A Return to Bonaire (Mar. 28/April 11/01)
by franny

This would be my 4th trip to Bonaire and I must comment that it was the easiest with regard to "getting there".

Flew AA on March 27 from Vancouver to Dallas and then on the Philly where I would overnight at an airport hotel. Met with my friend Lynn the next morning where we flew Air Jamaica to Montego Bay and then a 1 hour 37 min. flight direct to Bonaire. Flight included full meal, free beverage service including champagne and a movie. Literally no waiting time in MoBay, just hop on your connection and go. What a pleasure to eliminate ALM and Curacao. This was definitely a "cake walk" compared to the past.

Accommodations: Fortunately, my friend has a place there located on the road to Soborn (sp?) which is about 5 minutes from the airport and close to the Plaza Resort and many good shore dive locations. Her main purpose of this trip was to work on the landscaping and such. A lovely 3 bedroom 2 bath with living/dining area, a/c, tv, telephone etc. FYI, she will consider renting privately to trustworthy people.

Dive Op: Toucan Divers/Plaza Resort

Talk about a top notch business! Just loved it. Clean, well organized, Nitrox available, photo shop, great rental gear from my observations. Conveniently located rinse tanks and ease of getting unlimited tanks for shore diving. The staff was fantastic! As I would be there over a two week period, I felt like I was becoming one of the family. You really can dive with complete freedom on the boats and enjoy 1 hour bottom times if you like. Sort of like Cozumel where you (the divers on board) basically choose where you would like to dive. If there is a particular site you would like to do when you are there, just put in a request at the office. It was obvious that everyone there loved their job. And they were more than eager to gather around to pose for an RSD mugshot!

The Diving: Nature giveth and nature taketh away. I finally got to see the damage for myself after the "Lenny" surge. It still saddened me somewhat. Just as I had expected from reports, the shallows were very badly beat up. The good news was the deeper parts were not affected and still host some beautiful specimens of large elephant ear sponges, soft and hard coral and a plentitude of many, many fish. With little to no current, it is a macro photographers dream. (When I grow up, I want to be one). My first checkout dive at the Plaza (18 palms), would reward me with 3 separate schools of large tarpon. I counted 23 in one school. Plus one BIG ASS cubera snapper. That is probably the biggest fish you will see there, though the week before there was a Manta Ray spotted frolicking about up at Buddy Dive resort. An instructor friend up there got to swim with it. On pretty well every dive you will see the usual cast of reef fish: trumpet, parrot, fairy basslet, chromis, angels, baracuda, spotted drum, tiger grouper, turtles, lobster, crab, trunk and cowfish and a good variety of eels including green, spotted and goldentails. An incredible amount of juveniles can also be seen if you look closely. My favorite on a few dives were the spotted trunkfish, (no bigger than my pinky fingernail) and the sharpnose puffer. Balloon fish and scorpionfish are very common as well.

On one boat trip to Klein I saw a large bait ball with a few large tuna on the hunt. Also, as happened the last time I was there, a peek into the big blue showed a pair of honeycomb cowfish doing their mating dance a couple of feet from me. Kewl!

Water temps were around 78-80 but sure felt colder on some days. I used a full 3 mil. Vis was not as good as in the past. Average was 60'-90'. Bonaire does not have the diversity in the sites like Cozumel has. Some are a bit visually repetitive, but, on the whole it is still quite pleasant. The ease of the shore diving is always a "plus". More difficult entries can always be done as boat dives as I chose with 1000 steps!

Fun Stuff: The first Sunday was the aniversary of a jazz band that plays out at the Kon Tiki restaraunt. There was a super party as it was a total "jazz weekend". Musicians flew in from Curacao and Aruba to perform and the music was just fantastic!

Got to meet some of my friends pals there and we had a great "girls night" potluck dinner. Ahhhh, those great Bonaire sunsets!

My friend was dealing with Captain Don and his nursery for a lot of her landscaping needs. He also put the drip system in and critiqued her plans. We spent about 3 hours with he and his wife Janet up at their place. He has a beautiful nursery and gave me the grand tour. I am not certain at this point of my life where I have met more of a "character" than that man. Sharp, funny, strange and a wonderful story teller. Sometimes I still scratch my head!

Dining: A dissapointing meal at Richards, which I sent back. He came over immediately and I ordered something else. Not a great Ricejjtaffel at the Old Inn. Still good food at the Rendevous and the pizza at Pizza Bon was fabulous. Can't remember all the places.

Don't know if anyone saw me on the webcam on April 10 at "small wall" or not. I had the April edition of RSD in a ziplock bag which I was trying to mug for the camera. I will be submitting a photo for the "mugshots".

The trip back to Philly on Air Jamaica was smooth as well. The only bad news was, (I know this happened in Philly and not Jamaica), was someone rifled through my small suitcase and stole some personal items. They did open the gift my friend bought me but decided they did not really want a wooden scubadiving frog.

Overnight in Philly then to Dallas where I would meet hubby and off to Coz on April 13th.

Report to follow.

That's all folks! :)

©1999-2007 DiveAtlas Web Publishing.  All Rights Reserved
This entire domain and all associated e-mail addresses are located in the State of Washington,
and sending mail to addresses at this domain is subject to the provisions of the Revised Code of Washington.