Trip Report - Bonaire 12/2-12/12/08

[reefduffer]

Executive Summary:
Captain Don's Habitat (CDH) - Recommended.
Maduro Travel Agency - Recommended.
Leo Hoogenboom (Instructor) - You should be so lucky.
Bonaire - Doh!

Overview

My wife and I took a dive trip to Bonaire Dec 2-12, our third trip there and our third stay at Captain Don's. We added two days to the standard week package to be sure we got "dived out", and because we did our AOW certification this trip and didn't want to be shortchanged on fun dives. Being retired has some advantages. Arrived late Tuesday, left early the next Friday, eight days of diving.

We were joined on Saturday by my sister and her husband, who stayed a day beyond our departure. Our AA flights were actually changed by AA five times between booking in April and December, including a change to not-every-day flights, so we couldn't line up with their Continental red-eye.

I did 18 dives, including five AOW training dives, six boat dives and three night dives. Four of the boat dives were to Klein Bonaire, one to the Hilma Hooker, and one north. All the other dives were from the CDH dock.

Yes, I know Bonaire is the mecca of shore diving. I'd like to, but the others in our group are lukewarm at best. We're all 60-ish, the women find shore entries more challenging than they're worth, and my brother-in-law uses full-foot fins. If you want to know about Bonaire shore diving, sorry, read a different trip report. With a six boat-dive package and 2 dives a day (with a 3rd night dive a few times) there's enough to see from the dock to fill out a week.

The diving was as great as always. Bottom temps were 82 degF always except for one night dive that was 81. Vis varied from 40' to 70'+, mostly 50-60. As usual, currents were from none to weak. Never much surge. Bonaire diving rocks!

We saw all the usual fish, plus a few eels, turtles, snakes, and a frogfish. On two of the night (actually twilight) dives we found an octopus out hunting, just north of the CDH dock. They just froze in place and pretended to be rocks or coral, mostly pretty effectively. With the help of our AOW instructor Leo we saw some cleaner shrimp - Banded Coral and Pederson.

The Hilma Hooker was an experience, the biggest wreck we'd seen. A 130' freighter with its nose at just barely 100' and it's stern at 55' or so. We swam towards it per the briefing at about 70', looking for a boat. By the time we were close enough to resolve features and recognize it, we couldn't see it all, we had thought the dark shape ahead was the reef. Bam! And suddenly there's a wreck in front of us. We had enough bottom time to swim around it once, starting at the nose and working higher as we rounded the stern.


Dive Operation - CDH

There is a mandatory orientation at 9:00 AM every day. You must attend it before diving the first time. C-cards are checked, and you can't get gear or a Marine Park medallion until you attend. Then you are expected to do a self-checkout dive on the house reef. They bill themselves as the "home of diving freedom" and all certified divers really are treated like adults. Air tanks are available, unattended, 24/7 for shore or dock diving. Nitrox tanks are locked up at night, so some planning might be required there. Nobody checks to see if you're doing a dozen dives a day. You're expected to know how to judge what diving is appropriate for you.

The CDH diving dock (baby dock) is on the same level, and about 100', from the lockers / set-up benches. The boat dock (papa dock) is larger and separate, 100' or so south. There's a wooden bench at the end for final gear-up. You do a giant stride in, and there's a wide stable stairway from a sand bottom out. Like a big boat that doesn't move. There's a big rope - the "divers highway" - that goes from the dock down the reef to 200+ feet. Swim out to your depth, head north or south, follow the reef out and back until you hit the line again, and it's really hard to get lost.

Bring a small padlock for the gear lockers. It's pretty dimly lit at night, so I prefer a key lock (key around my neck, with the room key), but plenty of people use combination locks. The lockers will hold a full set of gear. They are wooden and don't represent high physical security. I took my regs/console to the room at night, partly for security and partly to get the dive data off my Cobra, but left everything else in the locker.

