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Summary
All things considered, we had an awesome trip to Bonaire. We were very pleased with Den Laman and aside from access to an immediately available gear rinsing station and convenient 24/7 gear storage, we were pleased with using Wannadive as our offsite dive shop. We probably could have addressed the rinsing situation by using BDA as our dive shop, but we did many late night dives and so the gear storage problem would still have existed.
With respect to diving, we very much enjoyed the underwater Bonaire experience. Although some of our diving later in the week felt monotonous, we still enjoyed every chance we had to get under the water. The freedom of "do it yourself" shore diving coupled with the ease of access to a plethora of dives sites was a winning combination for our group.
Obvious and Not So Obvious Tips (Some of which we learned the hard way)
Bring lots of bug spray - everyone in our group was eaten alive nearly every night notwithstanding the application of large amounts of bug spray.
Request a rental truck with some sort of tank rank in the back of the truck (I understand that AB has these). Our truck (Total Car Rental) did not and tanks were often all over the place. We put our booties in between tanks to prevent banging and this worked fairly well.
Bring frozen water to the dives, leave windows down and nothing of value in the car (sandles and shirts seem to be fine to leave behind).
Bring a compass - you can lose direction on the swimout for the southern sites.
For remote night dives - put a beacon light by your truck to find your way home.
Batteries for your torches are expensive - bring them with you.
The road on the westcoast becomes one-way right before Karpata - there is an old dirt road that circles back (thus avoiding the long route around through Rincon) but it was pretty burly drive that I would not do again (to much fear of blown tires).
Den Laman
We were very impressed with Den Laman condos. We were in the shark room, which is a two bedroom ocean view (not ocean front) on the third floor. The rooms were very clean and kitchens were well appointed. All rooms had AC units that were modern and efficient. We felt very secure in the rooms and frequently left gear on the patio to dry overnight. Security personal was stationed near the main entry every night.
Although the staff is only availble until 4pm, we found them to be very friendly. Housekeeping was better than we expected. They washed our dishes and cleaned our room to our satisfaction each day.
We did have some issues with the showers flooding our bathrooms (no curtains to block water from the shower stall) but the water evaporated rather quickly. Our unit was also equipped with a nearly non-functional safe which was small and mostly suitable for cash, passports and small electornics. Opening the safe with the key was a 5 minute "jiggle turn jiggle turn" exercise, and as a result, we ended up stashing everything but our hard cash in our luggage. On the final day, the key broke as we attempted to lock the safe so hopfully that issue will be resolved for the next guest.
The biggest downside of Den Laman was having to lug our gear up to the third floor after every dive. Often our gear was wet and so we were frequently guitly of breaking the "don't wet the stairs rule". Unfortunately, BDA not being our dive shop, we really had no other viable storage alternative.
Internet access worked reasonably well for us, but since access is in the form of prepaid usage time (we paid $10 for a 6 hour block of time) we had to be be mindful of "logging on" and "logging off" each time we used the internet, which was a colossal pain in the ass. I would have preferred a reasonable unlimited access charge, as I like the convenience of being always connected to the internet. Having to use a local calling card for local phone calls pissed me off. As a result, I never made reservations in advance and wasn't able to locate a spa soon enough to book a massage.
Den Laman lacks a common area (e.g. a pool or deck) to hang out at when not diving. We had thought that we could use the Sand Dollar pool without charge but this did not appear to be the case. Moreover, the Sand Dollar pool was a bit of a hike from Den Laman so we only went over to it one time. Depending on your diving schedule, this may or may not be a concern. Fortunately, we brought several DVDs which helped us kill down time.
Finallly, calling the room "ocean view" was a bit of a stretch. If I were to lean over my balcony, I could get a glimpse of the ocean, but that was the extent of any view I could have. Ocean front views are probably worth the extra dollars.
Wannadive
We arrived on Saturday on the 2pm Delta flight via Atlanta from NYC. Although we had 90 minutes for a layover, I was somewhat nervous about making an on time departure out of NYC and receiving our checked luggage in Bonaire. As Delta only has one flight into the island this time of year, I probably would think twice before booking this route again.
