This was my eighth trip to Bonaire since my wife and I started visiting in 2009, but the first in which we did a boat dive. On this trip, in addition to plenty of shore dives, we did three 2-tank morning boat trips, for a total of six boat dives. I’m glad we did them, but I doubt we will do boat dives again on future Bonaire trips. My trip reports tend to have themes, and I believe the theme of this one is boat dives.
To me, the shore diving is what makes Bonaire unique among dive destinations. Where else in the world can you conveniently rent a truck with a tank rack, cruise up and down a coastal road marked with yellow stones with the names of dive sites, park, and dive any site that suits your fancy, then exchange your empty tanks in minutes at a dive shop’s drive-up/drive-through station? There may be great shore diving elsewhere, but I can see how this combination of factors has led some to refer to Bonaire as the shore diving capital of the world.
My wife and I stayed at the Den Laman condominium unit known as the Parrotfish, managed by Sunwise. Having read @scubadada's trip reports with descriptions of Den Laman’s units, we decided to give them a try. We generally think of ourselves as budget travelers, and for us this place was somewhat of a splurge. We really enjoyed the spacious 1-br unit and its seaview terrace and now have been totally spoiled by the experience. We booked the dive package with Dive Friends Bonaire, whom we have used for shore diving packages on several previous trips. The onsite DFB location (shared between Den Laman and Sand Dollar) was very convenient, especially for dives at our “house reef,” Bari, from Den Laman’s pier.
But back to the focus of this report—the boat dives. For years we had been meaning to try some boat dives, but with us enjoying the shore diving so much we just never got around to booking boat dives. Were we missing out on something? Our conclusion is no, not really. Some Klein Bonaire sites we visited indeed had a slightly different feel than sites on the main island. But only slightly. The first day we were taken to Edo’s Special and Carl’s Hill on Klein Bonaire. Carl’s Hill felt different in that it was a multi-level dive, going up and down some varied topography; a nice change from cruising along a slope the entire dive. And there was some healthy elkhorn coral (possibly replanted from the coral nurseries). The second day we visited Leonora’s Reef on Klein Bonaire, then to Small Wall over on the main island. We felt neither of these sites were that interesting, though I suppose if there had been a sleeping nurse shark or something in Small Wall’s little cavern it would have been different, but no such luck. The third day we went first to Captain Don’s Reef on Klein Bonaire. We liked that site for its flat area on top where for the later part of the dive we swam around in the shallows. There’s a plaque dedicated to Captain Don. Then we did Nearest Point, so named because it’s the nearest point on Klein Bonaire to the main island’s original hotel, now the site of Divi Flamingo. At Nearest Point we saw squid, and finished the dive by floating around a coral head with an octopus perched on top. Nearest Point’s topography is nice, too—a broad, sloping wall, densely covered with healthy-looking coral. All in all, I would say boat dives to Klein Bonaire are worth doing at least one trip out of, oh I dunno, eight.
I think the dives on this one trip were enough to satisfy our curiosity, and we will not likely do any more on future trips.
With I believe one exception, we had different people each day on the boat. From my recollection, the number of divers ranged from around 6 to 10, and the boats felt spacious enough. Most of our fellow divers seemed inexperienced. DFB apparently tailored the dives to this level of experience. The divemaster (also different each day) stayed mostly at a depth of about 50 feet along the slopes, although in the pre-dive briefing the DM said that anyone with the training/experience to dive deeper would be free to do so. The buddy system seemed to be advocated but not strictly enforced, as I have found to be common in many locations. If someone lacked a buddy, the diver was nominally paired with the DM. Depending on the DM, we were either asked to signal when our tank pressure reached half-full or, more annoyingly, to return a numerical sign when asked our tank pressure. (I never surfaced with less than about 1000 psi on these dives, despite getting dive times of one hour.) One diver consistently dived deeper than the group, though he didn’t appear to be any more skilled than the others, out in the blue, tens of feet above the reef, in a trim angle I’d say was like 45 degrees, with arms dog-paddling and legs bicycling, and waving a small flashlight about in one hand (nowhere close enough to illuminate anything). He was the most memorable example, but several of the other divers exhibited lack of skills as well. Several times I had to duck out of the way of an errant fin kick from an oblivious diver. I believe we met two people who mentioned they had just taken refresher courses. I watched someone apparently having a difficult time recalling how to set up his gear. There were several people diving in shorties, some rented from DFB, and with the water temperature being 79-80F I saw goose bumps and some shivering. (My wife and I dived 5/4mm full suits and we felt they were just enough for the water temps and amount of diving we did; we started feeling chilly on dives late in the day or the night dive.) And as if we didn’t have enough stereotypes, there was the guy who compared everything to the experiences he had diving in the Maldives (“At the Maldives resort we stayed in, it was valet diving”), giving us the impression he hadn’t dived in many places. I have done day-boat dives in other well-trodden places in the Caribbean, such as Cozumel and Grand Bahama, and I don’t recall diving with so many inexperienced divers before. Not a BP/W or streamlined OW rig in sight. These are the “vacation divers” who get spoken of somewhat disparagingly on forums such as ours. Nevertheless, except for the one or two times I cringed when someone’s fin hit the coral, I really didn’t mind the idea of diving with people like this. Rather, it felt kind of refreshing to be reminded that divers come in all stripes. A couple of people mentioned that they do boat diving because the shore diving is getting harder with age or physical limitations. Every one of them we talked to seemed nice, and just happy to be on vacation in Bonaire. I should add that the DFB crew were exceedingly nice, too.
