Bonaire. Amongst divers it’s a legendary place; for others, it’s the “Huh? Where’s that?” island. It’s about 50 miles off the coast of Venezuela and part of the A-B-C Islands; Aruba, Bonaire and Curacao. All part of the former Netherlands Antilles, they are still Dutch protectorates and the southernmost islands of what is considered the Caribbean.
Once again, we had a dive adventure with our friends, Stacy and Renae. (See Roatan and Fiji). Great roommates, traveling companions, divers, and most of all, friends. We had an amazing week exploring the dive sites of Bonaire, mostly by car and a few by boat. We took off from PDX and met our friends in Atlanta for the journey south.
Bonaire is an interesting place. Very hot and dry, the predominant vegetation is cactus, thorn bushes, and a few endemic trees. Wild donkeys and goats abound, especially outside of the more populated areas. The wind never stops blowing. Ever. Nevertheless, for divers it’s a place you must visit at least once.
We stayed at Buddy Dive Resort, which is one of the most well-known. They have an excellent house reef that we dove multiple times and several dive boats for those not up to the Drive & Dive scene. As part of our room package, we were rented a pickup truck. Every day we would get in our truck, well-chauffeured by Stacy, go to the drive-thru tank pickup and load up two tanks each, then drive to the numerous dive sites all around the island. We would park, get our gear ready, and then walk into the water. Get out, swap tanks, dive to another site. Rinse and repeat. Die-hards go back to the hotel, swap tanks and go out for another round. Shelli and I were not die-hards. Between Drive & Dive, house reef dives and a few boat dives we added another 17 dives to our logs. Renae and Stacy, more than that.
The dive sites were all over the map as far as quality. We dove some really cool places like the Salt Pier, Karpata and Something Special and one of the most devastated sites we’ve ever seen, The Lake. We did some cool boat trips to Klein Bonaire (Little Bonaire), an island not too far off the west coast of Bonaire, the Hilma Hooker wreck and some sites up towards the northern end of the island. The boat dives take you to places you may not have access to, but they are also more strictly guided.
We saw a lot of interesting sea life on this trip. Some of the first time items for us were the huge tarpon seen on every night dive, sharp tailed eels, lots of different free swimming morays, frog fish, a rare stand of endangered staghorn coral, and more brain coral than we’d ever seen anywhere. Lots of the standard Caribbean reef denizens were in attendance as well, however we only saw a few turtles, no sharks, no rays.
All in all it was a great trip to a unique destination. We loved the freedom to dive so many different spots on our terms.