with all the noise. I'm not talking about the typical small trickle oring leak but more so the ones that leak very quickly from the valve handle stem when opened. I'd assume many of the valves get some pretty hard knocks being thrown in the back of the trucks. If you do find a bad one, do your fellow divers a favor and take some masking tape and mark the cylinder so the next guy doesn't have to deal with it and so Buddy's techs can repair it.

Also, all their cylinder valves are all yoke connections. If you're diving DIN, either change your reg to yoke before you leave or bring YOUR OWN DIN to yoke adapter. We had a guy with us who didn't change his to yoke and had to rent an adapter from Buddy's. He went throught three well worn (junk) adapters before getting one that would seal on the tank valves. Again, I'm not talking about little oring leaks, I'm talking about seals so bad the orings got extruded or they emptied the tank in short order.

 

[scubaaaronh]

Good point on the valves, didn't even think of that. also watch the orings, we found tanks without orings or cut orings.