After reading generally poor reviews of BDA on several travel websites (including tripadvisor and scubaboard), we decided to dive elsewhere. We initially booked with Buddy's, but Wannadive (Eden Beach location, about 2 minute drive from Den Laman) agreed to do our orientation at 4pm on the day we arrived, thus affording us one more evening of diving. That was sufficient to earn our business.
Tank access at wannadive was great - tanks are readily available 24/7, air and nitrox, 64 and 80cf. Tanks generally had very good fills (often 3100 psi) and decent o-rings. It takes about two minutes to drive from Den Laman to the wanandive loading station at Eden beach resort, so I dare say access was better than it would have been at Buddy's (which shuts down the drive through station around 5pm).
My only critique of wannadive was that the rinse tanks and gear storage were at he shop location, which was on the beach approximatley 250 feet from the parking lot and tank area, and not accessible by vehicle. As a result, we frequently rinsed our gear inside our condo and stored it in our 3rd story room at Den Laman, which was really tedious during surface intervals on day dives.
Over the course of the week, we chatted with people about their experiences with BDA, including a Den Laman owner who had an unbelieveable interaction with BDA's owner and who now dives with another vendor. Didn't hear much of anything positive. I dropped in their dive shop once to purchase some small items and the shop attendent inquired as to whether I was diving with BDA - when I said no, she said "so you hear bad things"? Very strange interaction, appearently they are very aware of their reputation.
As they lock the accessible tanks up fairly early, i often I saw people lugging air-only tanks from the BDA dock to the parking lot late in the evening. This exercise did not look pleasant. By contrast, our access to tanks at wannadive was convenient and pleasant. If I stay at Den Laman again, I probably still won't use BDA.
Diving
Summary - We did 18 dives over 6 days. Definately not the most aggressive schedule, but I felt satisfied after the trip. Although we enjoyed Bonarie, we did not have much luck spotting the more interesting creatures. The reefs looked faily heatlhy (although you could see storm destruction everywhere) with tons of common fish and lots of juveniles.. We came accross many flounders, drummer fish, all sorts of blennys, a family of squid, 2 scorpion fish, 2 goliath groupers (one of which buzzed us by a foot - spectactular!), one eagle ray and about four sea horses. We were hoping for a few turtles, frog fish, and some more eagle rays but no such luck.
In terms of favorite sites, we liked The Lake, Red Slave (which we dove with no current amazingly) and Oil Slick Leap (mostly for the leap!). We dove many other sites but those were our favorite. Hilma Hooker (the wreck, not the reef) was highly acclaimed and always appeared to be busy, but we were not that impressed. We also missed out on diving the park (never made the time to get out there), klein bonaire (didn't want to pay for boat dives) and the east coast (wasn't comfortable bringing my GF out there yet). If I return, i'll be sure to hit those places as I've heard good things.
Procedure and (Lack of) Theft- Our procedure was to leave Den Laman with two or three sets of tanks and 2 to 3 liter bottles of water for each dive site (which covered 3 people). We also brought a large jug of water for rinsing my buddies mucho expensive camera. We picked up this otter case from Leisure Pro which fit snugly in my BC pocket and was capable of holding my car keys, room keys and cash. The only items we left in our car were some generic bags (e.g. cloth carrying bag or cheap dirty duffle back), sandles, an occasional not too nice shirt and water. Windows were down on our vehicle during the entire stay. We never experienced one incidence of theft on the Island. I had some trepidation about leaving my reef sandles in the car but they were never stolen.
Preparation for Dive Sites / Ease of Location - Prior to my trip, I purchased Bonaire Shore Diving Made Easy. I also researched sites for "ease of entry" as this trip was the first big diving trip for my GF. Finally, for the sites I indentified, I printed out the pages from shorediving.com for the targetted sites and packed those along with me. This was extreme overkill.
Turns out, locating most dive sites on Bonaire was much simpler than I could have imagined. Nearly all (if not all) of the documented sites are marked with yellow stones (each bearing the site name) on the road. All you need to do is keep an eye out for the requesite yellow stone, pull up to the water, look for a marker bouy (which nearly every site also has) and get wet. We seldom even referenced BSDMA, which the exception of the one unmarked site that we hit (Taylor Made).
