14 divers on Island Diver 2014 Bonaire trip
Dive Travel Trip Report – Bonaire 2014
Fantastic trip with a really great group. The Buddy Dive resort was even better than it was a few years ago. The major improvement was the food at the two restaurants on site – Blennies at the pool bar and Ingredients for dinner. Club sandwich, ceasar salad, or burger – didn’t matter the pool bar post dive food was great. Ingredients was a full menu seafood, steak and pasta place – we only ate there one night as there are great restaurants all over Bonaire, but it was a fantastic meal. The night we ate their it was a good idea, since happy hour started early that day – Party in Room 513!
There were 14 of us on the trip, and since every room got their own vehicle we did varying amounts of dives. Some did 19, some did 12, some did something in between. Bob and Kath, 73 and 70, were not at the bottom of the list! They did take advantage of the boat diving more than the rest of us though. Boat dives where an add on to this $995 trip, but since they were only $28 each, we all did at least 4, going over to Kline Bonaire (island off the coast) and to some of the dive sites up north with difficult shore entries.
One of the dive highlights was on the last day when we went out to Red Slave – so named for the red marker on shore that let the boats know what quality of salt they had purchased and where to pick it up. That and the combination of the “slave huts” on shore gave this site its namesake. About half we through the dive we encountered a bait ball, and man was that epic. Check out the video.
For shore diving you park on the rocks near the beach, don’t run over the flamingos!
Shore diving is the norm on Bonaire, with drive through nitrox at the resort and dive sites that let you bring your truck right to the shore, it is super easy. The drop off is 10 to 40 yards past the beach. Your biggest daily decision is “Should I go left or should I go right?” Currents are present, but extremely light – at least by Oahu diving standards.
The resort itself was comfortable. AC was cold, dive shop and gear room right on the water with a fantastic reef dive right out front. We took advantage of that a couple of times for shore diving and even on night dive.
I think everyone will want to go back eventually, but during cocktail hour the group discussed future trips. We are looking at Utila and and Belize. As of this writing DEMA, the industry trade show is only a few weeks away. Oct/Nov seems to be a good time for people to get away for a Caribbean, so look for that to put up late in 2015.
Cheers,
Matt