Dive Your Share Tour Initial Impressions
Bonaire “Dive Your Share” 2016 Tour took us to the “ABC” island of Bonaire. Bonaire is part of the Dutch Antilles lying less than 100 miles off the coast of Venezuela, South America. We flew into the capital city of Kralendijk and made the short drive to Buddy Dive Resort . This was to be our base for the next week. Buddy Dive sets on the lea side of Bonaire. This minimizes currents but with a constant trade winds blowing, helps to keep the tropical temperatures at bay. Buddy Dive provides stair step access to the coral walls that surround Bonaire. This is considered some of best scuba diving in the Caribbean!
We Do The Dive
Scuba diving from Buddy Dive is made so simple. There is convenience with your dive locker on the dock. We were a short walk to the boats and just a few steps into the blue waters of the Caribbean! The opportunity to “dive your share” was easy here. Thus, this was to be our Caribbean home for June 2016. Diving the sloped walls of Bonaire in the clear, blue Caribbean waters was fantastic. Ultimately, one can see many of the fish and invertebrates there. Coral of all types, enormous sponges and soft corals were abundant. Everywhere, sea fans, sea urchins, sea biscuits and sea stars could be seen. The fish life is plentiful all over the entire reef system. There were moray eels, snake eels. Also, we saw spotted drum, cow fish, trunk fish, and trumpet fish. Incredibly, we caught up with the elusive red lipped blenny or jaw fish. Of course, the scorpion fish was also at hand. The number of invasive lion fish, however, has been drastically reduced. This is because of the help of the regular lion fish fry at the restaurant. The restaurant also has infamous “we’ll cook your lion fish anyway you want” lunches. Some of our dives were right on Buddy reef with all the abundance above. The added Coral Restoration Farms in the area gave an air of new growth and beauty for the reef systems. Our boat dives included ones like 1000 Steps, and Small Wall.
Specialty Diving
Our wreck dive on the Hilma Hooker was incredible! It was so massive and gave a lot of photo opportunities to our divers. One of our night dives was at Something Special. Just about anything you wanted to see was there! Our night dives were electric with bio luminescent algae. The ever present tarpon hunted in your light beam, and even the elusive reef octopus out hunting for his evening meal. When our boat took us to the nearby Klein Bonaire (small Bonaire) we stopped at sites like Don Stewart’s Reef, Keepsake and Carl’s Hill. What makes Bonaire so special is the ease of shore diving. There are marked sites just minutes’ drive away from Buddy Dive. We were all provided a rental truck for each room. Some of these dive sites included the spectacular Salt Pier, Nesting Beach, and Alice in Wonderland. There are 50-60 marked sites on the island. We really tried to hit them all. With water temperatures in the mid 80’s, diving at Buddy is nothing but spectacular. Talk about diving your share!
Post Dive Conditions
With the ease of diving relaxation, came at the Blenny Restaurant and Beach Bar (Buddy Dive). Of course, A bottle of Amstel Bright the constant trade winds and good company kept us at bay after an exhausting day of diving. Sometimes we ventured out to sample the local fare in places like Bobbejens BBQ, a unique local flare BBQ made Caribbean style. For the more normal fare we hit the local pizza pub, Pasa Bon Pizza and Bar just down the street from Buddy Dive for some thin crust pizza and good times. All together,we had a great week of diving and camaraderie. We were able to save a lot of really unique memories diving in Bonaire. Truly, Bonaire, and in particular, Buddy Dive gave us the opportunity to really get our share of diving in. What a fantastic dive week!
Trip Video
Trip Photo Gallery