Parking - Although shorediving.com and BSDMA indicate that many sites have potentially treacherous rubble in the associate parking area , we never had any problem pulling our truck right up to the water (and overycrazy looking patches of coral rubal!) We went real slow and managed to keep our tires in tact.
Entry - We also found the tried and true shore entry to be be reasonaly simple on almost every site (even sites marked as advanced entry). Inflate your bc, slowly get out to your waist, put your fins on and cruise. Some sites were a bit tricker (most notably Taylor Made), but we had very few falls getting in and out of the sites despite a lack of experience doing shore dives.
Dining in Bonaire
We were generally impressed with the quality of dining establishments in Bonaire given the fact that the Island is small and somewhat remote. Our dining choices below are in the order of ranking:
Wil's Tropical Grill - Our favorite dining experience. We arived right before closing and Wil and Sue were kind enought to seat us and allow us time to eat a several course meal. Afterwards, we had a great conversation with them about cuisine on the island. Both food and ambiance were excellent, and Sue and Wil are about as friendly as can be (a welcome change from the proprieters in NYC where I live). Wil, owner and chef, has an impressive resume which is somewhat surprising in light of the reasonableness of the prices for his entrees.
Carpricios - Very good dining experience. Homemade pasta and tiramisu were excellent. Steaks were fairly good. We didn't make reservations so we had to sit indoor. The ambiance of the indoor seating was bland. If we were to eat here again, we would definatley sit outdoors.
Rib Factory - The taste/value mix here was so good that we ate here twice. Each time we did the ribs and chicken combo. Very strong ribs, tender and deliciuos.
Zeezicht - We had a good dining experience here with efficient service, but nothing really to write home about. Several of the items we ordered were "unavailable" so we ended up with our second choices. We had the pineapple chicken and the angry chicken (chicken in hotsauce) - the latter was our favorite.
Sunset Grill - We ate here for our first dinner, and also after Wil reccomended that we try the burgers they serve for lunch. Unfortunately, our service for our dinner was attrocious. Our food took nearly an hour to prepare (pizza and a steak), notwithstanding the fact that there were only 4 other parties dining at the grill. Moreover, we were the first group in the restaurant, and each other group recevied food before us. As this was our first night on the Island, we hadn't learned the painful lessons about the mosquitos yet. We were nearly eaten by the time our food arrived. Our lunch later in the week was the exact opposite. Western style service that was fast and efficient. The burgers were very good to excellent. The ambiance at the Sunset Grill is strong, and lizards and iguanas frequent the area around the tables searching for scraps. We rather enjoyed their presence.
Pasa Bon Pizza - Pasa Bon Pizza was a good value and the food was solid, but not exceptional. We had an order of garlic breadh and a garlic and pepperoni pizza. The pizza had a thick crust and was on par with what I would expect from a Pizza Hut in the states. Price was right and the owner was friendly, but I'm more of thin crust pizza guy so If I were to do over, I would do the Pizza Temple at Captain Dons (which I hear is thin crust).
Wattaburger - Probably the worst meal we had on the Island. Burger tasted more like sausage than a burger, menu was nearly indecipherable and ordering was a challenge.
Miscellanous
UV Night Dive - After running into Bas at Karpata (very friendly and helpful fellow), we decided to do the much acclaimed UV Night Dive with his shop (VIP Diving). Our group's impression of the dive was very lackluster. The UV Night Dive differs is not a guided dive insofar as the dive master doesn't (generally) point out many things for you to see. Further, many critters that we were able to spot didn't light up at all under the UV lights. We spotted many anenomes, fireworms and brain corals with the assistance of the UV light (including a sand diver which looked pretty awesome) and each looked radically different under UV light exposure, but overall, we weren't that impressed. Given the high acclaim that others have given the dive, had we to do it over again, we probably would have just enlisted Bas and team to do an ordinary guided dive.
Cheers!
