On Bonaire 12-20 March

[Waterskier1]

I arrived on Bonaire 11 March, after departing Thus 10 March. I drove to Denver from Colorado Springs, for a Midnight flight to MIA on AA. Arrived around 5AM, and waited for the next AA Flight from MIA to CUR to depart at noon. Arrived CUR around 4:30pm and picked up luggage and rechecked it with Insel Air for the last let to Bonaire departing around 8:00PM. Arrived at 8:30PM and was picked up by a taxi arranged by Golden Reef Inn. Was at the room shortly after 9:000PM.

I choose not to pay an extra fee to pick up my truck Friday night upon arrive (and the extra day rental) so arranged to be picked up by Island Car Rental at 9:00AM Saturday. This was the earliest pickup they could arrange, due all the early morning flights coming in on Saturday. That worked out fine, got the truck and went over to WannaDive to register and pay for my Marine Parks Fee. Met a lot of old friends there.

I did some grocery shopping and then decided to re-rig my regulators for single tank dives, and back to WannaDive for some tanks. My dive buddy from Poland wasn't due to arrive Bonaire until 9:30PM that night. I did a checkout dive with some friend who were working on their Rescue Diver Cert, and then we all went do a dive at Angle City.

I picked up my buddy at 9:15 (early arrival) and all our luggage arrived fine.

On Sunday, we decided to dive single tanks for a couple days, and check out how difficult it might be entering shore dives with doubles. We did five dive Sunday, after Milo went through WannaDive's orientation. We did, Alice in Wonderland, Salt Pier (no problems diving here with no ships - employee/guard came over to ask about the dive), Bari Reef, Oil Slick Leap, and then Buddy's Reef for a night dive. We went to City Cafe for their special of the day.

Yesterday (Monday) we continued with the single tank dives and did Hilma Hooker, Margate Bay, Invisibles, 1000 Steps, and Karpata (which was almost a twilight dive. Had a quick dinner at Bon Appetit.

Today, we'll get some groceries and then pick up the double tanks. Milo is GUE trained, and I'm training with UTD. We want to practice skills along with fun diving. Logistically we may have problems obtaining our desired five dives per day, since we'll only get two dive out of the doubles, and then have to return for fills, before going out again. I'm not sure how long it will take to refill, since the operation is set up for filling single tanks. We haven't found a trans-fill whip yet, which would allow us to take extra single tanks and fill the doubles from those.

I'm not a writer, like Adaveke, but I'll try and answer any questions you might have while I'm here.

 

[Jersey]

May want to change your first line "arrived 19 March". Quite the logistics getting there and to think I complain about my Phl - Atl - Bon 8 hour jaunt!

Sounds like you already have done some diving - the Hooker up to Karpata in one day, I'm tired just reading it. How are winds and currents running? What temps are you seeing at depth? Rain (not that I care when diving)? Did you hit the second reef at any of the southern sites? Any interesting sea life - giant manta rays??? What did the guard at Salt Pier say?

 

[MagnaBoxer]

Waterskier1,

Could you detail what Insel's carry on / checked bag allowance is? Recently read another post, that mentioned each person was allowed a 22lb carry on, a 44lb checked bag, as well as 22lbs of scuba gear. Can you confirm is this is correct? So we'd each be able to carry three bags, two 22lb (one with scuba gear) and a 44lb?

Sorry if this has been detailed elsewhere, just a bit confused and don't want to overpack when we go back to Bonaire in May.

Hope you are having a great time and I anticipate hearing of your dives. Oh, and tell Liz hello for me

 

[Waterskier1]

May want to change your first line "arrived 19 March". Quite the logistics getting there and to think I complain about my Phl - Atl - Bon 8 hour jaunt!

Thanks, corrected

Sounds like you already have done some diving - the Hooker up to Karpata in one day, I'm tired just reading it. How are winds and currents running?

Not much wind, and currents are normal for Bonaire. There does seem to be quite a lot of surge though.

What temps are you seeing at depth?

