Country Garden from Tolo

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Kharon

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Location
Upstate NY
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Country Garden looks like an interesting site but the guides all say it's only a boat dive. Looking at all my guides and the Google satelite map it looks like it's reachable from the southernmost side of Tolo. It doesn't look like much of a swim.

Does anyone have an opinion or suggestions. If you don't think it can be reached diving, how about snorkeling? I won't do any more boat dives on Bonaire, though I might try East Coast Diving on this trip.
 
Country Garden looks like an interesting site but the guides all say it's only a boat dive. Looking at all my guides and the Google satelite map it looks like it's reachable from the southernmost side of Tolo. It doesn't look like much of a swim.

Does anyone have an opinion or suggestions. If you don't think it can be reached diving, how about snorkeling? I won't do any more boat dives on Bonaire, though I might try East Coast Diving on this trip.

If I'm correct that Country Garden is the next dive site south from Tolo and is right up against the cliff wall that's the coast there, then yes it is possible to reach Country Garden from Tolo. @wwguy and I did that exact dive a couple weeks ago. We headed south from a southern entry at Tolo and stayed around 40 feet or so at a fairly modest clip until a boat dumped a bunch of divers in just over our heads. We looked up and turned out we were right under the buoy from what I assume was Country Garden. We kept going a bit farther before turning the dive around and heading back north, so I would guess we saw a fair amount of that site. It was a nice dive and aside from that group from the boat, we didn't see any other divers while we were under water. Not much current.
 
If I'm correct that Country Garden is the next dive site south from Tolo and is right up against the cliff wall that's the coast there, then yes it is possible to reach Country Garden from Tolo. @wwguy and I did that exact dive a couple weeks ago. We headed south from a southern entry at Tolo and stayed around 40 feet or so at a fairly modest clip until a boat dumped a bunch of divers in just over our heads. We looked up and turned out we were right under the buoy from what I assume was Country Garden. We kept going a bit farther before turning the dive around and heading back north, so I would guess we saw a fair amount of that site. It was a nice dive and aside from that group from the boat, we didn't see any other divers while we were under water. Not much current.
If you didn't see the giant boulders then you missed the point of Country Gardens.
 
@Mr. Manfrenjensenden, what you remember was Country Gardens. Due to the horde of divers with poor buoyancy that apparently fell off of a dive boat just before we got there, I didn't take the time to circle the pillars with you. So we only explored the seaward side, which probably explains why you thought they were an extension of the shoreline. I should have explained more about it after our dive, but hey... spotted eagle rays.

@tursiops they're not boulders so much as three large pillars of limestone that have broken away from the main shoreline and settled to a slightly deeper depth. Beautiful either way though!
 
@Mr. Manfrenjensenden, what you remember was Country Gardens. Due to the horde of divers with poor buoyancy that apparently fell off of a dive boat just before we got there, I didn't take the time to circle the pillars with you. So we only explored the seaward side, which probably explains why you thought they were an extension of the shoreline. I should have explained more about it after our dive, but hey... spotted eagle rays.

@tursiops they're not boulders so much as three large pillars of limestone that have broken away from the main shoreline and settled to a slightly deeper depth. Beautiful either way though!
Pillars? They are almost spherical! And they are some distance from the shoreline, nearly at the reef crest. I agree, they are most likely broken off from the shoreline.
 
Pillars? They are almost spherical! And they are some distance from the shoreline, nearly at the reef crest. I agree, they are most likely broken off from the shoreline.

Check out the footage starting at 2:27 in the YouTube video below. To my wee brain the formation does not appear spherical at all, as the vertical face appears, well... vertical... like a pillar, column, or cliff face etc.

Here are a couple other respectable references that also refer to them as pillars, but I guess you can call them whatever you like. They're irregularly shaped, so describing them using geometrical or architectural terms is more for general reference than anything.
14. Country Garden
COUNTRY GARDEN, Bonaire, Dive Site Information

 
Check out the footage starting at 2:27 in the YouTube video below. To my wee brain the formation does not appear spherical at all, as the vertical face appears, well... vertical... like a pillar, column, or cliff face etc.

Here are a couple other respectable references that also refer to them as pillars, but I guess you can call them whatever you like. They're irregularly shaped, so describing them using geometrical or architectural terms is more for general reference than anything.
14. Country Garden
COUNTRY GARDEN, Bonaire, Dive Site Information

Nice video....glad to see someone is REEF.org surveying!
The Van't Hof BMP Guide calls them "big chunks of the cliff."
The Dive Guide Bonaire calls them "huge rock chunks."
I might have some picture....and I might look for them and post them!
Whatever a good description of those things are, they do make that dive site unique on Bonaire.
 

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