There are three boat dives a day, at 8:30, 11:00, and 2:00. All are 1-tank trips, trips are 5-20 minutes, the 20 being sites on the far side of Klein Bonaire. The sites are posted on a signup board around 3:00 PM the day before, usually it's one south, one north, and one Klein, but there are often DM choices and requests are taken both ahead of time and for DMC. There is seldom much in the way of waves/chop, less than any other place I've been.

There are nominally 20 seats on the boat, which would be pretty crowded. I think the most we had was 16, with fewer most trips. Every boat has a captain and a DM. The DM gets in the water with the divers and you can dive with him if you want, or not. The boat stays at one mooring, all dives are out-and-back, not drift dives. There is so little current typically that "Drift diver" isn't even offered as an AOW adventure dive. (Along with Altitude diver, Drysuit diver, DPV, Cavern, and ... wait for it ... Ice diver).

Entries are giant stride, there's an easy ladder back in. Typically they have you sit on a step at the stern while the captain removes the tank from your rig while you're still wearing it. As the "home of diving freedom" there is no "back with 500 PSI" or 1-hour rule, but we were requested to be considerate of the other divers and not spend 2 hours toodling at 20 feet keeping everyone else waiting on the boat.

The rental gear is very basic, and well-used. We tried to rent a computer for my wife but the few they had were already rented out. I'd prefer it if they had some rental upgrade options (not for myself) but I guess by now they know their business, and what matters to their customers. Maybe when the new dive shop opens ...

All the dive staff seemed knowledgeable and generally friendly and helpful. The senior staff is all Dutch, some of the DMs are locals. I counted nine staff, might have missed a couple.

 

[reefduffer]

PADI AOW training

I'm familiar with the attitude toward AOW here on Scubaboard. But after 75 dives (60 for my wife) we thought we might get something out of it. Maybe learn something, have an instructor observe us and fix things we might not realize are broken about our diving, and also avoid any future cases of having some dive op limit where we can dive when we believe it's within our experience level. Knowing you get out of it what you put into it, we started studying months in advance, had all the KRs typed up and close to completely memorized, did compass exercises out in the park several times, etc.

We had the happy experience of having our preparation matched by the gift of an instructor who didn't seem burnt out on AOW students, and more qualified and more in sympathy with what we wanted to learn than I ever dared hope for. Leo Hoogenboom is an experienced PADI and tech (TDI and DSAT) instructor who started work at CDH the day we arrived. He'd been on Bonaire before, but had been working in the Mediterranean, and just finished a honeymoon in Indonesia with his UW photographer/videographer wife. But there's not enough tech instruction work for him to make a living on Bonaire, so he has to teach strokes like us. IMO CDH is just simply lucky to have him on staff. I hope we made it marginally more interesting for him than his average class.

He said he loves to dive caves and wrecks, has been to 100+ meters many times. He's also a free-diver and just finished a 10-day course certifying as a free-diving instructor. He's been to something like 155 feet swimming (I note that's deeper than I will ever get on scuba) and even deeper assisted by weights and lift bag. Oh, and a distance swimmer, and had the Hummann & Deloach fish-ID book pretty close to memorized. Scary competent, and intense. But really friendly and helpful, and he seemed to accept us for what we are, and what we wanted to do as divers, as long as we were trying.

[ As a separate insight, my BIL is a physician with some curiosity about the negative effects of hyperventilation. He chatted up Leo, was told that deep divers don't, and why, got references to some websites to look at, and came away from the interaction with the same one-word evaluation as mine - competent. ]

Leo started out suggesting we do buoyancy as the first adventure dive, and not do the night dive, since we'd already done three, one by ourselves. He thought the night adventure dive was for those who hadn't ever done one, to get over the fear, and that we'd get more out of PPB.

Actually, we spent quite a lot of time on trim and buoyancy. Starting with him showing us his Halcyon BP/W rig and selling us on its merits wrt trim. [ That's when I started wondering what alternate PADI universe I'd wandered into. ] When I showed him my back-inflate BC with 60% of the weight in tank band pouches he realized the message was being heard. Before we were done, he had volunteered to string four pounds (all he thought it would safely hold) on the tank band of my wife's rental BC, which involved unthreading it from the plastic backplate, and rethreading it when we left. She was so impressed with the difference it made in her trim that she's asking for weight pouches for xmas (she's still not interested in shlepping her own BC or regs).

