Mrs Gdog and I made our first trip to Bonaire, Feb 28-March 10. We decided to stay at the Dive Hut for our first trip, and then check out the Island and plan from there where to stay next. Actually, the Dive Hut wasnt too bad, just very basic. As seems to be the case island wide, most of the people staying there were Dutch, with a few from the US, and other parts of the world. They serve a basic breakfast if you want it, and a BBQ on Thursday nights which Roland the owner hosts on his BBQ grill. The food was ok, and it was fun mingling with other divers. Rooms are very basic; a 4 burner hot plate for cooking, a small frig, basic utensils; sometimes hot water, sometimes only warm; a separate dive gear building that Wannadive stocks with air and nitrox tanks. The owners are very friendly and enjoy conversing as does the help. The Dive Hut coordinated our air package and our vehicle rental. The rental was from Island Rentals, and the truck was in good condition. With Wannadive, we had 3 locations to pick up tanks whenever we wanted.
Got some photos with my old Olympus 5060, but towards the end of the trip I had to give it last rites as it reached the end of its long life. I will post some of what I did get with it.
- Red Slave in the late afternoon
- Very nice southern dive site
- Blue Striped Grunt posing
- Me posing
- Friendly French Angelfish
- Went down on the Hooker!
- I think this is a Snake Eel?
- Blue Lettuce Slug
Thats the best of what I have for now, I have a couple more days of photos left to go thru. We got in 23 dives, averaging about 3 a day. Favorite dive site? Karpata, no question. We both preferred the northern sites to the southern ones. Midway thru the stay, I decided to leave the camera in the room while we dove with new friends. Of course, that is when we spotted a big seahorse by the anchor block on Karpata. The next day, armed with camera, Mrs Gdog and I spent 1 hour and 20 minutes searching for that bugger. Gone! Seahorses seem to be my holy grail photo-wise.
We did a night dive at Bari Reef, and spent the last 20 minutes of the dive being buzzed by 5 Tarpon that were using our dive lights to nail small fish. They are fast and aggressive. They would approach head on right up to your face then turn, come beside you, under you, over you. Kinda like being toyed with by the harbor seals up here. I could see Mrs Gdog wasnt really enjoying them, so we headed in and they followed us right to the waters edge.
We didnt get to dive all the sites we wanted, and we didnt get to dive any at Klein. But we did find some cool places to stay next trip, and we learned our way around.
Special thanks to ktb, Kelly, your info was appreciated and invaluable for our trip. Kdupreez, the Kindle Fire came in so handy on the long flight! I owe you several cold ones!
Ok Jesse, theres my report. If I have any other pics worth posting, I will.
