Bonaire dive site help

[beckyjohns]

We are planning to do 2 shore dives in Bonaire next week. Can anybody recommend a dive shop that has 2 shore dives within walking distance? I'm really not picky about the dive shop, I just need to be able to get tanks and weights from them. I would like to find someplace, though, that has 2 good dives that we can do from the same place since we won't have a car.

 

If that's not doable, we may only do 1 dive. If that's the case, what dive site would you reccomend? We are both advanced, rescue, and nitrox divers, so anything is fine with us, no issues with depth, current, etc.

[jamga02]

Hello! We are not experts on Bonaire, but we did dive their in November. We dove with Divi Dive; one shore dive and one boat dive. The boat dive out to Klein Bonaire was amazing, being one of the best in my life!! The shore dive on the "house reef" was only so/so, a lot of the reef was covered in sand. Couple of the locals said that last year remnants of one of the big hurricanes hit near the island, with the sand covering the coral as a result.

 

I did hear that the house reefs on the other side of the island were better protected, but I would definitely do some research. One couple on the cruise with us actually rented a truck for the short 7 hours our ship was in port! However, they were very familiar with everything on the island, going on yearly trips to Bonaire for forever.

 

Divi Dive is very convenient to the cruise ship dock, being an easy walk (even with full dive gear in tote) from the ships. However, it took us over an hour before we could get our gear and get the debriefing from the dive shop.

 

I have a couple of photos uploaded from our Bonaire dives here:

 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jamga02/

 

John