Bonaire: Diving Paradise

Feeling much better after a 12-hour sleep, we headed to the dingy dock to clear in with Bonaire Customs in Kralendijk. Bonaire is a “municipality” of Holland, so you are in Holland for all practical purposes. It was originally part of what was called the Lesser Antilles, made up of Sint Eustatius and Sint Maarten in the northern Caribbean, and Aruba, Curacao, and Bonaire off the coast of Venezuela.

Flying Cloud with Songbird on the right.

Clearing in Customs was a breeze, with the exception of crazed (this is an accurate description) cruise ship passengers interrupting during our check-in wanting to get a customs stamp on their passports. We noticed that sometimes the Customs official would say there was a stamp and and sometimes there wasn’t a stamp, depending on his mood.

This is typical of the shopping malls catering to the cruise ship trade.

Van den Tweel, a large Dutch supermarket, has an incredible selection of fresh product in refrigerated cases.

You can imagine what it's like for us to see this type of selection. This was a small selection of their pates, dips and sauces.

The first thing you notice is that Bonaire is not a third world country like many of the islands we’ve visited. There are good roads, modern stores, great restaurants, and a shoreline lined with resort hotels. Since Bonaire is recognized, rightly so, as one of the top diving destinations in the world, most of these hotels are “diver’s hotels.”

When a cruise ship is in port (about four times a week) the streets are mobbed with Bermuda short, walking-shoe wearing men and women who look uncomfortable in their tourist garb. A local told us its easy to spot the cruisers from the cruise ship crowd; he said the cruisers look more grungy.

Kralendijk is essentially a waterfront street with restaurants backed up by a main street with tourist shops. Further back are the grocery stores, hardware stores and industrial suppliers. I had a long talk with an Austrian woman who lives here and paints pithy sayings on pieces of driftwood. She said she used to be a watchmaker back in Austria, but makes a good living selling to the cruise ship passengers. The near perfect weather (82 degrees everyday with a cooling wind) also helps.

We walked north along the main street and ran into a neat diving shop where I bought a new set of fins (my old ones were giving me serious blisters on the top of my toes). We ogled the great selection of dive gear and debated buying our own BCs (buoyancy compensator jackets, basically an air-filled jacket you wear to keep your weight neutral in the water) and regulators, but decided to wait. Wandering back along the waterfront we popped into Julia’s for a nice lunch of Mahi Mahi. Julia is a very friendly lady and makes everyone feel right at home. With all the competition for the tourist dollar, prices are very reasonable here.

Our new friends off Songbird, Carol and Pat.

That night we dingied down to the Harbor Lights Marina to the Bistro de Paris where cruisers gather every Wednesday for Hamburger Night. This was timely since we got to met six other cruising yachts and got info on all the local events.  We met a nice couple from Florida, Pat and Carol, who are moored next to us on Songbird, a Hunter 40.  They have a condo in Beaver Creek, CO and shuttle between diving in Bonaire and winter skiing.  They have visited Bonaire for four years in a row and know the island intimately. We learned that they are also avid divers and they offered to take us diving the next day.

This is a picture off the Internet, but typical of the underwater scene in Bonaire.

On Thursday morning Pat and Carol took us to the a dive shop, Wanna Dive, where we rented BCs, regulators, and air tanks for $28 a day. We then headed back to our boats and dove right off the swim step into the clearest water we’ve seen since The Bahamas. The Sargent Majors (who must be used to being fed) met us the minute we jumped in with hopeful looks on their faces.  It had been about 15 years since Meryl and I have dove together (with the exception of me cleaning the boat bottom every other month) and we both had apprehension about our skills and ability to clear our ears (always an issue with both of us). Pat was very patient and helped coach Meryl and I on the basics. Eventually we descended to 30 ft. on the white sand bottom and got ourselves oriented. Pat then lead us westward to an incredible wall where the bottom dramatically dropped away to 130 ft). This drop off runs parallel to the shore for the length of the island. This is what makes Bonaire so desirable as a dive location, you can essentially walk into the water from your hotel, swim out about 200 yards, and descend into fantastic diving.

You tied up to mooring buoys right off the main town with great diving under your boat.

We slowly worked our way down the coral- and sponge-encrusted wall marveling at the diversity of fish and other reef creatures. Pat always dives with a spotlight and he would get us to look up under ledges to see the fish hiding inside. We managed to see a highly poisonous lion fish and even a rare scorpionfish.  It is difficult to adequately describe the beauty of all the underwater life, with vibrant colors that would make even Andy Warhol marvel. There were huge red barrel sponges, long purple stove-pipe sponges, yellow bowl sponges, crimson volcano sponges, and green rope sponges. I won’t even attempt to list the corals we saw, or the hundreds of fish and other creatures. One dive site has recorded over 390 species of fish in one location.  If you only dive one location in your life, make it Bonaire.

This shows some of the over 150 dive sites on Bonaire, most of them within close proximity to our boat.

There are over 150 dive sites on Bonaire and over the next week we dove at 18 Palms, Buddy’s Reef, The Cliff, The Lake, and the wreck of the Hilma Hooker. After the first dive we decided to take a two-hour refresher course with the owner of Wanna Dive, a brusk Englishman named Andy. He was actually a very good instructor and took us into the pool to go over basics of mask clearing, mask off, purging, buddy breathing, and hand signals. We then went out in front of the resort in about 10 feet of water and worked on buoyancy control and then just did a nice dive along Buddy’s Reef so he could watch us in action. He must of decided we weren’t going to kill ourselves since we got the OK to go diving on our own.

There are a number of great wrecks close to the beach.

Large sponges of every type, color and description are ubiquitous while diving in Bonaire.

Diving at The Cliff I got some incredible photos of lion fish and other creatures, but then somehow lost my underwater camera when the strap broke. I don’t miss the camera that much but I really miss the pictures. We have a new one on order but until that arrives we’ll use some public domain photos in the blog so you can enjoy some the incredible underwater scenery Bonaire has to offer.