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A Week In Bonaire

8 days of diving, eating, and exploring

By Glenn Charles Photography

March 27^th, 2020

These are some of my favorite images from 8 days in Bonaire. For those that don't know, Bonaire is located in the Caribbean, just off the coast of Venezuela. Once largely a slave colony (salt, agave, etc), the Island is now a diving Mecca. The entire island is designated as a protected marine park making for some of the most spectacular diving in the world.

Access to the vast majority of dive sites is via the shore which means all one has to do is rent a truck (highly recommended), purchase a dive package from one of the many operators, and then dive to your hearts content. I would personally suggest VIP diving. Centrally located and absolutely fantastic customer service.

Two things, beyond the diving that amazed or surprised me the most was the overall sense of safety that we felt and the absolutely amazing food that we ate. Downtown is a Mecca for really nice restaurants. Pro tip, scope them out and then make reservations wherever possible. We found that the nicer establishments filled up quickly with little to no overflow capacity. It is also worth noting that the restaurants are not all open 7 days a week, so check their schedules first.

Base Camp

This was my first trip to Bonaire and as such, we opted to stay at a Dive Divi resort where we would have access to everything that we needed. As newbies to the island this definitely worked out extremely well. We were able to dive right from the resort on their house reef; eat lunch at their restaurants; have half off happy hour at the bar; and walk into town for dinner.

We did buy the dive package from them which gave us 7 days of unlimited Nitrox tanks. Simply check them out each day, load them into the truck, and off you go. For your first trip to the island I highly recommend doing something like this. For our next trip, we will rent a house and use VIP diving.

Pressure on the Reef

The onslaught of cruise ships in Bonaire is a boon for economic development but will put tremendous pressure on the reefs right outside of town. This view is from Dive Divi, and while the sea life on this reef was beautiful, you could clearly see the damage being done to the reef from the 2 or more cruise ships coming in and out each day. Clearly this is something that will have to be managed carefully to preserve the marine heritage of the island.

Downtown Bonaire

A lovely little walkable town right on the waterfront. Plenty of shops and dining establishments of all flavors.

Fried Snapper

I said it earlier and I will say it again, the food in Bonaire was absolutely delicious

Mezza

This place was by far our favorite place to eat and we had some great meals at other places, but Mezza is just really special. Highly recommend.

The Salt Pier

Spectacular Sunsets

The Divi Dive shack where we launched our house reef dives made for an even nicer location for night dives.

The Hooker

Deepest dive of the trip. The ships keel sits in about 50' of water while the bottom is right at 100'. Like all the other dives, you swim from shore out to the surface marker where you then descend and work your way to the ship. Not knowing how big a ship this was, your first observation is this gigantic dark shape that takes up your entire vision. Very strange until you sort out what you are looking at.

Unfortunately I had focus issues, so most of these are not as sharp as I would like but they do give you a sense of what you are about to dive on.

Exploring to the south and South East

The south west coast of the island is home to some of the remnants of the slave industry. Hard to grasp how people were forced to live in these tiny concrete blocks.

Exploring to the North

To the north is the national park, but in order to get there you must drive north east to the coast and then up and back over to the west. Along the way, you have amazing sites of the raw east coast where the only diving is largely done via boat. The prevailing winds whip up the surf making it virtually impossible to shore dive. However, those same winds offer up recreational opportunities and drive a large windmill farm for energy.

Final Dive - The Jawfish

I had spent the entire trip looking for something to really work on my macro photo skills. The day before, I met a gentleman coming out of the water, Nikon D850 in a massive Subal housing in hand. An older gentleman, he proceeded to tell me that right off of the house dock, their was a couple of Yellow Headed Jawfish. He showed me the classic picture of the fish with the soon to hatch eggs in the males mouth.

Just the type of photo I envisioned capturing, I set out to find the spot. I spent an hour down to no avail, sure that I was in the right spot. As I was working my way back to shore, I happened upon the spot that had to be the right location. With my bearings in check, I returned several hours later to search for these beautiful fish.

Sure enough, within minutes of arriving I spotted one of the pair, the other was nowhere to be seen. I then proceeded to spend a glorious hour, sitting on the sandy bottom, watching and photographing this fish. Amazingly enough, this took place no more that 20 to 30 ft from the pier and in about 15' of water. Proving what I had long thought, you don't have to go far or deep to find things that are incredibly interesting.

All too often I see divers trying to cover as much ground as they can on a given dive instead of searching for something interesting and then staying in one place, at least for a brief amount of time, to observe and learn. So much beauty and insight to be found in just watching and waiting.