Bonaire in September

[Cactusdiver1]

Looking for information on diving Bonaire in September. Which resorts are good. Any resorts with an "all inclusive?". How about the deal with this shore diving with the drive through tank fill-ups? Any/All information will be helpful.

Like most...looking for the best dive for the buck.

 

[herman]

HI Cactusdiver,

There are no bad months to go to Bonaire. Around the full moon in Sept is the coral spawn....that's a good or bad thing depending on your point of view. It's neet to watch the coral spawn but it also degrades the vis some.

As for the resorts on Bonaire, what are you looking for? A 5 star place or a good clean dive resort? Prob the most upscale place on Bonaire is the Plaza, a nice place from what I hear but I have never stayed there. If you are looking for a nice place but not the fancyest then there are lots of places. Capt Dons, Lions Dive, Sand Dollar, Buddy DIve (my choice) and Divi to name only a few. IMHO do NOT get any all inclusive deals, by AI I mean all meals included. There are loads of good places to eat on Bonaire and while most of the resorts have good restaurnats, if you get an AI you to miss a lot of other great places to eat. We get the "Drive and Dive" package at Buddy. It is kind of an AI in that it includes a condo, rental truck, breakfast, airport xfer, 6 boat dives and unlimited tanks for shore diving. You will want all of these things when on Bonaire so I just perfer to get them at one place. The included breakfast is the only exception I have to not wanting any meals included. It's kind of hard to mess up breakfast and BD has a great buffet breakfast so we do include it. We also drop the 6 boat dives. It knocks off $100pp from the package cost and we much prefer to shore dive. You can always add boat dives back if you choose. If you are wanting an AI because of drinking water safety (and food ), don't worry about that. Bonaire uses only distilled water on the entire island and the drinking water is completely safe to drink...and taste great as well.

The "drive thru" air station is to the best of my knowledge only at Buddy Dive. In any case, the general mode on Bonaire is to pickup tanks from your dive shop and head off to any of about 80 marked dive sites, pull off the road and dive. The dives start at about 10 ft, slope off to about 35ft over a 150-200 ft run then drops sharply to about 100ft.

I think Natasha from the board is hosting a trip to Bonaire in Sept, if you want to join a group, she host a great trip. I can highly recommend her. In addition, I am heading down in July with a group of 8 or 10. If you would like to hang out with some experienced Bonaire Divers you can meet us there.

Here is the address of a Bonaire board similar to this one, drop by over there ask some questions as well. www.bonairetalk.com

You might also want to do a search on this board and the BT board, there has been a lot of good info posted on both boards over the years.

PM me if you like.

 

[herman]

Another site you may find interesting http://www.virtualbonaire.com/

 

[DiveTyme]

Herman preety much said it all , I have stayed at Buddy Dive the last two years. Last year we dropped the boat dives. We are planning on going back in Oct or Nov. One note, they have an exellent Nitrox deal. I believe it was $99 for a week of unlimited nitrox.
Tim

 

[scubaotter]

Wanna Dive at Eden Beach resort is a good dive shop as well. I think unlimited air was $90/week and unlimited nitrox was $180/week. There is a wonderful 6 inch yellow sea horse right off the shop too!

 

[herman]

Oh yea, Bart and company (Wannadivebonaire). Bart's a neet guy as well, he was one of the dive masters at Buddy Dive several years ago. My list is by no means complete. It would be a lot easier to list the bad places to stay and bad dive ops on Bonaire.......Are there any??

Unlimited Nitrox 32 & 36 is $100pp at BD, at least last year.

 

[Cactusdiver1]

Wow! Herman thanks for the ton of info! Thanks to the rest for the additional info too! Now all I have to do is survive 9 months 'till dive time. My Mexico dive trips will have to be considered "warm-ups".

Thanks again..

 

[Cousin]

www.bonairewebcams.com

 

[DiveSurgeon]

I am going back to Bonaire in April (our 6th time). I have stayed at the Plaza, SandDollar, and Buddy. I have also stayed at a place called the Bonaire beach Bungalows (now gone). This time we are going back to Buddy. The drive through is very convenient for loading tanks, and it is next to Lion Dive which has a great bar restaurant for drinks & good beer (you can actually get a real ale there). It became our new favorite spot and on our last night there we were lamenting how we didn't get to see an octopus this trip when my wife looked down at the water and spotted one on the shallow rocks just below the terrace. Now THAT is what I call great service!!

As far as "comfy" accomodations go, the Plaza is probably the most upscale place. We liked it well enough, but it seemed they had a fair number of inexperienced boat crew, and the layout of the resort was way too spread out over a lot of acreage. Schlepping my video rig to the lockers was a bit of a pain. They do have the nicest beach on the island however, and a very nice pool. We liked it, but liked Buddy's more.

There is a grocery store in town, and plenty of rerstaurants on the island. We have done the bring all the food with us thing, as well as just bringing our wallets. This time we are settling on a happy medium. Have fun & take pictures!!!

 

[DiveSurgeon]

By the way, does anyone know if Murphyn is still at Buddy's?? If he is there, do the boat trips...he will show you whatever you want to see including sea horses and frogfish.