CUunderH2O
Contributor
Bonaire! (for the short version, skip to the 2nd last paragraph in post #2)
We were supposed to go back to Roatan this year but as luck had it, the flights were cancelled for that week so we decided to go to Bonaire instead (my first time, my buddy's second). Getting there was not so much fun as we had to catch a charter flight to Curacao, then fly DAE to Bonaire. Our DAE flight was delayed by 45 minutes (we think the pilot was on a break since he was chatting with some friends in the departure lounge). When we finally got to Bonaire and picked up our truck, returned it for one with a better clutch and got to our hotel (Capt. Don's Habitat), it was around 4PM. We walked over to the dive shop and confirmed the the time of the next day's marine park briefing and went out to dinner. Next morning after the briefing, we dove the house reef. I took my empty housing for a swim and was amazed at all the things we saw during that dive. We brought a single newbie diver along with us and he seemed to have a great time, as we pointed out many creatures. After that dive, we loaded up our truck with more Nitrox tanks and drove north to our next dive location. That began our week of shore diving on Bonaire. We normally did 4 dives/day (2 AM, 2 PM), but on two days we did 5 dives, the last one being a night dive. We found all of the dive sites were good, but preferred the northern sites because of their 'lushness' and diversity. We didn't get around to diving the far north sites in Washington Slagbaai Park, nor the Town Pier or Salt Pier. So many dive sites, so little time! Our truck (which I named RPOC for rusty piece of crap) was an older Toyota Hilux double cab pickup. It was good enough to haul us and our gear back and forth, though we noticed the right side rear bumper was barely hanging on by the rust flakes. The entire bottom of the truck was rust, complete with holes. The front license plate was held on with tie wraps. The inside of the truck (the parts that weren't upholstered or plasticized) were rusted. The tailgate had previously rusted off so we had one of those mesh tailgates instead. I was surprised the front seat didn't break off, the area underneath was so rusty. The driver's side seatbelt didn't buckle because the buckle was so badly rusted. Not so much of a problem when the maximum speed limit is 60 kph, though I was a bit unsettled about it for a few days. We had heard it was best to leave the truck unlocked with windows rolled down without any visible valuables. We started off the week hiding our sandals & sunglasses under the front seat, but by the end of the trip we just threw it all in the back seat in full view. We had no issues at all and even left our truck unlocked all night in the parking lot of our hotel. The only time we locked it was when we went out for dinner and parked 'downtown'.
The island:
After your plane lands you realize that all those trees you saw from the air are actually cacti. There are some trees on Bonaire, for instance Divi Divi trees, but mostly there are various cacti and thorn bushes. The island is flat in the centre and south regions and gets a bit hilly in the north with a peak in the park that goes up to just over 1000 feet. The tallest artificial site on the island is usually the set of oil storage tanks, however there were 2 cruise ships docked the week we were there and they literally dwarfed everything else on the island. There are wild donkeys roaming the northern areas, and wild goats, various iguanas and lizards are plentiful. Flamingos like to nest in the salt flats and can be found in the northern part of the island as well. Dogs roam around town, and our resort had its share of cats. The roads are fairly good in town, however some of the two-way roads in the north and south areas only accomodate one vehicle by width, so someone always has to pull over to let the other go by. The east or windward side has a lot of ironshore and the surfing there would be good if you could get in & out without killing yourself. The waves there were huge as we saw on our last day when we drove around the island. Windsurfing on the windward side in Lac Bay is popular, and kiteboarding is the new popular sport in the south-eastern part of the island. We toured around the island in our truck on the last day, driving up to the entrance to Washington Slagbaai Park to snap a few photos, spending some time looking at huge waves breaking on the windward shore, and touring around the southern tip of the island by the lighthouse and beyond. There is not much shopping on the island, and the t-shirt selection is a bit sparse.
The room and resort:
We were originally supposed to be booked into Buddy Dive Resort but they sold out the weekend so we ended up at Capt. Don's Habitat. The Superior Villa Suites with ocean view were sold out so we got the only thing left, an Oasis Cottage. These cottages have no view, but they are conveniently located right beside the parking lot which proved great for the shore diving we did. We ended up with a 2br/2bathroom so it was convenient except for the concrete slab of a bed in one of the rooms. I swear the mattress was so hard you would be more comfortable on the floor. First day I found a huge cockroach in the bathroom, but later there were only the little geckoes on the ceiling, which was fine since they eat bugs. The cottage itself was very spacious with the two rooms each with its own bathroom, a full kitchen with gas stove & oven (no microwave), dishes, glasses, toaster, fridge and freezer with 5 ice cube trays (very handy), table & chairs. Couch and 2 comfy chairs, TV (never used), as well as the wrap-around porch with full dining table and chairs outside. Clothes lines on both porches for hanging wet dive gear -- though I found hanging my wetsuit in the bathroom on the clothes drying rack dried it out by morning much better than leaving it outside. It rained a couple of nights in a row early in the week, which left large puddles in the morning but didn't affect the temperature or the sunshine. When we checked in, the staff failed to mention they needed an additional cc imprint for eating at the restaurant which proved a little annoying, and we never received any beach/dive towel service even though other guests did (we brought our own anyway).
