Shore Diving any time, anywhere!!!!

We arrived in Bonaire on the red eye from Newark.  It was a direct flight - the only caveat being it leaves at midnight.  We arrived around 4:30am.  In no time we had our luggage and were met by the representative of Buddy Dive Resort.  He whisked us away in a pickup - our room was ready and waiting for us and by 5am we were tucked into bed.  You can check in at your leisure later in the morning - which we did, got the keys to our truck and headed to the dive shop for our dive brief.

We were fairly tired from our journey so we only did 2 dives on Sunday, both on Buddy's house reef.  We had lunch at the pool bar (they had a fabulous peppercorn soup!) and dinner at BobbeJans - fabulous BBQ place with a very small menu - only open on weekends.  Definitely worth a stop!

Monday we did a boat dive out on Klein Bonaire - Saw our first frogfish!!!   Did a second dive on Buddy's reef with Charlie the tarpon - the afternoon we took a road trip up north and dove Witches Hut and Karpata.  Karpata remains my favorite dive site on the island.  Dinner was a City Cafe.  Good place for a burger or a salad.

The next day we did 2 boat dives - Country Garden and Rappel.  Both at the north end of the island.  Alot of little critters at these sites including baby spotted drums, lettuce sea slugs and nudibranchs.  An afternoon dive at buddys and the night dive at Town Pier!  We grabbed dinner at the Lions Den - also on the Buddy's property.  Dinner was good - but definitely pricey!

No boat diving on Wednesday for us - we headed south to margate Bay and Angel City.  I hung out by the pool in the afternoon while Michael did an afternoon dive on Buddy's reef - We both did a dusk dive on Buddy's Reef.  The reef really comes alive this time of day - with all the pre-nighttime activities.  We headed over to Pasa Bon for pizza - wow... for an island in the Carribean - they've got some pretty decent pizza!  With its proximity to Venezuela (home of MANY Italian immigrants) its not surprising.  Actually one of our favorite Italian resturants is on this island.. and it was CLOSED for vacation (we were crushed!)

Thursday we did another 2 boat dives - again to the North part of Bonaire, again alot of macro critters...  Flamingos toungues, lettuce sea slugs (lots of these there), arrow crabs and cleaner shrimp.  On the second dive we saw 2 frogfish (a green one and a yellow one), 2 seahorses (one yellow and one brown), reef squid and a big hawksbill turtle!  the afternoon we headed south again to Invisibles and Alice in Wonderland.  At Alice, we found a spotted eagle ray - he was a bit spooked by us and took off - in turn spooking a turtle in the process.  Quite the site!

our last diving day was Friday - we got out to Klein Bonaire one more time and saw ANOTHER frogfish...  I went from never seeing one - EVER to seeing 6 in a week!  Our shore dives took us north this time to Ol Blue and Karpata.  I never get tired of Karpata.  A great dive site for Michael to shoot wide angle photography.

We decided to get one more dive in and headed south to Aquarius.  Full of fish and a large cleaning station.  Very nice last dive.

Our last day we spent a Slaagbai National Park - took us about 4 hours to go thru the whole park - pretty views, lots of iguanas who OBVIOUSLY get fed by tourists!  Grabbed lunch in town at City Cafe and checked out the slave huts before heading back to the resort.  Packed up our gear and stuff had a great dinner at Donna y Giorgios (since Cappricios was closed!!!!) and got ready for the trip home at 4am!

Its great having a direct flight from Newark and despite the times - it really does work out well!