He was also a little tickled that I dive a 5' long hose and bungied backup, and we both use spring straps. When he first showed us the frog kick (and who would have expected that?!), and I not only knew what it was but told him we'd watched the 5th-dx Essentials of Recreational diving DVD and wanted to learn how to do it, he started loosening up a bit, and I think we got a little more than basic AOW. Can't say I've mastered the frog kick, but I'm closer than I was before, which wasn't much. I never made any pretenses of wanting to be anything but a rec diver, and he didn't seem to mind, as long as I was sincerely trying to be a better one.

We had actually prepped KRs for seven different dives, with PPB being my first alternate choice, so that worked out. We ended up doing PPB, nav, deep, naturalist, and wreck. Got to 100+ feet a couple of times for the first time. Leo also taught us deep stops, not exactly the 1 minute at 50% I'd read before, but after 100 feet we did 60 and 40 for 2 minutes each, plus the usual 3 at 15.

In retrospect, I'd say our time and effort was rewarded by what we got out of it. The context is that we had had some dive experience, and several years, since OW training. We took our time with the book and got what we could from that. We were in what amounted to a private class, with a very competent and patient instructor. We definitely learned some things. I love it when a plan comes together.


Accommodations - CDH

I'm a little ambivalent here. This was our third trip to Bonaire, and our third stay at CDH. It was a little ... shabbier than I remembered. Possibly it was just the specific accommodations. Our first trip was a Villa Suite. Second trip that wasn't available and we got a Flamingo apartment. This time, although we booked in April, neither was available and we got a 1-bedroom cottage. Supposedly a "full kitchen", but in 2008 you'd expect that would have a microwave and coffee maker. The gas stove needed matches and they weren't provided. We always had hot water, but mostly too much; the shower was very tricky to adjust. The lights were dim, the sheets were rough, there was no electrical outlet in the bathroom. The safe was digital rather than the key of our last trips, but still too small for a laptop. Expecting that, I had brought only my iPod touch.

My sister had a "Deluxe Ocean View" suite, actually just a room and covered balcony. Nicer room, but no kitchen. A small refrigerator and a coffee maker. They said their shower was impossible to get a decent flow that wasn't scalding. But the safe was big enough for a laptop.

WiFi (free) worked decently in both rooms. Except when the whole island was out, which happened a couple of times. But oddly, it didn't work in the open-air restaurant.

They are constructing a new dive/photo/gift etc shop and conference room. Behind schedule of course, but aside from making for some slightly longer walks around the construction fences, it didn't really bother or affect us.

Although clearly we like a lot about CDH, and there's a lot to be said for a smidgen of familiar in a strange place, our party of two couples is discussing whether we'll try somewhere else next time we go to Bonaire. Maybe if we can book a Villa Suite or equivalent we'll give CDH another shot, or maybe we'll just go somewhere new for its own sake. But there seems no doubt there will be another Bonaire trip, even if we go somewhere else first.

 

[reefduffer]

Dining and Food

Breakfasts were the CDH buffet, quite acceptable. Omelets to order, sausage, bacon, pancakes, french toast, fruits, breads and rolls, including decent bagels (for the Caribbean) and an odd little raisin roll we have all gotten addicted to. Cereals, yogurt, cold cuts and other euro-style breakfast items. Forget to check for Vegemite, but I wouldn't be surprised. Quality is like Denny's, not the Marriott breakfast buffet, but good enough for the likes of us, and it's way more choice and quantity than I need anyway before a day of diving.

They still have my pet peeve that (other than omelets) it's all buffet - except for the coffee! That's the one thing I want NOW. But it actually seems like they're softening a little; if you just go to the wait station and pour your own, they just smile and try to serve you there rather than chasing you back to your table to wait for a server. Maybe a few more years ...