Dive shop:
At first glance, appeared to be well-run, however they ran out of nitrox tanks on several occasions near the end of the week which caused us to have to wait, thereby getting hot fills that cooled down to 2700 psi. They claimed the lack of tanks was because tanks were getting stolen, however we noticed a large group of divers in one truck (6 of them) who took out 12 tanks at once, which obviously lowered the number of nitrox tanks available for other divers. We brought our own O2 analyzer with us which helped alleviate the lineup at the nitrox station every morning. The marine park briefing was pretty short, as most of their emphasis was on "diving freedom": that you could do boat dives for 90 minutes as long as you exited with 500psi. Not that we cared, as we were exclusively doing shore dives on this trip. They gave no information on shore diving except from their dock and I didn't see a copy of Bonaire Shore Diving Made Easy in their shop, so we were glad we had a borrowed copy to use. On day 1, my alternate second stage hose blew an o-ring. I hadn't brought any o-rings with me, but they fixed it in a couple of minutes at no charge, which was nice. The next day, my SPG started fizzing at the connection to the hose, and they replaced that o-ring as soon as I dug out my wrench set since they had lost their wrench in that size. The nice thing was that they basically let us do what we wanted without any hassle and no-one on the island blinked twice at our long hoses nor my bp/w setup. Tank o-rings were consistently leaky (sometimes tank valve o-rings too), but this seems pretty standard in the caribbean and I got used to it after a while. There are dive lockers available down at the shore dive dock, just a small staircase away from the dive shop. Bring your own lock, as the ones sold at the shop are tiny suitcase-type locks. We didn't use the locker very often but it was nice to have. There are several rinse tanks as well as a camera tank and showers at the dive dock. The dive dock is separate from the boat dock, and the house reef is accessible via giant stride (a bit shallow, though) as well as a solid staircase for entry/exit.
...continued below...
We were supposed to go back to Roatan this year but as luck had it, the flights were cancelled for that week so we decided to go to Bonaire instead (my first time, my buddy's second). Getting there was not so much fun as we had to catch a charter flight to Curacao, then fly DAE to Bonaire. Our DAE flight was delayed by 45 minutes (we think the pilot was on a break since he was chatting with some friends in the departure lounge). When we finally got to Bonaire and picked up our truck, returned it for one with a better clutch and got to our hotel (Capt. Don's Habitat), it was around 4PM. We walked over to the dive shop and confirmed the the time of the next day's marine park briefing and went out to dinner. Next morning after the briefing, we dove the house reef. I took my empty housing for a swim and was amazed at all the things we saw during that dive. We brought a single newbie diver along with us and he seemed to have a great time, as we pointed out many creatures. After that dive, we loaded up our truck with more Nitrox tanks and drove north to our next dive location. That began our week of shore diving on Bonaire. We normally did 4 dives/day (2 AM, 2 PM), but on two days we did 5 dives, the last one being a night dive. We found all of the dive sites were good, but preferred the northern sites because of their 'lushness' and diversity. We didn't get around to diving the far north sites in Washington Slagbaai Park, nor the Town Pier or Salt Pier. So many dive sites, so little time! Our truck (which I named RPOC for rusty piece of crap) was an older Toyota Hilux double cab pickup. It was good enough to haul us and our gear back and forth, though we noticed the right side rear bumper was barely hanging on by the rust flakes. The entire bottom of the truck was rust, complete with holes. The front license plate was held on with tie wraps. The inside of the truck (the parts that weren't upholstered or plasticized) were rusted. The tailgate had previously rusted off so we had one of those mesh tailgates instead. I was surprised the front seat didn't break off, the area underneath was so rusty. The driver's side seatbelt didn't buckle because the buckle was so badly rusted. Not so much of a problem when the maximum speed limit is 60 kph, though I was a bit unsettled about it for a few days. We had heard it was best to leave the truck unlocked with windows rolled down without any visible valuables. We started off the week hiding our sandals & sunglasses under the front seat, but by the end of the trip we just threw it all in the back seat in full view. We had no issues at all and even left our truck unlocked all night in the parking lot of our hotel. The only time we locked it was when we went out for dinner and parked 'downtown'.