Jeff
All things considered, we had an awesome trip to Bonaire. We were very pleased with Den Laman and aside from access to an immediately available gear rinsing station and convenient 24/7 gear storage, we were pleased with using Wannadive as our offsite dive shop. We probably could have addressed the rinsing situation by using BDA as our dive shop, but we did many late night dives and so the gear storage problem would still have existed.
With respect to diving, we very much enjoyed the underwater Bonaire experience. Although some of our diving later in the week felt monotonous, we still enjoyed every chance we had to get under the water. The freedom of "do it yourself" shore diving coupled with the ease of access to a plethora of dives sites was a winning combination for our group.
Obvious and Not So Obvious Tips (Some of which we learned the hard way)
Bring lots of bug spray - everyone in our group was eaten alive nearly every night notwithstanding the application of large amounts of bug spray.
Request a rental truck with some sort of tank rank in the back of the truck (I understand that AB has these). Our truck (Total Car Rental) did not and tanks were often all over the place. We put our booties in between tanks to prevent banging and this worked fairly well.
Bring frozen water to the dives, leave windows down and nothing of value in the car (sandles and shirts seem to be fine to leave behind).
Bring a compass - you can lose direction on the swimout for the southern sites.
For remote night dives - put a beacon light by your truck to find your way home.
Batteries for your torches are expensive - bring them with you.
The road on the westcoast becomes one-way right before Karpata - there is an old dirt road that circles back (thus avoiding the long route around through Rincon) but it was pretty burly drive that I would not do again (to much fear of blown tires).
Den Laman
We were very impressed with Den Laman condos. We were in the shark room, which is a two bedroom ocean view (not ocean front) on the third floor. The rooms were very clean and kitchens were well appointed. All rooms had AC units that were modern and efficient. We felt very secure in the rooms and frequently left gear on the patio to dry overnight. Security personal was stationed near the main entry every night.
Although the staff is only availble until 4pm, we found them to be very friendly. Housekeeping was better than we expected. They washed our dishes and cleaned our room to our satisfaction each day.
We did have some issues with the showers flooding our bathrooms (no curtains to block water from the shower stall) but the water evaporated rather quickly. Our unit was also equipped with a nearly non-functional safe which was small and mostly suitable for cash, passports and small electornics. Opening the safe with the key was a 5 minute "jiggle turn jiggle turn" exercise, and as a result, we ended up stashing everything but our hard cash in our luggage. On the final day, the key broke as we attempted to lock the safe so hopfully that issue will be resolved for the next guest.
The biggest downside of Den Laman was having to lug our gear up to the third floor after every dive. Often our gear was wet and so we were frequently guitly of breaking the "don't wet the stairs rule". Unfortunately, BDA not being our dive shop, we really had no other viable storage alternative.
Internet access worked reasonably well for us, but since access is in the form of prepaid usage time (we paid $10 for a 6 hour block of time) we had to be be mindful of "logging on" and "logging off" each time we used the internet, which was a colossal pain in the ass. I would have preferred a reasonable unlimited access charge, as I like the convenience of being always connected to the internet. Having to use a local calling card for local phone calls pissed me off. As a result, I never made reservations in advance and wasn't able to locate a spa soon enough to book a massage.
Den Laman lacks a common area (e.g. a pool or deck) to hang out at when not diving. We had thought that we could use the Sand Dollar pool without charge but this did not appear to be the case. Moreover, the Sand Dollar pool was a bit of a hike from Den Laman so we only went over to it one time. Depending on your diving schedule, this may or may not be a concern. Fortunately, we brought several DVDs which helped us kill down time.
Finallly, calling the room "ocean view" was a bit of a stretch. If I were to lean over my balcony, I could get a glimpse of the ocean, but that was the extent of any view I could have. Ocean front views are probably worth the extra dollars.
Wannadive
We arrived on Saturday on the 2pm Delta flight via Atlanta from NYC. Although we had 90 minutes for a layover, I was somewhat nervous about making an on time departure out of NYC and receiving our checked luggage in Bonaire. As Delta only has one flight into the island this time of year, I probably would think twice before booking this route again.
