Bonaire Trip Report: July 1999

Dan and Faith Senie

Well, we'd planned to go to the Florida Keys, and were about to book the flights when I got email from our friends on Bonaire suggesting a trip there to help install a leased line for their business. Mixing a little business in with the vacation wasn't a big concern, so off we went to Bonaire again! A separate page will have some pictures from this trip, and a link will be added here to those, when they're ready.

Getting there

Getting to Bonaire is always an adventure. Allow a full day for travel each way. If you get there faster, you'll be delighted, if it takes the full day, you'll be less upset because you were expecting it.

The ALM flights from Atlana were booked, so this time we took American (our least favorite airline) to Curacao via Miami. The flights were all on-time and smooth (the vegan meal was even edible, which is kind of amazing for American). We got to Curacao, and ALM had cancelled our flight (we actually learned about this when we checked in at Boston). We were wait-listed for the next flight, but they had 50 people to try and re-book, and so after arriving at 1:30PM in Curacao, we got a 7:30PM flight to Bonaire. In an amazing show of customer service, the ALM rep in Curacao took our names and the phone number and names of our friends in Bonaire. They sent a message over to Bonaire on the computer, and someone on Bonaire called our friends. Our friends were stunned. Perhaps the new competition from Air Jamaica is starting to wake up ALM?

We arrived at about 8:30PM after some delays getting the ALM flight boarded (it's a 10 minute flight in the MD-82 they had there). Our friends were there, and we got through immigration and customs quickly. Two of our bags had actually been sent over on an earlier flight and were sitting on the baggage carousel all afternoon... nice and secure.

Briefing, what briefing?

Normally, you've got to get a briefing to dive on Bonaire, and pay admission to the marine park. We'd been on Bonaire in February, and so our tags were still good. So, we got dive numbers at Habitat and headed off to the Telbo (telephone company) office to install one of the pieces of equipment for the leased line. After playing with that for a while, we were off again to the house. Got the rest of the equipment in place, but it wasn't going to be live until Monday.

It was our friends' 10th wedding anniversary that weekend. They'd arranged to have the kids stay with the sitter for the weekend, and spent the weekend in a fancy resort (and, we learned later, drank too much champagne). So, we had the house to ourselves, with only the dog and cat to water and feed every so often.

Checkout Dive

We did a few dives at La Machaca off the dock at Habitat the first day. It was a chance to get used to dealing with AL80s again, and check out weights. We swam the opposite direction from the way we'd been last time, and saw some different stuff. Got down to 60 feet or so, and could see a wreck on the sand. Read later that wreck is at 130 feet, so it was still a distance below us. Worked on getting breathing smoother. Yoga has definitely helped, my air consumption on this trip was much better than in the past.

Punt Vierkant

Saturday we headed for the south end of the island. We headed to Tori's reef, then started driving north looking for a site where it wouldn't be too rough to get in. The wind was blowing and the swells were large. Vierkant looked doable, and so we jumped in. We got down to 75 feet, and could see the garden eels in the sand below. What a site... they were everywhere.

Bachelor's Beach

After Vierkant, we got out of the water, kept our wetsuits on, and drove to Bachelor's Beach. The entry here is a stairway down to the water, and a beach below. It's a nice site, highlight was a sea turtle as we came back up the reef slope.

La Machaca, at night

We went back to the house, got our lights and headed back to Habitat. Had a nice night dive. Saw a large tarpon at the end of the dive (thought it was huge until our last dive of the trip, see Bari Reef below). Lots of silver sides.

La Machaca Again

Sunday Morning, back to La Machaca to test out some gear. There is plenty to see at this site, which is good 'cause it's real convenient. Dan tried out a dive skin, and tried to get properly weighted. We also took the camera along. Didn't turn out to be that great a dive. Each of us thought the other hogged the camera. Time for a second camera. Not enough weight with skin, either. Next...

