Trip Report June 14-21

[rlskill1]

We flew Insel Air from Charlotte to Curacao to Bonaire.

Stayed at Eden Beach and dove with Wanna Dive (Bart, Tama, Kim, Jeff, and the rest) Great place to stay and a great group to dive with.

The house reef isn't as colorful as the rest but an easy drift dive is available be walking/driving up to Bari's Reef and drifting down to Eden Beach. There are 2 nice little wrecks along the way with a good variety of creatures. We even saw a large Goliath Grouper on the first upturned boat.

We dove the Swim beach at Windsock up to the aviation fuel terminal - Very Nice

One dive we drifted from Buddy Dive to Eden Beach. A nice swim.

We also dove Hilma Hooker, Something Special, Salt Pier, Pink Beach, Sweet Dreams, Joanne's Sunchi, Semplar, Lenora's Reef, Alice in Wonderland.

Water temps were 80. Air temps upper 80's low 90. Vis 50-75'. Winds 20+ kts daily.

Supper we ate at Watta Burger, Pasa Bon Pizza, Spice Club at Eden Beach, and Mi Banana which is to the right just past the big church downtown then a mile down the road. Excellent food and excellent prices.

Our group of 15 thoroughly enjoyed themselves.

 

[drrich2]

Sounds like a good overall Bonaire trip. Did you do any of the northern sites? Those I recognize from your list are mainly southern or central. How many dives did you get in?

Oh, congrat.s on the goliath grouper. Only fairly big grouper I've seen in Bonaire are tiger grouper.

Richard.

 

[rlskill1]

Hey Richard,
I got 18 dives in and missed the last day of diving because I stayed on the boat as crew to retrieve divers as we did a "drift dive" at Salt Pier.

I tried to get our group to head north, but they weren't liking the idea of "1000 Steps". The list of body pains started being read, so we stayed south. We went south and still had a few of our divers get rolled by the surf, nothing broken, just some good reef rash to take home.

We started a night dive, but a squadron of Jellyfish moved in and the group cancelled the dive 15 minutes into it. There was a slight thermocline on the Eden Beach wrecks that lowered water temps to 78 on the bottom.

The Goliath is a decent size. 4'-5' and nicely colored.

Overall, everyone had a good time and the trip went very smoothly. A hats off to Eden Beach and Wanna Dive. We will use them again.

 

[drrich2]

2 Easy entries part way up north are Andrea I and II. Oil Slick Leap is the iconic giant stride entry for Bonaire, with a ladder climb out. 1,000 Steps has 60 something steps and will make you feel the burn, but that stair well is scenic, and a good place for land shots. Tolo and Karpata are really nice dive sites, but good to do together since either commits you to the one-way stretch and a long drive home.

Any idea what species of jellyfish those were? Perhaps a photo? Especially it being a night dive, I'd like to see whether they were Bonaire box jellyfish. I had a recent thread about encountering them on Bonaire, but I don't want to assume that's what you saw. They are a 'topic of interest' here.

I stayed at Eden Beach 4 times under previous management. Nice grounds, practically impossible to get lost the layout was so simple, the wreck of the Bakanal was good for photos since unlike the Hilma Hooker you can photo the whole thing in one shot, the lack of a 'reefy' house reef isn't such a big deal as you can enter at the far north end of the property and head north, getting in Front Porch and maybe seeing the tug boat at around 90 feet, and walking along the beach at night with your dive light (gotta love those LED versions you can use above water), where the water washes over the flattened rocks, we'd watch chain moray eels crawling along hunting in water maybe 2 inches deep, if that. Good times.

Richard.

 

[rlskill1]

They were Moon Jellyfish, and the members of the group weren't having any part of diving in the dark with the jellyfish. The Marine Park posted a warning during our stay about box jellies being around during the night.

And for whatever reason, our group was happy diving the south end. Go figure. We did the dive between Sand Dollar and Eden Beach a few times. It's a nice dive the upturned tug at 80-90' was nice to explore. We saw a few turtles during these dives and a couple nice sized stingrays.

Anyway, our group was happy with the dives they made. We go back in January and again June.