After reading generally poor reviews of BDA on several travel websites (including tripadvisor and scubaboard), we decided to dive elsewhere. We initially booked with Buddy's, but Wannadive (Eden Beach location, about 2 minute drive from Den Laman) agreed to do our orientation at 4pm on the day we arrived, thus affording us one more evening of diving. That was sufficient to earn our business.
Tank access at wannadive was great - tanks are readily available 24/7, air and nitrox, 64 and 80cf. Tanks generally had very good fills (often 3100 psi) and decent o-rings. It takes about two minutes to drive from Den Laman to the wanandive loading station at Eden beach resort, so I dare say access was better than it would have been at Buddy's (which shuts down the drive through station around 5pm).
My only critique of wannadive was that the rinse tanks and gear storage were at he shop location, which was on the beach approximatley 250 feet from the parking lot and tank area, and not accessible by vehicle. As a result, we frequently rinsed our gear inside our condo and stored it in our 3rd story room at Den Laman, which was really tedious during surface intervals on day dives.
Over the course of the week, we chatted with people about their experiences with BDA, including a Den Laman owner who had an unbelieveable interaction with BDA's owner and who now dives with another vendor. Didn't hear much of anything positive. I dropped in their dive shop once to purchase some small items and the shop attendent inquired as to whether I was diving with BDA - when I said no, she said "so you hear bad things"? Very strange interaction, appearently they are very aware of their reputation.
As they lock the accessible tanks up fairly early, i often I saw people lugging air-only tanks from the BDA dock to the parking lot late in the evening. This exercise did not look pleasant. By contrast, our access to tanks at wannadive was convenient and pleasant. If I stay at Den Laman again, I probably still won't use BDA.
Diving
Summary - We did 18 dives over 6 days. Definately not the most aggressive schedule, but I felt satisfied after the trip. Although we enjoyed Bonarie, we did not have much luck spotting the more interesting creatures. The reefs looked faily heatlhy (although you could see storm destruction everywhere) with tons of common fish and lots of juveniles.. We came accross many flounders, drummer fish, all sorts of blennys, a family of squid, 2 scorpion fish, 2 goliath groupers (one of which buzzed us by a foot - spectactular!), one eagle ray and about four sea horses. We were hoping for a few turtles, frog fish, and some more eagle rays but no such luck.
In terms of favorite sites, we liked The Lake, Red Slave (which we dove with no current amazingly) and Oil Slick Leap (mostly for the leap!). We dove many other sites but those were our favorite. Hilma Hooker (the wreck, not the reef) was highly acclaimed and always appeared to be busy, but we were not that impressed. We also missed out on diving the park (never made the time to get out there), klein bonaire (didn't want to pay for boat dives) and the east coast (wasn't comfortable bringing my GF out there yet). If I return, i'll be sure to hit those places as I've heard good things.
Procedure and (Lack of) Theft- Our procedure was to leave Den Laman with two or three sets of tanks and 2 to 3 liter bottles of water for each dive site (which covered 3 people). We also brought a large jug of water for rinsing my buddies mucho expensive camera. We picked up this otter case from Leisure Pro which fit snugly in my BC pocket and was capable of holding my car keys, room keys and cash. The only items we left in our car were some generic bags (e.g. cloth carrying bag or cheap dirty duffle back), sandles, an occasional not too nice shirt and water. Windows were down on our vehicle during the entire stay. We never experienced one incidence of theft on the Island. I had some trepidation about leaving my reef sandles in the car but they were never stolen.
Preparation for Dive Sites / Ease of Location - Prior to my trip, I purchased Bonaire Shore Diving Made Easy. I also researched sites for "ease of entry" as this trip was the first big diving trip for my GF. Finally, for the sites I indentified, I printed out the pages from shorediving.com for the targetted sites and packed those along with me. This was extreme overkill.
Turns out, locating most dive sites on Bonaire was much simpler than I could have imagined. Nearly all (if not all) of the documented sites are marked with yellow stones (each bearing the site name) on the road. All you need to do is keep an eye out for the requesite yellow stone, pull up to the water, look for a marker bouy (which nearly every site also has) and get wet. We seldom even referenced BSDMA, which the exception of the one unmarked site that we hit (Taylor Made).
