Bonaire - Lou and Andy's Dutch Odyssey, February 2005

by Louise Nicholson

We got a very good first impression of Bonaire going through customs. Not only were the customs officers young and good looking; they were also smiling. In fact, one of them was sniggering like a naughty schoolgirl. Not a usual reaction from immigration officers, in my experience. She was showing the other one something on her computer screen, which turned out to be a dodgy internet chat room that she was playing with, in between booking terrorists into the country.

We then went to collect our rental vehicle. We'd hired a pick-up for the fortnight; useful for chucking dive gear into the back and parking on beaches. We only had to walk 100m to get to the office and we were given the keys in 10 minutes flat. This place is fantastic, we thought. I then jumped into the pickup and wondered where the steering wheel had gone. Oops, they drive on the right here. So, after swapping seats and a few circuits round Flamingo Airport drop off area, practicing the mantra 'keep to the right, keep to the right', we were off.

It was only about 10 minutes drive from the airport to our digs, the Yachtclub Apartments, but it took us 20 because we got lost. Driving in Bonaire is a breeze, apart from the occasional reflexive veer towards the left of the road/oncoming traffic now and again. Luckily there's so little traffic, the notion of a traffic jam starts at about 4 vehicles. Total gridlock, man.

Most accommodation on Bonaire is self-catering, although there are some hotel rooms for those who want them. The Yachtclub is highly recommended, a small place with about 13 apartments or studios. There was a pool and seating area outside, along with a locked storeroom and a rinse tank for kit. Perfect.

Sunday morning we woke up to tropical temperatures and ambled along to Eden Beach resort, where Wannadive are based. We wanted to get into the drink as quickly as possible. We'd managed to catch a glimpse of the sea when we arrived, and I can't describe the colour of it without getting all poetic. It was proper blue, like.

The whole of the area around Bonaire is a protected marine park, so we were expecting a major lecture and induction course. What we got was a Dutch fellow called Paul, sitting behind the counter tucking into scrambled eggs on toast. Now, I've got a lot of time for the Dutch, having worked quite a bit with some of them in the past. Apart from having an easy-going, laid back attitude to some of the more pleasurable things in life, they are a very fit, strapping race. And the guys at Wannadive are no exception. Plus, the Dutch pronounce 's' as 'sh', so when they ask you to 'sit down there for a minute', it's hilarious.

Paul checked our qualification books. He then showed us the Marine Park rules on the wall, gave us our Marine Park tags (£25 for a year), showed us where the tanks were kept and that was it. I believe he surreptitiously watched us kitting up, to make sure we knew our BC's from our elbows. When I asked him to recommend some good dive sites, he said 'they're all good' (he was right). Bonaire Fun Travel had given us a map of Bonaire with all the dive sites on it along with a leaflet describing each one. So did the car rental place. Did I tell you that Bonaire is totally geared up for divers? All the car number plates have Divers' Paradise on them.

Bonaire is an island that's about 24 miles long and 5 miles at its widest. The diving works like this: you pick a dive site from your map/leaflet and drive to it, maximum 15-20 minutes from the main settlement, Kralendyke (unless you're going to the ones in the national park). There are about 58 sites on Bonaire and a further 25-ish on Kleine Bonaire, an uninhabited island about 1 mile offshore.

Each site on Bonaire is shown by a painted yellow stone by the side of the road, with the site name painted on it. There are either a couple of car parking spaces or you can park on the beach. There's a yellow buoy marking the spot, and any boats have to moor on the buoy, with only one boat allowed at a time. All you do is get out to the buoy and drop down. None of this 'the best spot is by the 2-inch crack in the rock by the 3rd largest boulder, that may be covered at high tide' malarkey. You just find the site, park up and plop in. So long as there are no other divers there, God forbid. If someone else was parked up, we'd drive on until we found a site to ourselves. You plan your own dives - whatever site, time, depth - it's entirely up to you and your computer.

Of course, if you die, nobody knows about it until you don't show up to pay your bill, so that's not recommended. But it beats being babysat by a stroppy dive guide any day of the week.

Most sites are similar in that there is a sandy shelf that drops off steeply to about 40m, with a gentler slope into the blue after that. Kleine Bonaire has steeper walls and deeper depths. Generally, the shelf is wider in the south of the island, with a longer fin-out than the north. There, we generally dispensed with the surface swim and just headed out underwater, using the sandbars to navigate. The south of the island is flat and barely above sea level, whilst the north is more rugged. Average visibility is 40m but it was less when we went (more like 25-30m), due to some recent dodgy wind patterns.

Bonaire's more for creature lovers than wreckies. We saw something different on every dive. Apart from some small wrecks, there are only 2 major ones on Bonaire. The Windjammer lies in 50-60m, which is diveable from shore or boat, towards the north of the island. It's not on the dive map but the guides will tell you where to find it if they think you're up to it. The other one is the Hilma Hooker, which was a drug-running ship that got its collar felt in the early 80's. When it mysteriously started taking on water, the authorities very kindly towed it out, and let it sink for the divers. They didn't leave the skank. It lies on its side at 30m, with the port side hull at 19m.

In 14 days we did 22 dives, including 4 boat dives to Kleine Bonaire with Wannadive. We also did 2 night dives with them. You can do night dives by yourself if you want, but the best one - Town Pier - has to be dived with an operator due to the high risk of divers planting Semtex under the cruise ships (I have to admit, I was tempted). The other night dive we did was a 30m penetration of the Hilma Hooker, a dive which, I must admit, I wouldn't fancy leading myself. Especially since it also involved a long swim out in open water in pitch darkness. Top marks to Chris, the guide, for hitting it bang on. At least Andy got to say he'd penetrated the Hooker after that.

