You can actually do Cliff from Buddy. Walk to the Northern set of stairs, the old Lions Dive side, along the Capt Don's-Buddy border. If conditions are favorable (not to much wave action) enter, surface swim on diagonal out to Capt Don's, drop down, somewhere around La Machaca. You can also check out the flag and plaque 'in honor of those who have gone before...' along the reef edge. Keep it on the shallow side up to Cliff, drop, dive, turn and depending on your air head back in the same way or go up by the docks.
Van den Tweels has a warehouse operation (think BJ's or Costco) about 1/2 miles away, hard to describe location beyond down the side street next to the auto parts place. They will give you directions from V den Tweels. Excellent liquor selection. Zhong Kong as mentioned is a great close resource, wide selection, good prices.The Chinese restaurant next door is reasonable and has huge portions. They do more take away than eat in. Mi Banana (across the street from the brothel by the way) local, Columbian, down home cooking - pretty extensive menu - chicken, fish, beef, pork. Get the Tres Leches cake for dessert. Rose Inn, Rincon last few trips only open for lunch select days. Do have the goat stew - kabrita stoba - and a couple cold beers.
Cuba Campagnie, in the square in K-djik, Thursday night is Salsa Night! Free lessons. Goes on till the wee hours. Also has great food, try the crispy salty bread w/ garlic aioli. I'm drooling thinking about it.
Events & Foto's check out the pics.
We like to do a few boat dives, some days I don't feel like dealing with shore diving, sand, entries, all that stuff. Tie in, let me fall off the boat and climb back on in an hour. Usually head North - to those sites you can't do from shore (Rappel) or don't want to do from shore (1,000 Steps) . Or head over to Klein - Forest mentioned above is great. Earlier this year we had nasty winds, bunch of stuff was not accessible. At Ebo's Special (not a pretty site) we found a very large sleeping nurse shark in a mini-cave with the tiniest juvi spotted drum cleaning its teeth. Even longtime Buddy DM Murph (an icon and veritable institution at Buddy!) was duly impressed by the size of sharky - maybe 8 foot. Some of the coral restoration sites around Klein have become turtle havens, love to watch the turtles. South Bay has large stands of stag coral regenerating in about 25 feet, beautiful to see, think large shrubs not twigs. South West Corner is the intersect of 2 currents which can create bedlam and great diving. You never know what will fly by in the deep. With enough air at the end of dive, take some time to explore the shallows. A nice flat pan with soft corals creating a juvi nursery for all kinds of critters.
...And if the tree mentioned above is what I think they are referring to, it's called a Machineel, or 'manzanita de la muerte' (that's 'little apple of death' in English). Contact can cause blistering, blindness and consumption can cause death.
