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Bonaire Dive Trip

When my mother died in 2017 I inherited some money. I didn't want to just put it in the bank or buy something like a new car. My idea was to use it for a special family trip. Distributed around the country, we rarely all get together. I would use it to pay for Sandy and myself, our kids, and all of their families to take a special vacation together. Since all of our kids are certified divers, I decided that Bonaire would be the ideal destination. Sandy and I and the kids had all been diving there before, so it would be nostalgic as well as a chance to get everyone together.

We went in March, 2018 and it turned out to be a great trip. Unfortunately, the only problem was that Mickey wasn't able to go. Just out of the army, he had started a new job at the VA and wasn't able to get away from work. I started to plan another trip with everyone in 2020 so that Mickey and his girl friend could go. Then covid hit. That put the idea on hold indefinitely.

Well this year travel began to open up so I started to plan again. It wasn't possible to organize a large trip with everyone because there were too many complications, but I was able to plan a makeup trip to Bonaire with just Mickey and Allie.

I've planned and booked a lot of international travel but this was the most work I've ever had to do to set up a trip. There were the usual hotel reservations and flight arrangements. On top of that, it took a lot of time to transfer credits from the deposits that I made for the aborted trip in early 2020 to this new trip. Then there were covid requirements. Travelers from other countries needed to be vaccinated or else had to meet a long list of special requirements. Bonaire also required a covid test within 48 hours of departure. The wording about what type of test was needed to meet their requirements was vague. It took a lot of effort, including emails to the Bonaire Health Department, to determine exactly what was required. Eventually I found out that NAAT tests, which we could get at Walgreens in Boise, were sufficient and had a fast enough turn around time for the results. Unfortunately they weren't available in Baltimore where Mickey and Allie lived. Searching online I finally found a place where the right kind of test was available. On the day of departure, Mickey and Allie had to drive to a Walgreens in Delaware to be tested.

Getting to Bonaire required an overnight stay in Houston. To keep it simple, we all stayed at the Marriott located inside the airport. Sandy and I arrived in the afternoon so we weren't rushed. Mickey and Allie wouldn't get in until late that night. We spent the afternoon texting and emailing back and forth, trying to make sure that we had the covid test results for all four of us. Then Sandy and I were in the business center printing everything out and making sure that we had all the proper forms filled out. I didn't really relax till the next morning when the airline checked our papers and let us on the flight.

I'd been to Bonaire a half a dozen times before this trip and learned that arrivals there are never speedy. It was even worse with all the covid paperwork that needed to be checked. It was early evening when we landed and we wanted to get to the hotel as quickly as possible before they stopped serving dinner. Sandy and I were at the front of the plane so we were near the head of the line and got through immigration quickly. We had to wait a long time for Mickey and Allie. It didn't matter though since it took even longer before our bags came out. The airport in Bonaire operates on island time.

The hotel transfer was on a large shuttle bus with about twenty people on it. We had been to the Plaza Resort before, so we knew that their check in process was slow and it would take them forever to check in that many guests. When the bus arrived we split our forces. Mickey and I went with everyone else to the back of the bus where the luggage was being unloaded. Meanwhile Sandy and Allie went ahead to check in. By the time we got all of our stuff, the ladies had already checked in and had our room keys. We left a long line of people behind us in reception still waiting to check in. We dropped our things off in the rooms and headed for the restaurant. We made it in plenty of time to have dinner.

After all the time we had been hunkering down during covid it was good to be out and traveling again. That evening we had a good dinner. It was good to be with family again. It helped that drinks were part of our all inclusive package at the resort.

Next day we had to visit a couple of dive shops after breakfast. First we went to DivOcean. They were just outside the resort. They had taken excellent care of us during our trip there in 2018 so we wanted to give them some business. Mickey and Allie and I got all of the rental equipment that we needed from them. I also planned to book any boat dives that we did during the week with them but their schedule was busy. That was ok. We figured we would just do shore dives. They're the main attraction of Bonaire anyway.

We had a good talk with Pieter, the owner of DivOcean, while we were there. He said that it had been tough during covid, but the Dutch government had bailed out a lot of Bonaire businesses by providing relief at 40% of their normal revenue. So much for the evils of colonialism.

When I paid for our rental gear, Pieter looked at my credit card and laughed. It had my first name, middle initial and last name on it. "Steve G. That's funny" he said. Now Mickey was Rolling On the Floor Laughing. Thanks a lot Pieter. For the rest of the trip, I heard that from Mickey every day. "Steve G. That's funny" Oh well. Good thing I'm tough.

