New and Needing Advice

[hapakim]

Hello Fellow Divers!

I am an advanced Open Water Diver with about 50 dives under my belt. I registered to scubaboard to seek peoples advice on dive locations.

I am currently seeking advice on travel.

My boyfriend plans on spoiling me by taking me on a dive trip to either Bonaire or Hawaii.

So I have three main questions:

(1) If you have ever dived in these locations, what did you think?
(2) If you ever dived with "Plaza Resort Bonaire," what were your likes and dislikes?
(3) Where and what dive boat, would you recommend diving with in Hawaii?

Thanks,
hapakim

 

[Robotixfan]

Welcome, I have snorkeled in Bonaire about 4 weeks ago and can say the water was about 80 degrees and there was an abundant amount of sea life. The water is SUPER salty, for the heads up. I swam with a sea turtle, grouper (about 3ft in length) and coral reef squid. Warm and clear. This place was just voted best scuba and snorkel place in the world. As for the island itself? A complete disappointment. The island is one big salt lick with donkeys. If you plan to stay there and site see as well, go for Hawaii, Kona has the light show under water at night so you can swim with Manta rays.

Good luck and have fun

 

[mudhole]

Hapakim, welcome to ScubaBoard, There are 100,000 divers here ready to answer your questions. . . you just have to sort through the crowd to talk to the right people.


At the top of each page is a "Forums" button, that will fly you through tens of thousands of divers talking about something else. Scroll down the long list of topics till you reach "Regional Travel and Dive Clubs." here you will find information about diving in the U.S. as well as the Caribbean, and Hawaii. Within the topic for Hawaii, you will find posts that are a few days old to a couple of weeks. Use the search function for earlier messages, or specific search criteria. The same technique for search the "A (Aruba) B (Bonaire) C (Curacao?) the ABC islands are grouped together, but are different from each other, above and below the water.

Take a look around the topics for answers for new divers questions, equipment opinions, boy do we have opinions, and to get a preview of travelers choices look through the photo galleries. there are a lot of good photographers posting here.

 

[hapakim]

Thanks for the info so far folks. Anyone else got any ideas?

 

[ptyx]

Hello,

I've been diving both - and I concur with Robotixfan.

I'd rate Bonaire first for diving:
-reefs are beautiful - especially if you like small critters
-convenience is hard to beat: you rent a car, grab tanks from your resort and go diving wherever you like - almost - and any time you like. Most resorts also have a home reef, so you can even skip the car trip for a pre-breakfast or night dive
-water is warm
-on the minus side, there isn't much to see or do on the island except diving.
-get the basic nitrox certification once you're there (it's cheap and worth it) - otherwise your computers won't talk to you any more at the end of the trip.

For diving only, Hawaii diving isn't as good (colder, sites less easily accessible - boat rather than shore most of the time, less life,...), however there is plenty to do outside of diving.

Most of the dives I've done in Hawaii were guided - Bonaire, you're on your own. I like the later better, but that's personal preference.

I have no experience with Plaza Resort - but as long as it has self service tanks and a decent home reef you won't care
For Hawaii, I've been following the 'Big Island|Maui|... Revealed' guide boat recommendations - and have never been disappointed.

 

[spectrum]

My experience is in Bonaire and it is shore divers heaven. Awesome sites in close proximity. We stayed and dove from buddy dive and wanted for nothing.

Bonaire is all about diving with barely enough other stuff to consume your surface day. That may be a bit of an exaggeration but aside from windsurfers nearly all visitors are there for dive intensive vacations.

Pete