Chasin' Tales
Registered
- Messages
- 68
- Reaction score
- 28
- # of dives
- 50 - 99
This was our third trip to Bonaire and third time staying at Coral Paradise Resort. Can't say enough good things about Kenny & Margaret!
We had another great trip with some good dives and topside fun. My wife was so fed up with the Sea Life camera from the last trip that she decided to rent a Cool Pics from Bon Photo. She managed to snap some good pics which has reignited her subsea photo ambitions...we now have a housing for the 5D on order.
Most of our dives this trip were at the southern sites. The furthest north we dove was Jeff Davis. The furthest south was Red Slave. I don't have my dive log with me and my memory just isn't quite good enough to recall what dives we did each day...some highlights from what I can recall:
Andrea I & II: Saw two turtles, got some good pics of them lounging amongst the coral.
Cliff/Small Wall/La Machaca - Dove these a couple times. Saw the frogfish here on our last dive. My crohn's was getting the best of me on this last dive. We had eaten at the new Italian place the night before. Knowing that I shouldn't, I had the pizza. It tore me up the next day. My gut was doing some bad things before we even started the dive. I was about to abort when I saw the frogfish. We snapped some pics...I had some "leakage" in my wetsuit (yes, I crapped my wetsuit)...had to abort the dive. Ended up at Cap't Don's dock. It was not a pleasant ending to that dive. Yikes! Sorry if anyone witnessed the brownout underneath Cap't Don's dock. The fish didn't seem to mind.
East Side Diving - Funchi's Reef & White Hole: These dives were amazing! The highlight of the trip for sure. In the two dives we saw over a dozen eagle rays, more turtles than we could count, 100+ tarpon, stingrays, and lobster. The diving is a bit more challenging than shore dives on the lee side, but don't let that stop you from doing this. We are already looking forward to some more East Side dives on our next trip.
Some other sites we dove: Bari, The Lake, 1/2 between Angel City & Alice in Wonderland, Aquarius (saw a spotted eagle ray in the sand channel), Margate Bay (another of our favorites), unmarked spot just north of Red Beryl, and Salt Pier. This was our first dive at the salt pier. We will definitely do this one again.
We ate dinner at Bistro, Mona Lisa, Four Seasons, Wills, Sonia Home, Cap't Don's. Bistro & Mona Lisa are our favorites, Wills & Four Seasons were very good as well. We won't be going back to Sonia Home and will be surprised if it is still open the next time we visit the island. The restaurant at Cap't Dons is average, at best. We had lunch at the new Peruvian restaurant at Den Leman. It was good and the views are nice. Great place to have lunch. I'm assuming dinner would be decent also.
One of the first dinners we had on the island was at Four Seasons. For dessert we split a chocolate lava cake. It was divine. It also led to a quest to find which restaurant on the island had the best chocolate lava cake. Wills and the Peruvian joint at Del Leman were the only other restaurants we visited that had lava cakes on the menu. Four Seasons won hands down. It was so good that after our Valentines day dinner at Bistro, we had to go back to Four Seasons for dessert. That night we each had to have our own lava cake.
Friday afternoon on our offgas time we visited the distillery and the indian inscriptions. Both are worth checking out.
Here's some of the pics...enjoy!
We had another great trip with some good dives and topside fun. My wife was so fed up with the Sea Life camera from the last trip that she decided to rent a Cool Pics from Bon Photo. She managed to snap some good pics which has reignited her subsea photo ambitions...we now have a housing for the 5D on order.
Most of our dives this trip were at the southern sites. The furthest north we dove was Jeff Davis. The furthest south was Red Slave. I don't have my dive log with me and my memory just isn't quite good enough to recall what dives we did each day...some highlights from what I can recall:
Andrea I & II: Saw two turtles, got some good pics of them lounging amongst the coral.
Cliff/Small Wall/La Machaca - Dove these a couple times. Saw the frogfish here on our last dive. My crohn's was getting the best of me on this last dive. We had eaten at the new Italian place the night before. Knowing that I shouldn't, I had the pizza. It tore me up the next day. My gut was doing some bad things before we even started the dive. I was about to abort when I saw the frogfish. We snapped some pics...I had some "leakage" in my wetsuit (yes, I crapped my wetsuit)...had to abort the dive. Ended up at Cap't Don's dock. It was not a pleasant ending to that dive. Yikes! Sorry if anyone witnessed the brownout underneath Cap't Don's dock. The fish didn't seem to mind.
East Side Diving - Funchi's Reef & White Hole: These dives were amazing! The highlight of the trip for sure. In the two dives we saw over a dozen eagle rays, more turtles than we could count, 100+ tarpon, stingrays, and lobster. The diving is a bit more challenging than shore dives on the lee side, but don't let that stop you from doing this. We are already looking forward to some more East Side dives on our next trip.
Some other sites we dove: Bari, The Lake, 1/2 between Angel City & Alice in Wonderland, Aquarius (saw a spotted eagle ray in the sand channel), Margate Bay (another of our favorites), unmarked spot just north of Red Beryl, and Salt Pier. This was our first dive at the salt pier. We will definitely do this one again.
We ate dinner at Bistro, Mona Lisa, Four Seasons, Wills, Sonia Home, Cap't Don's. Bistro & Mona Lisa are our favorites, Wills & Four Seasons were very good as well. We won't be going back to Sonia Home and will be surprised if it is still open the next time we visit the island. The restaurant at Cap't Dons is average, at best. We had lunch at the new Peruvian restaurant at Den Leman. It was good and the views are nice. Great place to have lunch. I'm assuming dinner would be decent also.
One of the first dinners we had on the island was at Four Seasons. For dessert we split a chocolate lava cake. It was divine. It also led to a quest to find which restaurant on the island had the best chocolate lava cake. Wills and the Peruvian joint at Del Leman were the only other restaurants we visited that had lava cakes on the menu. Four Seasons won hands down. It was so good that after our Valentines day dinner at Bistro, we had to go back to Four Seasons for dessert. That night we each had to have our own lava cake.
Friday afternoon on our offgas time we visited the distillery and the indian inscriptions. Both are worth checking out.
Here's some of the pics...enjoy!
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