81* F. But haven't exceeded 110 feet. I don't think there is a thermocline here to worry about.

Rain (not that I care when diving)?

Not much rain yesterday, none today. Partly cloudy, which hurts the visibility underwater.

Did you hit the second reef at any of the southern sites?

We went over to the second reef at Invisibles, but only to see it - we did not descend down over it.

Any interesting sea life - giant manta rays???

Saw a ray at Invisibles, a turtle, yesterday, and a sea horse today.

What did the guard at Salt Pier say?

He just asked us how the dive went, how deep we went, and what we saw....more questions of someone who doesn't know much about diving but was interested. No comments regarding closures or such. There were others diving the site too.

[Sorry for the late response - been diving

 

[Waterskier1]

Waterskier1,

Could you detail what Insel's carry on / checked bag allowance is? Recently read another post, that mentioned each person was allowed a 22lb carry on, a 44lb checked bag, as well as 22lbs of scuba gear. Can you confirm is this is correct? So we'd each be able to carry three bags, two 22lb (one with scuba gear) and a 44lb?

Sorry if this has been detailed elsewhere, just a bit confused and don't want to overpack when we go back to Bonaire in May.

Hope you are having a great time and I anticipate hearing of your dives. Oh, and tell Liz hello for me

Sure. That is the posted allowances for the smaller Turboprop.

I flew AA to Curacao. I was lucky to fly the Insel MD-80 Series to Bonaire. On that aircraft, Insel say you are allowed on small carry on (22 lbs max), up to two checked bags (66 lbs max combined) and one "free" scuba bag (22 lbs max). That is 30 kg + 10 kg = 40 kg total check bags. I repacked my scuba bag and other baggage to meet the the 22 lbs (10 kg) scuba bag limit while in Curacao. When I checked in to Insel, they put all three of my checked bags (scuba bag, checked bag and my carry on bag which was too much for their carry on - per the website). They all weighed 46.8 kg. They explained nicely that the limit was 40 kg, but they would let me go this time. They did not individually weight the bags, so I didn't need to repack.

My buddy flew over in the small turboprop. He had a single checked bag that weighted 23 kg. This included his scuba gear, but we don't know they knew that. He was not assessed any fee either. On the turboprop planes, you are allowed 10 kg (22 lbs) scuba plus just 20 kg (44 lbs) checked baggage. He did have a backpack that he carried on, and held on his lap. Others with conventional carry on luggage had theirs "checked" as they boarded, as there is no where to store anything, not under the seats and there are no overhead compartments.

I will be flying that turboprop back to Curacao on Sunday. I expect to be charged for my excess. I'll pay - I just hope it makes it to Curacao, so I can check it on to Denver on AA.

That's our experience to date. No one seemed worried about the luggage, but I wouldn't count on that everytime.

 

[Waterskier1]

Yesterday, we went grocery shopping - we are fixing our own breakfast and lunch, eating out only for dinners. Then we hit all the tech diver locations looking for a trans-fill whip (decanting hose) to fill the doubles from the readily available single AL80s. No one had one - only Walt knew what we were talking about, without us giving a detailed explanation on what it looked like and how we would use it. A couple said they had on hooked to their compressor, but we couldn't have it....but they offered to fill our tanks for a fee. We already have unlimited Nitrox through WannaDive, so we gave up and decided we'd just live with doing two dives, returning to get them filled and doing two more that afternoon. That's is what we did, and it worked out fine. The great folks at WannaDive filled our tanks "on demand". No undue waiting. Note: Bonaire isn't set up for tech diving, other than escorted wreck dives, or training. Very few places have doubles and other tech equipment for rent, without lessons or guided dives. We were the only divers with doubles we have seen this week.

We didn't get to diving until afternoon yesterday. We dived Andrea I, then The Cliff, refilled the doubles, and dived WannaDive Windsock, and Punt Vierkant.

Today, we started a bit earlier, and after getting the doubles refilled, we dived Ol' Blue and Karpata. Then back for lunch and refills, and then to Something Special and Calabas Reef.