I can only speak to DFB’s boat dives, and I have no way to know if boat dives with other dive ops may be different.
[continued]
To me, the shore diving is what makes Bonaire unique among dive destinations. Where else in the world can you conveniently rent a truck with a tank rack, cruise up and down a coastal road marked with yellow stones with the names of dive sites, park, and dive any site that suits your fancy, then exchange your empty tanks in minutes at a dive shop’s drive-up/drive-through station? There may be great shore diving elsewhere, but I can see how this combination of factors has led some to refer to Bonaire as the shore diving capital of the world.
My wife and I stayed at the Den Laman condominium unit known as the Parrotfish, managed by Sunwise. Having read @scubadada's trip reports with descriptions of Den Laman’s units, we decided to give them a try. We generally think of ourselves as budget travelers, and for us this place was somewhat of a splurge. We really enjoyed the spacious 1-br unit and its seaview terrace and now have been totally spoiled by the experience. We booked the dive package with Dive Friends Bonaire, whom we have used for shore diving packages on several previous trips. The onsite DFB location (shared between Den Laman and Sand Dollar) was very convenient, especially for dives at our “house reef,” Bari, from Den Laman’s pier.
But back to the focus of this report—the boat dives. For years we had been meaning to try some boat dives, but with us enjoying the shore diving so much we just never got around to booking boat dives. Were we missing out on something? Our conclusion is no, not really. Some Klein Bonaire sites we visited indeed had a slightly different feel than sites on the main island. But only slightly. The first day we were taken to Edo’s Special and Carl’s Hill on Klein Bonaire. Carl’s Hill felt different in that it was a multi-level dive, going up and down some varied topography; a nice change from cruising along a slope the entire dive. And there was some healthy elkhorn coral (possibly replanted from the coral nurseries). The second day we visited Leonora’s Reef on Klein Bonaire, then to Small Wall over on the main island. We felt neither of these sites were that interesting, though I suppose if there had been a sleeping nurse shark or something in Small Wall’s little cavern it would have been different, but no such luck. The third day we went first to Captain Don’s Reef on Klein Bonaire. We liked that site for its flat area on top where for the later part of the dive we swam around in the shallows. There’s a plaque dedicated to Captain Don. Then we did Nearest Point, so named because it’s the nearest point on Klein Bonaire to the main island’s original hotel, now the site of Divi Flamingo. At Nearest Point we saw squid, and finished the dive by floating around a coral head with an octopus perched on top. Nearest Point’s topography is nice, too—a broad, sloping wall, densely covered with healthy-looking coral. All in all, I would say boat dives to Klein Bonaire are worth doing at least one trip out of, oh I dunno, eight.
I think the dives on this one trip were enough to satisfy our curiosity, and we will not likely do any more on future trips.With I believe one exception, we had different people each day on the boat. From my recollection, the number of divers ranged from around 6 to 10, and the boats felt spacious enough. Most of our fellow divers seemed inexperienced. DFB apparently tailored the dives to this level of experience. The divemaster (also different each day) stayed mostly at a depth of about 50 feet along the slopes, although in the pre-dive briefing the DM said that anyone with the training/experience to dive deeper would be free to do so. The buddy system seemed to be advocated but not strictly enforced, as I have found to be common in many locations. If someone lacked a buddy, the diver was nominally paired with the DM. Depending on the DM, we were either asked to signal when our tank pressure reached half-full or, more annoyingly, to return a numerical sign when asked our tank pressure. (I never surfaced with less than about 1000 psi on these dives, despite getting dive times of one hour.) One diver consistently dived deeper than the group, though he didn’t appear to be any more skilled than the others, out in the blue, tens of feet above the reef, in a trim angle I’d say was like 45 degrees, with arms dog-paddling and legs bicycling, and waving a small flashlight about in one hand (nowhere close enough to illuminate anything). He was the most memorable example, but several of the other divers exhibited lack of skills as well. Several times I had to duck out of the way of an errant fin kick from an oblivious diver. I believe we met two people who mentioned they had just taken refresher courses. I watched someone apparently having a difficult time recalling how to set up his gear. There were several people diving in shorties, some rented from DFB, and with the water temperature being 79-80F I saw goose bumps and some shivering. (My wife and I dived 5/4mm full suits and we felt they were just enough for the water temps and amount of diving we did; we started feeling chilly on dives late in the day or the night dive.) And as if we didn’t have enough stereotypes, there was the guy who compared everything to the experiences he had diving in the Maldives (“At the Maldives resort we stayed in, it was valet diving”), giving us the impression he hadn’t dived in many places. I have done day-boat dives in other well-trodden places in the Caribbean, such as Cozumel and Grand Bahama, and I don’t recall diving with so many inexperienced divers before. Not a BP/W or streamlined OW rig in sight. These are the “vacation divers” who get spoken of somewhat disparagingly on forums such as ours. Nevertheless, except for the one or two times I cringed when someone’s fin hit the coral, I really didn’t mind the idea of diving with people like this. Rather, it felt kind of refreshing to be reminded that divers come in all stripes. A couple of people mentioned that they do boat diving because the shore diving is getting harder with age or physical limitations. Every one of them we talked to seemed nice, and just happy to be on vacation in Bonaire. I should add that the DFB crew were exceedingly nice, too.
I can only speak to DFB’s boat dives, and I have no way to know if boat dives with other dive ops may be different.
[continued]
