Random thoughts.
1.) At restaurants, soda refills may not be free. I order water. Get a bunch of soda at the market, and stock your fridge. Use empty containers to put water in for face rinsing and rehydration, and put in back of your truck.
2.) When parking to dive, windows down, doors unlocked, and leave nothing you're not willing to 'donate' in the truck. Plan so everything except extra tanks enters & exits in the water with you. This isn't hard to do. Lots of poor people know you're gone & the truck unguarded for an hour or so.
3.) When you look at a map, without getting into the park, what I think of as the mainstream dive sites start to the north with Karpata, and a bit south of that, Tolo. These occur after the road becomes one way, committing you to a long round trip home. So these dives are good to do together. Karpata is pretty lush reef.
4.) Northern Bonaire is quite hilly, even mountainous, and very bushy, with a lot of thorny plants. Parking for dive sites seems quite sheltered at times. Southern Bonaire is very flat and you can see a long ways up & down the shore.
5.) 1,000 Steps is nice for entry/exit and scenic for photographs, but hauling gear up & down the 60 something steps can make you feel the burn. It made me appreciate shedding some lead from when I was over-weighted.
6.) Oil Slick Leap involves a maybe 6'+ giant stride of a rocky cliff if you wish; you can enter by the exit ladder. Kind of a signature island thrill. Nice dive site.
7.) Down south, I found Sweet Dreams to be quite lush. I believe Red Beryl is also good, and people often speak well of Margate Bay.
8.) If you get down near Atlantis (I believe it is) where the kite boarders do their thing, it's neat to watch. People windsurf in little sail boats on the other side of the island, at Jibe City.
9.) Animals I see a lot of; French Grunt, trumpet fish, stoplight parrotfish, French & Queen angelfish, rock beauties, Spanish hogfish, spotted moray eels, blue tang, blue chromis, graysbys, conies, yellow-striped goat fish, yellow snapper, black margate, flounder, scorpion fish, some blue-striped grunts and other grunts/snappers, some porgies, occasional midnight parrotfish, occasional tarpon, goldentail moray eels, conch, flamingo tongues & anemones. I see a few slipper lobster, Caribbean spiny lobster, green morays, barracuda, tiger grouper, rainbow parrotfish, octopi, small reef squid, once in awhile an eagle ray (in the distance, not letting me close) and once I think a southern (or similar) stingray.
Things I've seen very rarely: 2 seahorses were pointed out to me, and 1 frogfish, by other people. 2 ocean triggerfish swam by at the Cliff site. That one (?) southern stingray. Couple of reef crabs. Buddy found a small starfish on a west coast dive; together we found a big one on an east coast dive, Cai, where I also saw a queen triggerfish. At the surface on one trip, a buddy pointed out what looked like a flea circus in the distance and said they were dophins. I have not seen a manta, but seems like in the past couple of years people have seen more there.
Things I haven't seen in Bonaire over 7 trips and well over 100 dives there: sharks, porkfish, any big grouper except tiger grouper, grey angelfish, common hog fish.
10.) I like to drag out dive time by spending time at the end of the time messing around over rubble in the shallows. Be mindful that scorpion fish hang out here, day and night.
Richard.
