Spartacus20
Registered
Visited Bonaire late last year for my first dive-centric trip in close to a decade! I have been diving some in the interim, but have not taken a proper “dive trip” in forever. Last year it occurred to me that I missed it a lot and decided to fix the situation.
First thing I will say is if you haven’t used your gear in some time, get ready for what I can only describe as “plastic rot”. It had been a long time since I used MY gear, so I had several gear check dives planned and had my BC and reg serviced, but what I did not anticipate was in how poor of shape the rest of my kit would be. It has always been stored inside, in a climate controlled closet so I figured it would be all good right? Nope. My dive computer battery cover effectively disintegrated in my hands when I went to open it. My dive lights were falling apart in the same kind of way. My booties ripped on the first attempt to put them on. Time treats gear just about as poorly as the human body apparently. It all wound up ok, and I had planned my gear check dives with enough time to get everything fixed, but it definitely added some stress to my planning. I did wind up with some unexpected new gear, so it’s not all bad I suppose…
Onto the trip. There were 5 of us and we stayed at Buddy Dive on one of my friend’s recommendations (this was his third trip to Bonaire) and I have nothing but good things to say about our experience. The rooms are not overly nice, but that’s not what we were there for. I thought everything was clean, the service was good (i.e. everyone was super nice, we really had no “issues” that had to get dealt with), the dive shop seemed professional and the food was good at both restaurants. Just overall a solid base of operations for a dive trip. The hotel works well for a larger group, as we were able to get both a 3 bedroom and 2 bedroom apartment instead of 5 different rooms.
Upon check in you have to do what they told us before we arrived was a “check-out dive” before you can get your park dive pass, but really it’s more of a Buddy Dive orientation and gear check, not a skills check like we thought going in. My friend who had been there 3 times was frustrated that he had to do the orientation yet again, but being a new guest I appreciated the detailed walkthrough. There is a gear storage facility on the water, but you only get one locker key per room so I stored all of my stuff in our room since it was very close. I didn’t ask how much it would be to rent another locker since we were so close, but I would have investigated were our room further away. After orientation you do your check out dive (really more of a gear check) on the reef right off the hotel. This is when I knew we were going to have a great trip: within minutes of being in the water we spied 2 octopus (octopuses? octopi?) and a turtle!
After that it just became dive, dive, dive. We tried to fit in 5 dives a day and for the most part that’s what happened. Almost all of the dives were great, happy to answer any particular questions if people have them. Karpata was my favorite. I suppose it was the topography of the reef and the fact that we saw 5 (FIVE) turtles. The only “eventful” (eventful in a bad way) dive was Red Slave; we called it after a few minutes due to what I would call almost extreme current. Unfortunately we missed Salt Pier since we were leaving it until the second full day and a boat came in (and never left…). I was pretty disappointed about that.
We primarily ate at Buddy Dive just for the sake of expediency while re-filling tanks (and then everyone was super tired at the end of the day), but one night we ate at It Rains Fishes and I thought the food was fantastic. I definitely recommend that restaurant. We ate at Between Two Buns once for lunch and while the food was pretty good, the service was very, very slow (I know we were on island time, but it was crazy slow). That might have been a one off thing though.
Happy to answer any questions. I put together a short video if you want to check it out. Unfortunately it’s not that good, I didn’t take nearly enough footage. I was so excited with everything that was going on, I kept forgetting to turn on my camera!
First thing I will say is if you haven’t used your gear in some time, get ready for what I can only describe as “plastic rot”. It had been a long time since I used MY gear, so I had several gear check dives planned and had my BC and reg serviced, but what I did not anticipate was in how poor of shape the rest of my kit would be. It has always been stored inside, in a climate controlled closet so I figured it would be all good right? Nope. My dive computer battery cover effectively disintegrated in my hands when I went to open it. My dive lights were falling apart in the same kind of way. My booties ripped on the first attempt to put them on. Time treats gear just about as poorly as the human body apparently. It all wound up ok, and I had planned my gear check dives with enough time to get everything fixed, but it definitely added some stress to my planning. I did wind up with some unexpected new gear, so it’s not all bad I suppose…
Onto the trip. There were 5 of us and we stayed at Buddy Dive on one of my friend’s recommendations (this was his third trip to Bonaire) and I have nothing but good things to say about our experience. The rooms are not overly nice, but that’s not what we were there for. I thought everything was clean, the service was good (i.e. everyone was super nice, we really had no “issues” that had to get dealt with), the dive shop seemed professional and the food was good at both restaurants. Just overall a solid base of operations for a dive trip. The hotel works well for a larger group, as we were able to get both a 3 bedroom and 2 bedroom apartment instead of 5 different rooms.
Upon check in you have to do what they told us before we arrived was a “check-out dive” before you can get your park dive pass, but really it’s more of a Buddy Dive orientation and gear check, not a skills check like we thought going in. My friend who had been there 3 times was frustrated that he had to do the orientation yet again, but being a new guest I appreciated the detailed walkthrough. There is a gear storage facility on the water, but you only get one locker key per room so I stored all of my stuff in our room since it was very close. I didn’t ask how much it would be to rent another locker since we were so close, but I would have investigated were our room further away. After orientation you do your check out dive (really more of a gear check) on the reef right off the hotel. This is when I knew we were going to have a great trip: within minutes of being in the water we spied 2 octopus (octopuses? octopi?) and a turtle!
After that it just became dive, dive, dive. We tried to fit in 5 dives a day and for the most part that’s what happened. Almost all of the dives were great, happy to answer any particular questions if people have them. Karpata was my favorite. I suppose it was the topography of the reef and the fact that we saw 5 (FIVE) turtles. The only “eventful” (eventful in a bad way) dive was Red Slave; we called it after a few minutes due to what I would call almost extreme current. Unfortunately we missed Salt Pier since we were leaving it until the second full day and a boat came in (and never left…). I was pretty disappointed about that.
We primarily ate at Buddy Dive just for the sake of expediency while re-filling tanks (and then everyone was super tired at the end of the day), but one night we ate at It Rains Fishes and I thought the food was fantastic. I definitely recommend that restaurant. We ate at Between Two Buns once for lunch and while the food was pretty good, the service was very, very slow (I know we were on island time, but it was crazy slow). That might have been a one off thing though.
Happy to answer any questions. I put together a short video if you want to check it out. Unfortunately it’s not that good, I didn’t take nearly enough footage. I was so excited with everything that was going on, I kept forgetting to turn on my camera!
