Jerry and I joined our ward friends Doyal and Donna Debow on a scuba diving trip to Bonaire. Bonaire is by the islands Aruba and Curacao (they make up the ABC islands in the Caribbean and are right off the coast of Venezuela). They are Dutch owned and known as the Lesser Netherland Antilles.
We stayed at a wonderful bed and breakfast: The Deep Blue View, owned and operated by Menno and Ester.
Bonaire is known for it's shore entry diving. Just rent a truck, load it up, drive to one of many dive sites marked by a yellow painted rock, and wade in. Well, try to wade in between the waves, sharp coral, uneven sometimes slippery bottom.
On our first dive at Alice in Wonderland, my underwater camera case flooded my Canon G7. So all pictures are from Donna's camera. Here Jerry and I are diving the Hilma Hooker ship wreck.
We did a couple of boat dives from Menno's boat; a night dive, two dives off the islet Klein Bonaire and a dive on the Wildside East Coast (guided by Menno where we saw hundreds of HUGE tarpin, huge eagle rays, huge hawksbill turtles...the key word on all these being HUGE).
Donna is so great about researching our dive vacation sites. She had a list of 'Must Eat' restaurants that would likely make a great episode of Dives, Diners and Drive-Ins. We ate at Maiky Shack (Doyal had goat stew), El Fagon for local Columbian, Boudoir, Pasa Bon Pizza, Rose Ann (in Rincon, we drove there to have icecream but that place closed down),and my favorite; Donna & Giorgio's.
Washington Slagbaai National Park is on the north side. We went there on our last day in Bonaire. We saw hundreds of flamingos, cactus, a cool blow hole, a lone iguana, tons of tiny lizards with teal colored tails, and beautiful birds.
Bonaire is known for it's seahorse population but I didn't see a one. I did see squids for the first time. Overall, it was a wonderful dive vacation with great friends. We laughed at the many, many donkeys (Bonaire is a donkey sanctuary), and the funny road signs.
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