We followed a Turtle for quite a while at The Cliff, and found a Black Sea Horse at Calabas Reef.

We decided to do a East Coast boat dive tomorrow. WannaDive now has access to a really cool RIB (rigid hull inflatable boat) - twin 225 HP outboards. But, they can only handle single tank divers. So, we converted back to single tanks tonight, and will be diving single tanks from now on.

We had fun with the doubles, and both got in a bit of practice (valve drills, shooting smb's and basic 6). But, carrying those around was a bit taxing. You'll notice we didn't do hard entry dives with the doubles.

We are going to try to get in a couple dives before the boat dive at 12:30 tomorrow, and then a couple more dives after, with the last being another night dive. Tonight was the first night we didn't do either a twilight or night dive. That's how I have time to write this.

 

[Jersey]

Thanks, corrected. He just asked us how the dive went, how deep we went, and what we saw....more questions of someone who doesn't know much about diving but was interested. No comments regarding closures or such. There were others diving the site too.

[Sorry for the late response - been diving

Thanks! Glad to hear no hassles at Salt Pier ~ done it as a night dive, taking new camera this trip. I can say I've rarely seen doubles on Bonaire, though it may become more common as more places are starting to advertise Tech dives and training. I'll say you've been out diving just keep the reports coming, between the dives of course!

(I'm at 8 day countdown, back to Bonaire, excited YEAH! )

 

[gert7to3]

Seems to me that independent doubles might be the way to go at a place like Bonaire. From your earlier post, did you actually haul your own tanks down there?

 

[Waterskier1]

Seems to me that independent doubles might be the way to go at a place like Bonaire. From your earlier post, did you actually haul your own tanks down there?

Independent doubles would work if you needed the additional gas to perform a dive, and didn't have access to proper doubles. We rented ours here. We did so because both of us are in technical training programs (he:GUE, I:UDT) and we wanted to gain additional experience and practice drills. Some of these only can be done with proper doubles (i.e., you can't do a valve drill when you have no manifold). All dives were "min-deco" dives, which is to say we never entered deco status. We did two dive per fill.

I do have a Remora System, just for doubling up independent tanks to make independent backmount doubles. Sidemounting is another option where proper backmount doubles are rare.

 

[Waterskier1]

Finally some time to update. On Thursday, we switched back to single tank kits, and dived Jeff Davies and Webber's Joy (Witche's Hut) before grabbing some lunch and heading over to the East Side for our boat dive. We dove White Hole, and swam around many turtles (15-20, maybe more). Also saw a couple sting rays. It was a nice dive, lots more larger fish. Nice to do once, but not sure would do it over and over again, especially since it costs money, and take a lot of time out of a day's diving time. That said, we still managed to do Eden's Rubble (Front Porch) and Andera II.

Yesterday, we went up north, and dived Taylor Maid, then Nukove, and on the way back, Candy Land. Then a late lunch, and down south to our week with Aquarius and a night dive at Jeannie's Glory.

Milo departs this afternoon, and I depart for Curacao tomorrow afternoon, spending the and then off to MIA early Monday morning on AA.

Overall, the reef is more bleached than in the past, and didn't seem to have as many fish. Taylor Maid and Candy Land seem to be in better shape, and remind me of what Bonaire was like. Nukove was a waste of time. Bad entry (worse than before) and bleached coral, and few fish.

The visibility was under par for the whole week. I'm not sure what it was, but you could see particles (not sand) floating around all the time. It was hard to see the bottom of the reefs, even in the south, from the top. I sure hope this is a temporary problem, and not an indicator of things to come.

Other than the difficulty getting here for a reasonable price, it was a good trip. The folks at WannaDive were great (as usual). Liz is bed-ridden waiting to go to the States for surgery, so we didn't get to see her, but had a nice chat with Ed. It looks like they may have a contract on the Inn. We might have been the last guests of GRI. They are still leasing long term - the people we spoke to here were medical students.