The sites we dived (in no particular order) were:

Front Porch - north. Wannadive's reef. The world's only permanent reef cam is at this site. It takes a picture every 3 minutes and posts it on the web. You can sit in front of it for 3 minutes pulling silly poses or you can just have a poke about the small boat that's also in the frame. We went back to this site again on the last day, with an American guy who's been going to Bonaire for the last 17 years. This dive proved that you should never write off a dive you've already done before, as it was totally different second time around.

Front Porch - south. Small tug boat wreck, about 40 feet long. We liked this so much we went back for seconds later on. Again, we had it all to ourselves. Front porch doesn't actually have that much coral growth around it because it's close to a fresh water outlet at the marina. There's still plenty of life though, including seahorses, which I'd never seen before.

1000 Steps - so called because you have to climb about 65 stone steps to get back up to your pick-up and it feels like 1000 with your kit on. My legs were doing an Elvis by the time I got to the top, but the thought of the resulting buns of steel were enough to spur me on. Didn't work though - I had to buy a new wetsuit on day 3 because my old one was too tight (see photo above - there are no bubbles because I can't breathe).

Oil Slick Leap - Usually a boat dive, but if you're prepared to do a high entry off the rocks, and climb back up a steel ladder, it can be done from shore.

Tori's Reef - last dive of the holiday. Came up to the sun setting on the sea. Magic.

Alice In Wonderland - a parallel reef system. This is where we saw the spotted eagle ray.

Cliff/La Machacha - off Captain Don's Habitat, also dubbed Captain Capitalism by us, as it's the only resort that charges outside divers to jump off its pier. We were so incensed we squeezed 2 dives into 1. Cliff is a small wall, and La Machacha is a small wreck in the opposite direction. Luckily there was no current to fight against. We'd have come up with 10 bar if it meant getting our money's worth.

Hilma Hooker - wreck, twice. First time we did it early in the morning and had the place all to ourselves. 2 huge tarpon live there. 2nd time a night dive with the guide and 4 others. We'd met a big, blustery Texan at the Yachtclub halfway through the week. He went on about how he'd been diving for years, using home-made regs and a BC when they were made out of sheep's bladders, blah, blah, blah. He came on this night dive and we wound up having to come up after only 26 minutes because he'd blown off all his air!

Others:
Windsock Steep, 18 Palms, Ol'Blue, Karpata (twice), Town Pier (night), Witch's Hut. I can't remember what we saw where but it's all in the logs.

On Kleine Bonaire:
Mi Dushi - apparently this means 'my sweetheart' in the local lingo. Unfortunately we did it the day after Valentine's. Also Rock Pile, Near Side, Ebo's Reef.

Stuff we saw:
Turtles, spotted eagle ray, moray eels (some huge), stonefish, tarpon, parrotfish, barracuda, seahorses, octopus, oh, the list goes on….

We took a day off diving halfway through, to visit the national park on the north end of the island. There we stood on a cliff by a remote beach, and saw a quite large reef shark in the shallows. Magic. Unfortunately we didn't see any whilst diving as they are mostly on the wild, windy side of the island. You can dive there by special arrangement. Next time.

We can't recommend Wannadive enough. They got the balance exactly right between professionalism and having a laugh. Bart, the co-owner, usually took out the boat divers and always dived himself ('you can follow me or you can go where the hell you like, just don't be longer than an hour'). He had a good trick of jumping into 60m of water and descending with his fins on his ears. He must have had really big ears for them to stay on. The dive centre was chilled out and the guys were very friendly. No macho posturing there.

We also can't recommend highly enough Bonaire Fun Travel, who organised our trip. Douglas Durrant is their man in the UK, and he is an absolute gem. In these days of crappy corporate service and telephone answering machines, it was really refreshing to get such good service and at such a personal level. And they were cheaper than anyone else by MILES!! See the link below. He can also be found at the Dive Show. He's happy to chat, and knows the Dutch Antilles extremely well.

Unfortunately KLM lost my bag on the way back and consequently all my kit. They still haven't found it. No doubt as we speak, there's a gleeful baggage handler somewhere, wearing a sheepskin coat and touting a brand new Analox analyser, along with some rather fetching underwear. I also couldn't recommend Buddy dive insurers, who are rubbish. That's quite enough on the baggage saga*

Overall though, we heartily recommend Bonaire to anyone who wants to dive where they like, when they like, and particularly for those who like a sleep in on their holidays. We will definitely, definitely be going back. It's not often you get to dive with a Vietnam vet.

Unfortunately there's only the 1 photo, as Andy forgot to lube his camera housing and it played up the rest of the holiday. We also have a piece of film footage that I shot on the same dive without realising it. You'd need seasickness pills to watch it.

Here are some useful links on Bonaire, for anyone who is interested (I also have dive guides too):

Bonaire Fun Travel
Wannadive
(the official Bonaire Tourism Board website)
Webcams(there are 3 at Eden Beach plus the reef cam)
Bonaire Talk

*post script on the lost baggage saga: Douglas Durrant from Bonaire Fun Travel called us up after we got back, to ask if we'd had a good time and if there were any problems at all. This in itself was impressive, but then after a good chat I mentioned about my lost baggage, and the fact that I was most bothered about having lost my Bonaire dive T shirts, and one of the Divers Paradise car number plates I'd bought (and couldn't get in the UK).

We came back from the Red Sea and there waiting for us was a parcel from Douglas with a number plate and a Wannadive crew T shirt in it. He'd been back out there to check the accommodation and had bought me some replacements! Now that's what I call service!


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