After DivOcean we went to Toucan Diving, the dive shop located in the Plaza Resort. They were not very helpful on our last trip to Bonaire in 2018, which was why we went to DivOcean first. But they really are the only choice for shore diving on the house reef at our hotel. I just wanted to get the shore diving package from them, but even for that they required that Mickey do a checkout dive. Ok, that wasn't really a bad thing, since it had been many years since Mickey had been diving. They scheduled Mickey for a checkout dive the next afternoon with one of their dive masters. I had certified in 2018 so I was ok, but they gave me the option of going along on the dive. I figured I would go since it was a chance for me to do an extra dive. Mickey was the one who would have to do all the work.

Since we couldn't dive until after Mickey's checkout we just took advantage of being in the tropics. Mostly we hung out at the beach and enjoyed the warm weather and being by the ocean. That afternoon I walked into town to check things out there. We were on vacation so we were pretty lazy.

The next afteroon we met Spider. He's a native Bonairian and turned out to be pretty cool. After going over some basic stuff on the beach he led us into the water. He did some skill checks with Mickey in the shallows while I just hung around. And when you are scuba diving, you literally can just hang around. Then we went out a little further to the top of the reef for a short guided dive. The high point was when Spider found a sea horse. I have only seen them two other times in my twenty five years of diving. Very cool. But shortly after that I had a major problem. I had a full wet suit and probably not enough weight. I was forcing myself to stay down by pointing downwards and kicking. That caused a problem because my head was below my body and my exhaust bubbles got into my suit. That made me more and more buoyant. Eventually my wet suit filed up with air - I was like the Michelin Man. I couldn't stay down. I popped up to the surface. This was embarrassing. Spider was cool about it, but I am sure that he was rolling his eyes. Eventually we went ashore and I made weak excuses for my bad performance.

The next day I went to DivOcean and rented a shortie wet suit to use in place of my full wet suit. I figured that was the simplest solution. The water was certainly warm enough that a shortie was sufficient and it meant that I needed less weight. That seemed to fix things and for the rest of the week I didn't have any more problems. Nothing was hurt except my pride.

After Mickey completed his checkout dive, we were free to do shore dives on our own. We did nine dives total that week, usually one in the morning and one in the afternoon or evening. All of our dives were at Eighteen Palms, the house reef for the Plaza Resort. We entered from either the beach in front of the hotel or from the pier by the restaurant. The dives were easy. There wasn't much current but what little there was usually came from the north in the morning and from the south in the afternoon. That provided some variety as we went different directions from our entry point depending on the time of day that we were diving. Even though we were diving the same site all week we weren't going over the same section of reef over and over.

We didn't usually dive particulary deep but we did dive to the bottom of the first reef once at each entry point (Eighteen Palms has a double reef structure). The pier entry was less than 90 feet deep but the bottom of the slope at the beach entry was almost 115 feet. Needless to say, we didn't stay at that depth long, but headed up and finished the dive by angling upward along the slope of the reef.

Although we did all of our dives at Eighteen Palms, it didn't feel repetitive. We went different directions, and dove at different depths on each dive. There were a lot of colorful reef fish. We also saw a lot of big fish, barracuda and tarpons. The one thing that surprised me though was that we saw very few eels. I'm used to seeing a lot of morays when diving in Bonaire. I don't know if something changed or if I just didn't spot many.

We did one night dive. It was actually unpleasant. A ship was heading out to sea and its engines made a horrible noise during the entire dive. It was actually so loud it hurt my ears. I've never experienced anything like it before. It was too bad because it ruined what otherwise would have been a cool dive. There were several tarpon hunting in our dive lights and one even brushed against me once. Sometimes they get close but usually not that close.

While Mickey and I were diving, Sandy and Allie stayed on the beach. While Bonaire was closed during Covid, the Plaza Resort expanded their pool area and that is where most of the guests stayed. The beach was small but they were usually the only ones on it.

Although Allie didn't dive, she did try snorkeling. There was a group of rocks just off the beach that had quite a few fish. There was even a turtle that came by the rocks on several days. There were also some isolated coral heads in the shallows that had some colorful reef fish swimming around them. Although Sandy has retired from diving, she did some snorkeling too.