1000 Steps

Well, despite the name, there are only 74 steps. It just feels like 1000 when coming back up the steps after a dive. This site has oustanding coral formations, bigger, more intense than in other sites. Faith's tank had a questionable valve (only about 1 full turn to turn it on) so we kept it shallow and short. This one's got to be done again, maybe by boat next time. If you dive this site from shore, carry your wetsuit down the steps in a mesh bag, don't suit up until you're down there. You'll be sorry otherwise.

Forest

Monday we headed out to Jake's new boat, the World Wide Wet. Jake's a bit of a maniac driving this thing. We got a bit wet. Next time, we'll put our wetsuits on at the dock. Forest is at the western tip of Klein Bonaire, and is a pretty exposed site. It was relatively calm with 2 to 3 foot seas. We got to do our first back-roll entry (smallest boat we've dived from), and were treated to a beautiful dive site. The soft corals are unlike those seen elsewhere we've been. We dropped to 80 feet or so, then spent a lot of time tooling around at 70 or so, before slowly coming up the reef slope. Getting back on the boat was amusing, as it was bobbing around quite a bit. On the way back in, Dan rode in the bow with the painter in one hand, cowboy-style. The return was around the opposite side of the island from the trip out, which was nice.

Old Blue

Tuesday morning Dan had a meeting to attend. After that, we got our gear together. Jake and Linda and the two of us headed for Old Blue. We did some photography at this site, and Jake had his housed SLR with two strobes. We spent a lot of time during the early part of the dive in the shallows, then eventually got down to 57 feet, before coming back up the slope. Total dive time was 59 minutes as we all tooled around taking pictures and looking at critters.

Old Blue is in an area where the road is one-way. When we got out, a fellow in another vehicle asked how to get back to Kralendijk. After trying to explain, we suggested he follow us. We loaded evrything up, and began the long drive back around through Rincon to Kralendijk. 1000 steps is the last site going north where you can still drive south again (the road is one lane, but two directions until 1000 steps and the Radio Netherlands transmitting station).

Salt Pier

Wednesday afternoon, the four of us again set off. Jake had gotten permission to dive Salt Pier. A local divemaster is required and permission must be obtained. We took lots of pictures of the abundant fish life under the pier, and generally had a good time looking around. Surfaced after 1 hour, 4 minutes (our longest dive to date). Yoga classes have definitely helped with air consumption.

Windsock

We wanted to go somewhere else on the way north, so we swapped tanks and kept our suits on and drove north. We stopped at Windsock, found a decent place to enter, got suited up and in we went. Just a 57 minute interval from the last dive, and another 49 minutes of dive time at this site. We'd shot all our film on the previous dive, and hadn't brought another roll, so we just swam with the camera this dive. Jake shot another roll, but needs to work on hand signals for instructing divers as models. Dan did a bunch of paddling to try to get out of a shot only to realize he was the intended subject!

Small Wall

A trip to Bonaire wouldn't be complete without diving Small Wall. It's out Jake and Linda's back door, after all. We took 2 cameras on this one. Faith shot with a close-up kit, while Dan used a 16mm wide angle adapter attached to the 35mm standard lens. We got to 80 feet or so to ensure we'd be able to have flexibility for the dives later in the day. Nobody was home in the cave at the bottom of the wall. Dan tried to get a photo looking into the cave, but it'll take at least 2 strobes to do that, maybe more.

Tori's Reef

We spent some time eating lunch and trying to decide whether to go north or south for an afternoon dive. Faith hit on the idea of checking out Tori's Reef. We'd done our underwater navigation dive at this site back in February, but really never saw the reef... just lots of sand. Jake wanted us to have no visual clues for that nav. dive, and we didn't!

This time, we swam out to the reef, and found it boiling with fish life. an incredible number of fish and variety of species were absolutely everywhere. We shot some more film, and got one or two reasonable shots. Salt Pier is supposed to be full of fish life, but Tori's outdid it by a good margin.

Bari Reef

The evening started with dinner at a downtown restaurant. Nothing on the menu was vegan, but that didn't matter. The place made a fabulous stir-fried noodle and veggie dish. We ate until we were stuffed, and then they brought out fresh fruit for us.

