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May 1st, 2007, 05:55 PM
Just got back from a week in Bonaire. Great diving. Great people...great everything. Go.
It was a last minute thing, a sick friend cancelled, insurance paid half, trip available at half price for two....I didn't want to go, but I can't resist a bargain!
I had to pull my stepdaughter out of school (the only other one I know with a passport), so she'd been wanting to get trained to dive for awhile now and it seemed like the perfect opportunity and the perfect location. I'm an instructor and promised her I'd teach her....but why not let Bonaire teach her? I did and it was great! She ate it up, had a ball, became a damn good diver and she's only 14.
I ate it up too! Two tank boat dives for 6 days, unlimited shore diving, free air/nitrox (all you can breathe), use of a four-door toyota pickup truck, breakfast buffet, poolbar, apartment, and centrally-located gear locker. Bonaire is a diver's paradise. The reef is one of the healthiest in the world and we saw virtually every hard and soft coral, sponges, critters, fish, and conditions that exist in salt water and fresh water diving. Go.
We saw starfish, four species of eels, brittle stars in platoons, squid, frogfish, seahorses, scorpion fish, octopus, and the usual reef fish: parrotfish, angels, porgy's, grunts, drums, damsels, wrasses, and all the others of every kind. And they were everywhere you looked, in hordes. Go.
Cleaner shrimp cleaned my cuticles as blue chromas waited in line, crabs snapped at the ends of my finger when I pointed too close, a bicolor damsel defend his territory when I shook the edge of his vase sponge home. Little bigger than a gnat, he rammed my mask, then my hands, pinching a tiny-mouthed bit of dead skin, and repeatedly attacked until I backed off a respectable distance. Emily laughed out loud! Go.
The boat dives alternated between mornings and afternoons, so you could visit the shore dives for the other half of the day (before or after the boat dives). We did a night dive on the Town Pier - not to be missed! We even took a cave tour and snorkeled some "spooky passages" that required short breath-hold dives under the rock to another pool. Flowstone formations and crystalline structures were everywhere in this once above water-level cave system. Go.
I'm going back for sure; and I suggest you too: Go.
-skip
It was a last minute thing, a sick friend cancelled, insurance paid half, trip available at half price for two....I didn't want to go, but I can't resist a bargain!
I had to pull my stepdaughter out of school (the only other one I know with a passport), so she'd been wanting to get trained to dive for awhile now and it seemed like the perfect opportunity and the perfect location. I'm an instructor and promised her I'd teach her....but why not let Bonaire teach her? I did and it was great! She ate it up, had a ball, became a damn good diver and she's only 14.
I ate it up too! Two tank boat dives for 6 days, unlimited shore diving, free air/nitrox (all you can breathe), use of a four-door toyota pickup truck, breakfast buffet, poolbar, apartment, and centrally-located gear locker. Bonaire is a diver's paradise. The reef is one of the healthiest in the world and we saw virtually every hard and soft coral, sponges, critters, fish, and conditions that exist in salt water and fresh water diving. Go.
We saw starfish, four species of eels, brittle stars in platoons, squid, frogfish, seahorses, scorpion fish, octopus, and the usual reef fish: parrotfish, angels, porgy's, grunts, drums, damsels, wrasses, and all the others of every kind. And they were everywhere you looked, in hordes. Go.
Cleaner shrimp cleaned my cuticles as blue chromas waited in line, crabs snapped at the ends of my finger when I pointed too close, a bicolor damsel defend his territory when I shook the edge of his vase sponge home. Little bigger than a gnat, he rammed my mask, then my hands, pinching a tiny-mouthed bit of dead skin, and repeatedly attacked until I backed off a respectable distance. Emily laughed out loud! Go.
The boat dives alternated between mornings and afternoons, so you could visit the shore dives for the other half of the day (before or after the boat dives). We did a night dive on the Town Pier - not to be missed! We even took a cave tour and snorkeled some "spooky passages" that required short breath-hold dives under the rock to another pool. Flowstone formations and crystalline structures were everywhere in this once above water-level cave system. Go.
I'm going back for sure; and I suggest you too: Go.
-skip