Parking - Although shorediving.com and BSDMA indicate that many sites have potentially treacherous rubble in the associate parking area , we never had any problem pulling our truck right up to the water (and overycrazy looking patches of coral rubal!) We went real slow and managed to keep our tires in tact.
Entry - We also found the tried and true shore entry to be be reasonaly simple on almost every site (even sites marked as advanced entry). Inflate your bc, slowly get out to your waist, put your fins on and cruise. Some sites were a bit tricker (most notably Taylor Made), but we had very few falls getting in and out of the sites despite a lack of experience doing shore dives.
Dining in Bonaire
We were generally impressed with the quality of dining establishments in Bonaire given the fact that the Island is small and somewhat remote. Our dining choices below are in the order of ranking:
Wil's Tropical Grill - Our favorite dining experience. We arived right before closing and Wil and Sue were kind enought to seat us and allow us time to eat a several course meal. Afterwards, we had a great conversation with them about cuisine on the island. Both food and ambiance were excellent, and Sue and Wil are about as friendly as can be (a welcome change from the proprieters in NYC where I live). Wil, owner and chef, has an impressive resume which is somewhat surprising in light of the reasonableness of the prices for his entrees.
Carpricios - Very good dining experience. Homemade pasta and tiramisu were excellent. Steaks were fairly good. We didn't make reservations so we had to sit indoor. The ambiance of the indoor seating was bland. If we were to eat here again, we would definatley sit outdoors.
Rib Factory - The taste/value mix here was so good that we ate here twice. Each time we did the ribs and chicken combo. Very strong ribs, tender and deliciuos.
Zeezicht - We had a good dining experience here with efficient service, but nothing really to write home about. Several of the items we ordered were "unavailable" so we ended up with our second choices. We had the pineapple chicken and the angry chicken (chicken in hotsauce) - the latter was our favorite.
Sunset Grill - We ate here for our first dinner, and also after Wil reccomended that we try the burgers they serve for lunch. Unfortunately, our service for our dinner was attrocious. Our food took nearly an hour to prepare (pizza and a steak), notwithstanding the fact that there were only 4 other parties dining at the grill. Moreover, we were the first group in the restaurant, and each other group recevied food before us. As this was our first night on the Island, we hadn't learned the painful lessons about the mosquitos yet. We were nearly eaten by the time our food arrived. Our lunch later in the week was the exact opposite. Western style service that was fast and efficient. The burgers were very good to excellent. The ambiance at the Sunset Grill is strong, and lizards and iguanas frequent the area around the tables searching for scraps. We rather enjoyed their presence.
Pasa Bon Pizza - Pasa Bon Pizza was a good value and the food was solid, but not exceptional. We had an order of garlic breadh and a garlic and pepperoni pizza. The pizza had a thick crust and was on par with what I would expect from a Pizza Hut in the states. Price was right and the owner was friendly, but I'm more of thin crust pizza guy so If I were to do over, I would do the Pizza Temple at Captain Dons (which I hear is thin crust).
Wattaburger - Probably the worst meal we had on the Island. Burger tasted more like sausage than a burger, menu was nearly indecipherable and ordering was a challenge.
Miscellanous
UV Night Dive - After running into Bas at Karpata (very friendly and helpful fellow), we decided to do the much acclaimed UV Night Dive with his shop (VIP Diving). Our group's impression of the dive was very lackluster. The UV Night Dive differs is not a guided dive insofar as the dive master doesn't (generally) point out many things for you to see. Further, many critters that we were able to spot didn't light up at all under the UV lights. We spotted many anenomes, fireworms and brain corals with the assistance of the UV light (including a sand diver which looked pretty awesome) and each looked radically different under UV light exposure, but overall, we weren't that impressed. Given the high acclaim that others have given the dive, had we to do it over again, we probably would have just enlisted Bas and team to do an ordinary guided dive.
Cheers!
Jeff