Mickey and I weren't diving all the time. It was only a half hour walk into town so everyone made the trip at least once. I went every day although usually I was by myself. It was good exercise and through the week I checked out every single shop in Kralendijk and scouted out every Bonaire tshirt. In one store I found some nice fused glass jewelry and bought several pieces as gifts. I even got some for Sandy since she hadn't seen that shop the one time she had walked into town with me. I was feeling pretty sneaky.

Later in the week we rented a car. One day after our morning dive, Mickey, Allie and I drove around the southern tip of the island and over to the east side. The Sorobon Beach Resort is the only resort there. It had a completly different feel from the rest of the island. The west side is totally oriented around diving. The coast is in the lee of the island and has very mild conditions that has made it world famous dive destination. The east side is the opposite, windy with big surf. The only resort is in Sorobon Bay and it caters to wind surfers. It was a totally different crowd there.

The funniest thing was their beach, a sandy area that was at most fifty feet by fifty feet. Beach lounges were arranged in rows that were literally touching each other, packed in about as densely as the seating at a movie theater. That's really not my idea of a beach resort.

After we had a drink at the Sorobon we drove back to the west side of the island and up north of town. We stopped at Buddy Dive, and Mickey was sure he could identify the room he had stayed in during our dive trip in 2006. We also saw that a brand new hotel had just opened on the old site of the Sunset Beach Hotel, where we had stayed on our first two trips to Bonaire way back in the 1990's. And very importantly, we located the clinic where we needed to go to get our covid tests before we could return to the US. With a narrow window to get the test before leaving, we didn't want to have any problems finding it the day we had scheduled our tests.

After our trip to the east side, Mickey and Allie wanted to see more of the island. The next day they took the car and drove way up north on their own. They had lunch in Rincon. I've been to Bonaire seven times over the years and have never made it up there, although from what they described, I haven't missed much. It's far from the coast. It's in the desert. It's hot, dry and the flies were bad. They said it wasn't pretty at all. Meanwhile Sandy and I got to spend a day just hanging out at the beach together.

We didn't dive our last full day on the island since we had an early flight the next morning. It's a good idea to have at least a 24 hour surface interval before flying to avoid decompression sickness. The most important thing was to get our covid tests for entering the US. We had appointments and the clinic was pretty well organized. It didn't take long, but there are those few minutes while you are waiting for the results that you can't help being a little nervous. Fortunately we were all negative so no one was stranded.

We stopped in Kralendijk on the way back. We all bought Bonaire tshirts. Unfortunately Sandy discovered the shop with the jewelry and bought some for herself. My only consolation was that I had bought the best pieces a few days before so I think she will still like them when she gets them as presents, probably for Valentine's Day. Finally we celebrated the trip with a drink at Karel's Beach Bar. It's built over the water on a pier in the center of town.

Overall it was a good vacation. It felt great to travel again. Mickey and I did some good dives. It was Allie's first trip out of the US so she enjoyed seeing the island, staying at the resort and trying snorkeling. Sandy got to relax on the beach for a week.

The resort had made improvements during the covid closure. Their pool and beach areas were bigger. A large new building was under construction to the north. The restaurant was expanded, adding another eating area for dive travel groups. Our old friend Quincy from the last trip got promoted (?) and only worked with the travel groups now, so we didn't see him much this time. Sandy and I thought the food was ok but not as good as last time. Mickey and Allie seemed to really like it so that was good. And the all inclusive beer and wine made for a fun vacation. Mickey developed a real taste for Polar Beer from Venezuela. It was only 4.5% and came in a twelve ounce bottle, so Mickey took to ordering two bottles at a time. Something about free beer and being in the Army for eight years.

Although we didn't see much of Quincey, I did talk to Spider a lot. He seems to have taken Quincey's place as the guy everyone mentions in TripAdvisor reviews. He asked me about my previous trips to Bonaire and I told him my first two trips I had stayed at the Sunset Beach Hotel, which burned down in 1998. He said that he had played in the ruins when he was a kid, but it had burned down before he was born. Man, that made me feel old!

Things change though. The remains of the Sunset Beach Hotel have been cleared away and a fancy new hotel, the Chogogo Dive and Beach Resort, had just opened on part of the site the week before our trip. A new Sunset Beach Resort is under construction next door as I write this and is scheduled to open later this year. Even the old Den Lahman Restaurant has been torn down and replaced with condominiums. Time goes on.

It was a fun trip. It was good to get out again after being shut down for two years by covid. I think everyone had a good time. Mickey and I did some good dives. I'm determined to go back to Bonaire again sometime to dive some more. I'm already bugging people about it.