Lunches were in the room, either cold-cut sandwiches or dinner leftovers, and instant coffee (I always travel with enough, in ziplocks) . We shopped at both Warehouse (east of Lisa gas station, a little better variety and meat) and Cultimara (downtown, better produce selection). A hint for low-prep veggies, which are always at a premium when traveling and eating out: celery and apples. If you do sandwiches, you might consider bringing along a few fast food type condiment packets, so you don't have to pay import price for a bottle of something you'll leave 90% of behind.

Cultimara also had the better liquor selection. I got a 7-year old Cuban rum that was interestingly spiced for my nightly cardiac-health shot. There's also a liquor store with a wider selection on the main gift-shop street downtown. But there is no local Bonairian rum, I asked at several places and got the same answer.

Dinners ... well, there are some really nice restaurants on Bonaire, and we indulge shamelessly. I didn't make notes as we went, and my memory can no longer keep them all straight, so I'll only report what I remember clearly. We ate at:

- Rum Runner's (at CDH) the first night (too tired to go out). Thin crust pizza. Meh. More like partly-scorched matzoh then pizza crust.

- Bobbijan's BBQ. Twice, once before my sister arrived, once with them. Good grilled meat but unexceptional, and limited choices. Nice fries. Only open Friday-Sunday. But we'll go again next trip.

- Casablanca Argentine BBQ. The mixed grill for two. We ate half of it for a big dinner, and made two days' lunches from the leftovers. It will easily feed four adults for dinner. Nicely flavored, but the beef might have been a little overcooked this time. Won't stop us from returning.

- Wil's Tropical Grill. Nice seafood but nothing especially memorable. I remember OK conch fritter and nice calamari appetizers, but I don't clearly recall the entrees, other than that my BIL's pork was a better choice than my fish.

- Mona Lisa. Outstanding mixed seafood grill entree (Wahoo, Dorado, Grouper, and shrimp) with a nice sauce and enough au gratin potato to sop it up with. But the Bonairean soup was disappointing - just didn't care for the stock flavoring - too much dill? -, although the fish in it was nice. Very nice bread.

- Richard's Seaside. A bit disappointing from it's reputation. My sister's fish was so overdone she sent it back, the second try was much better. My shrimp scampi was surprisingly tasteless except for the shrimp itself. No sauce to speak of. The Bonairean soup was tastier than Mona Lisa's but the fish in it was a bit overcooked and rubbery. The famous table out on a dock was destroyed by Omar, but its return is promised.

- Papaya Moon. Tex-Mex. Very nice chicken eggrolls and fried Calamari appetizers. My steak fajitas were pretty good. But the only waiter was overworked and overfamiliar, repeatedly calling me "boss" and my wife "sweetheart". We asked him to leave a water pitcher, which he did, and it sat there mocking us for 10 minutes until he brought glasses. Between the waiter and the 20% service charge added to our bill (the menu says parties of six or more) we were really put off. We changed it to 15% (and thought about less) and then went and told him we'd done so in front of another table of 4 he was shmoozing. The food was good enough that we'll probably try it again next trip, though my wife says no. We remember it as very good our last trip.

- Unbelievable Restaurant. New place, a couple of blocks south of Casablanca. Second story deck with a nice sunset view. Very nice food, friendly and efficient service. My wife and I had the mixed seafood grill with pasta (me) or rice, very tasty. MY BIL had a rib-eye steak special that was big, tender, flavorful, and came with a very nice peppercorn sauce. US beef, we learned from talking with the owner, who also told us he'd built the whole building himself. We said, of course, "unbelievable". We'll be back here.

- Last Bite Bakery. On the road north of town, opposite Bobbijan's. We picked up four deserts to split our last night after dinner while watching the CDH weekly slide show at the bar. Best were the lemon sponge and the tres leches cakes. The chocolate pecan brownie (cake-ey, not fudge) and chocolate cake were not as good. If you want a dose of sweet as take-away, it's about the best available.

Oh, an observation on all Bonaire restaurants - check your bill to see if a service charge has been added before tipping. We were hit for 20% (Papaya Moon) and 15% (Unbelievable) and we were only a party of four. Wonder if we missed some others?