Now that we were all a little tired, and full, we headed back to the house, picking up Jake and Linda's kids from the sitter along the way. Then it was time to head out for our night dive. We'd planned to do Town Pier, but the USCG Tampa was tied up at the pier, and running suction and other machinery. They suggested we'd be better off elsewhere, and so we headed for Bari Reef, at Sand Dollar. Jake's briefing included a warning about jellyfish, as it was 12 days or so after the full moon, apparently the magic number of days that beings out the jellies.

To complicate matters, we each had a camera, but Jake went without. Trying to juggle a dive light, camera and all the normal dive stuff was a challenge. We were using Spot Shot focusing aids instead of framers, which helped some. Faith shot 1:3 macro, Dan shot 1:2. Something went wrong with the TTL on Dan's camera, and we didn't get anything on that roll... bummer.

We saw two sea wasps, and Jake was a little concerned. He was wearing a shortie and wished he'd worn a skin under it. We were in 3mm full suits, Dan with a hood, and so were a little better protected. We also saw a large moon jelly. Jake kind of missed on the navigation, and we were a distance from where we wanted to be. So, we did a bunch more swimming. A really huge tarpon appeared and swam around us for a while. It was probably bigger than Dan or Jake. We eventually got out of the water around 1AM, after a 62 minute dive.

Off Gassing Day

Well, that was it for diving, but we had a day to do stuff on the surface. Out came the above-water camera, and we headed off to downtown Kralendijk for some serious T-shirt shopping. We bought several, got a tour of the USCG Tampa and chatted with the sailors. After some lunch, we headed up to 1000 steps for some photos of the scenery, and also took lots of pictures of the Radio Netherlands towers (we're both ham radio opertors, too, and like antennas).

We went out to dinner with Jake and Linda to the Rendez Vous restaurant. The chef is a friend of Jake and Linda, and is also the dessert chef on the Bonaire Culinary Team (a chef's competition team). As we eat a vegan diet (pure vegetarian, no diary, eggs, or any other animal products), we presented the chef with a challenge. He met it with flying colors, and we had an outstanding meal. All four of us had the vegan dessert the chef had whipped up. It was something he's been working on for the Culinary Team competition. Wow.

After that we headed back. Faith packed while Dan talked over some work stuff with Jake.

The Trip Home

Travel to or from Bonaire takes a full day. Even when it shouldn't, it does. Our trip from Bonaire to Curacao was uneventful. In Curacao, the American Airlines plane was late arriving from Miami. The American ground crew in Curacao was fabulous (did I really write that?) and got us on the plane in record time. By the time we touched down in Miami, we were only 10 minutes behind schedule. They'd made up an hour.

American has all the planes from all over the caribbean arrive at the same time, so immigration and customs were a zoo. The Immigration guy looked like and had the same demeanor as the character Alonzo Mosley (FBI) in the movie Midnight Run. No smiles... Customs was a zoo getting baggage. It took forever, it seemed. No problems getting through the actual inspection, though. Then off to recheck bags and run for the flight. American Airlines TV monitors showed the next flight as on-time, so our connection was tight. After hustling to the gate, we discovered they were without an airplane, and were not going to have another ready until 10PM. It was now 7PM. Typical. They offered a $5 voucher at Burger King. Again, typical. They refused to cover a voucher for a few bottles of gatorade and a few pieces of fruit at another stand. American ground crews (with the exception of Curacao) seem to be the most unpleasant and unhelpful folks in the business.

We did finally get on the plane at 10PM. The pilot and in-flight crew were great, and they pushed the plane for all it was worth. It's supposed to be a 3:30 flight, but we got there in just under 3 hours. Then off to find the baggage, then the van, and finally drive home. Bedtime, 3AM.

Summary

Once again we had a great time diving in paradise. It's good the diving is so great, and we get to visit friends, 'cause the travel back and forth is a pain. Still, we're already talking about our next trip to Bonaire.