The island:
After your plane lands you realize that all those trees you saw from the air are actually cacti. There are some trees on Bonaire, for instance Divi Divi trees, but mostly there are various cacti and thorn bushes. The island is flat in the centre and south regions and gets a bit hilly in the north with a peak in the park that goes up to just over 1000 feet. The tallest artificial site on the island is usually the set of oil storage tanks, however there were 2 cruise ships docked the week we were there and they literally dwarfed everything else on the island. There are wild donkeys roaming the northern areas, and wild goats, various iguanas and lizards are plentiful. Flamingos like to nest in the salt flats and can be found in the northern part of the island as well. Dogs roam around town, and our resort had its share of cats. The roads are fairly good in town, however some of the two-way roads in the north and south areas only accomodate one vehicle by width, so someone always has to pull over to let the other go by. The east or windward side has a lot of ironshore and the surfing there would be good if you could get in & out without killing yourself. The waves there were huge as we saw on our last day when we drove around the island. Windsurfing on the windward side in Lac Bay is popular, and kiteboarding is the new popular sport in the south-eastern part of the island. We toured around the island in our truck on the last day, driving up to the entrance to Washington Slagbaai Park to snap a few photos, spending some time looking at huge waves breaking on the windward shore, and touring around the southern tip of the island by the lighthouse and beyond. There is not much shopping on the island, and the t-shirt selection is a bit sparse.
The room and resort:
We were originally supposed to be booked into Buddy Dive Resort but they sold out the weekend so we ended up at Capt. Don's Habitat. The Superior Villa Suites with ocean view were sold out so we got the only thing left, an Oasis Cottage. These cottages have no view, but they are conveniently located right beside the parking lot which proved great for the shore diving we did. We ended up with a 2br/2bathroom so it was convenient except for the concrete slab of a bed in one of the rooms. I swear the mattress was so hard you would be more comfortable on the floor. First day I found a huge cockroach in the bathroom, but later there were only the little geckoes on the ceiling, which was fine since they eat bugs. The cottage itself was very spacious with the two rooms each with its own bathroom, a full kitchen with gas stove & oven (no microwave), dishes, glasses, toaster, fridge and freezer with 5 ice cube trays (very handy), table & chairs. Couch and 2 comfy chairs, TV (never used), as well as the wrap-around porch with full dining table and chairs outside. Clothes lines on both porches for hanging wet dive gear -- though I found hanging my wetsuit in the bathroom on the clothes drying rack dried it out by morning much better than leaving it outside. It rained a couple of nights in a row early in the week, which left large puddles in the morning but didn't affect the temperature or the sunshine. When we checked in, the staff failed to mention they needed an additional cc imprint for eating at the restaurant which proved a little annoying, and we never received any beach/dive towel service even though other guests did (we brought our own anyway).
Dive shop:
At first glance, appeared to be well-run, however they ran out of nitrox tanks on several occasions near the end of the week which caused us to have to wait, thereby getting hot fills that cooled down to 2700 psi. They claimed the lack of tanks was because tanks were getting stolen, however we noticed a large group of divers in one truck (6 of them) who took out 12 tanks at once, which obviously lowered the number of nitrox tanks available for other divers. We brought our own O2 analyzer with us which helped alleviate the lineup at the nitrox station every morning. The marine park briefing was pretty short, as most of their emphasis was on "diving freedom": that you could do boat dives for 90 minutes as long as you exited with 500psi. Not that we cared, as we were exclusively doing shore dives on this trip. They gave no information on shore diving except from their dock and I didn't see a copy of Bonaire Shore Diving Made Easy in their shop, so we were glad we had a borrowed copy to use. On day 1, my alternate second stage hose blew an o-ring. I hadn't brought any o-rings with me, but they fixed it in a couple of minutes at no charge, which was nice. The next day, my SPG started fizzing at the connection to the hose, and they replaced that o-ring as soon as I dug out my wrench set since they had lost their wrench in that size. The nice thing was that they basically let us do what we wanted without any hassle and no-one on the island blinked twice at our long hoses nor my bp/w setup. Tank o-rings were consistently leaky (sometimes tank valve o-rings too), but this seems pretty standard in the caribbean and I got used to it after a while. There are dive lockers available down at the shore dive dock, just a small staircase away from the dive shop. Bring your own lock, as the ones sold at the shop are tiny suitcase-type locks. We didn't use the locker very often but it was nice to have. There are several rinse tanks as well as a camera tank and showers at the dive dock. The dive dock is separate from the boat dock, and the house reef is accessible via giant stride (a bit shallow, though) as well as a solid staircase for entry/exit.
...continued below...