Credit cards were accepted everywhere except at a gas station in Rincon and the gift/snack shop in the national park. But not Amex. US currency is accepted everywhere (it will soon be Bonaire's official currency), but some shops said no $50 or $100 bills. Change was sometimes in dollars, sometimes in Florin. We ended up with no Florin.


Maduro Travel Agency, Budget truck rental.

I think Maduro is the exclusive US agency for CDH, but I see no reason to want to use another trip arranger. They did their job, and a little more. They were able to coordinate the separate trips of us and my in-laws pretty seamlessly. We arranged to share one truck, which we picked up, added my BIL as second driver ($5/day) and then he turned it in, paying the non-prepaid stuff on his CC. They handled the AA flight changes requiring changes to stay dates at CDH pretty easily. The package price seemed pretty good, and included a free night. We did our own air travel arrangements.

The last time we were in Bonaire, the truck we got from Budget was pretty beat up; the tailgate was rusted shut, both tail lamps were burned out, and one seatbelt was nearly unusable. So I asked Maduro about using ABCarental at CDH, which had nice shiny pickups sitting in the lot mocking us the last trip. I was assured that Budget had upgraded their fleet. Well, that was true, everything worked on the low-mileage 2.7L Toyota Hi-Lux we got, including AC, power windows and mirrors, etc. But IMO that truck is a little too big for Bonaire roads and parking spaces. We managed, but unless you really need a really big truck, I'd recommend requesting something smaller. Four tanks and gear and four people will fit comfortably in the smaller trucks that are more common there. JMO.

Budget was out of tank racks when we picked our truck up. Fortunately we didn't do any shore diving, but many will expect to, so this may need to be reserved. They said we could come back to the airport during the day and pick one up, but we didn't need to bother.


Non-dive: Washington Slagbaai national park.

For our non-dive day we finally made it to the national park that covers the whole north end of the island, including what's left of the volcano that we owe Bonaire to. We had tried last trip but got lost just following the map, and just gave up on it (we also started late). This time we asked and learned we have to go to the town of Rincon to find the entrance. We were also advised to call first to see if the road was open. CDH desk did that for us. So, armed with water, sandwiches and apples we headed north mid-morning to Rincon.

Entrance to the park is free with the park pass you must buy to dive Bonaire. There is a small museum at the entrance, and I would assess it as very well done for what it is and where it is. A reasonable thing to do if you don't want to drive through the park outback would be to spend a half hour to an hour at the museum and outdoor exhibits at the visitor's center, a mile or two of paved roads from Rincon.

There are exhibits on Bonaire's geology, plant and animal life, anthropology, plantation life and economics, and political history. Directed at adults, not just school kids. Captain Don's first regulator and "depth gauge" is on display (see photo). There's also the skeleton of a 40 foot whale impaled by a cruise ship and reconstructed by Bonaire high-schoolers. Really, worth a half hour to an hour on your non-dive day.

The drive through the park - maybe not so much. We sort of enjoyed it, especially lunch overlooking the Playa Funchi dive site, and feeding bits of it to the very bold 8" lizards. But the one-way loop drive was 15 Km or so of pretty bad mostly unpaved road with lots of hills. Took a couple of hours all told, including lunch. I wouldn't do it in bad weather, ours was bright and sunny. A few lakes with flamingos, a few kinds of vegetation, a few donkeys on the road along the west coast, but mostly just bounce bounce bounce through the trees hoping to avoid getting stuck. The "long road" around the north coast was closed for repair, so we took the "short road" through the interior. Don't know what we missed view-wise, probably would have been a prettier trip, but if the road was equivalent, I can't say I'm sorry we took the short one.


Odds n' ends

As on our previous trip, we paid the airport departure tax in advance to save time the morning of departure. While shopping downtown one AM we just trucked down to the airport and got it done. 35 USD, they took a credit card. The parking at the airport is free for the first 15 minutes, which was enough.

CDH has their registration form and dive release forms available as PDFs on their website. Use them. It's a long, tiring trip and it's nice not to be filling out forms when you check in.

We were frustrated by the low-res maps of Bonaire that were all we could find included in the numerous guides on the rack in every lobby. Then we found the real map. Free. Folds to about 4" square, with a picture of a Bonaire civil servant on the front. All the street names, and covers the whole island pretty well. If you'll be driving around, look for it. It exists. We found ours in a photo shop one block east of the main street downtown.

Shopping at Warehouse we were puzzled by several dozen unpaired children's shoes carefully lined up on the floor at the foot of the wall of freezer cabinets, some with straw or carrots inside. Too many for a lost-and-found, and unpaired shoes for sale? Turns out they will be filled with candy for their owners on Dec 6, Santa Claus' birthday. The straw and carrots are for Santa's reindeer.

We brought and used a deet-based insect repellant. We saw some people with some pretty nasty-looking collections of bumps on their legs. And Dengue fever is reportedly present.

At departure I got thrown a mild curve by AA. As we were entering security my wheeled carry-on got weighed. My usual strategy is to put everything small, heavy and legal (regs, lights, anything with batteries, tools, ...) in my carry-on to keep my checked roller duffel under 50 lbs. I've never had the carry-on weighed, including on the trip down. But they weighed it on the way back. I'm sorry but I didn't get a clear reading on the limit, I thought he said 30 lbs, and mine was just under. The AA website says 40 lbs, or less at some airports. Sorry I can't be more precise, but if you have a carry-on that's over 30 lbs, you might want to check with AA in advance.

The AA leg from San Juan to Bonaire is on a smaller plane, an AT7 70-seat turboprop. Full-size roller carry-ons will get gate-checked, but not charged for. On the way there it showed up on the carousel, on the way back (San Juan) on the tarmac at the bottom of the stairway.

US customs coming back is in San Juan. AA had at one point tried to give us a 70-minute layover (this was after they had greatly reduced their flight schedules worldwide and were rebooking us). We'd never have made it. 90 minutes, maybe. We balked and insisted on more time in SJC, ended up coming home via DFW instead of LAX, but we made all the connections.

Cruise ships. Scary big. So sad. One night we were driving south into town to dinner, and roughly near Bobbijans there was suddenly a UFO in the sky over the buildings to the southwest. When I finished resolving the view, it was a cruise ship at the town pier, all lit up a little prior to its departure. I'll post a picture of it below as seen from near Casablanca. On our boat trip south to the Hilma Hooker there were two of them docked at the same time.

We actually were not directly affected by them. We looked at the published schedule, and picked Monday, the only day during our stay with no cruise ships in town, to go to town shopping. But we did need to go to or through town other days and I was surprised at how uncrowded it was. I wonder what all those people do?

Bonaire is the same time zone as San Juan, an hour earlier than EST. That's four hours earlier than PST. Some preparatory body-time shifting is recommended if you don't want the first part of your trip to seem like a hallucination. We started two months ahead, but got an easy hour by ignoring the DST transition. And it's amazing how much you can done waking up at 4:00 AM. Not that I intend to make that permanent, though.

 

[reefduffer]

A few pictures:

 

[DiveMaven]

Wow, GREAT trip report!! Thanks for sharing, makes me look forward even more to our return trip to Bonaire in June.

 

[highlandfarmwv]

Great report, but there are no sea snakes in the Caribbean. You probably saw an eel that looked like a snake!

 

[reefduffer]

Great report, but there are no sea snakes in the Caribbean. You probably saw an eel that looked like a snake!

You are correct, I've identified what we saw in Humann & Deloach as a Goldspotted Eel. Thanks.

While I'm here, a couple of other "thinkos"/typos I could no longer edit by the time I noticed:

In my brother-in-law's question to Leo about hyperventilation, I meant to say "free divers don't", not deep divers. Maybe because he does both simultaneously by my standards, I confused that in composing and didn't catch it proofreading before posting.

Last trip to CDH we stayed in a Flamboyant apartment, not Flamingo.

And I misspelled "Humann".

 

[deeper thoughts]

Excellent report thnx for taking the time to write it