It's better in bonaire

Boat/US Magazine, July, 2003 by Elaine Dickinson

Have you ever dreamt you were flying and sensed an exhilarating feeling of freedom and weightlessness? For millions of scuba divers, floating Through the world that lies underwater is as close to flying and weightlessness as we'll ever get. And That's only part of the attraction of scuba diving.

As a total scuba novice, I recently took the plunge and, with my diver-husband, journeyed to an island that draws divers the way Las Vegas draws blackjack players.

There was certainly some trepidation that I would be way out of my league on an island whose official nickname is "Diver's Paradise," and that my first scuba adventure would be more work than fun since I still had to complete four open water dives to get certified. But after devoting some cold winter nights to scuba classes and pool sessions at home in Annapolis, MD, I decided why not go where the divers go to complete my PADI certification: Bonaire.

This tropical island in the Netherlands Antilles off the coast of Venezuela -- onethird of the 'ABC" islands of Aruba and Curacao -- has become the number one dive destination in the Caribbean, and now we know why. Not only are the diving conditions ideal, with pristine reefs running parallel to the island's western - -- and southern coastline and within an easy snorkel swim from the beach, but all of the waters of Bonaire are a protected marine preserve.

The island government had the foresight to place strict rules on its coastal waters in the 1970s and create the Bonaire National Marine Park in 1979. Consequently, the coral reefs of Bonaire remain intact and healthy, 'unlike many other islands where the fragile reefs have been largely ruined by overuse, anchors, poaching and other negative forces. We did not mind, for example, paying $10 each for an entry fee to the Bonaire National Marine Park (actually a plastic tag) to dive for a week. The tags are good for a year and the money goes toward continued protection of the reefs.

Standing in line at the open-air car rental counter after arriving at Bonaire's Flamingo Airport, where billy goats scampered around the parking lot, I knew we'd made a good choice when the man ahead of us said this was his seventh trip to Bonaire to dive. With over 80 marked dive sites to explore, multiple trips started making more sense.

About the size of Bermuda, 24 miles long and three to seven miles across, Bonaire caters to divers even as it guards its natural resources. To make diving easy, Bonaire's resorts virtually all offer dive packages. These usually include your room, plus a twin-cab pickup truck (with a rack in back for tanks) weights and unlimited air, and a week's worth of boat dive trips or a week's worth of shore diving, or both. Divers bring their own regulators (the breathing apparatus) and BCDs (buoyancy compensating devices, the flotation vests that everything attaches to) or rent them. (A certification card is needed to rent scuba equipment.) And the only "drive-through" on Bonaire is not a fast food restaurant but a resort that features a drive-through air refill station for your tanks.

The Endless Reef

Bonaire, similar to the Florida Keys, is coral rock and lined with a fringing type reef, practically one continuous reef not separated from the shore by wide lagoons, but often starting right at the shoreline. The reef terrace just off the beach slopes gently down to about 30 feet, then begins a sharper drop-off down to 130 feet or more. The submerged landscape also features a double reef where, at about 100 feet, there is a channel of empty sand and beyond it, another fringing reef that begins at 130 feet.

Dive operators on Bonaire offer an enticing menu of specialty dive classes for those who want advanced training -- everything from wreck diving and night diving to underwater photography. Resorts host evening slide shows of the day's best underwater photos. One evening, while dining at a waterfront pub, we noticed the harbor waters were lit eerily from below by moving, alien-looking lights; it was a regular outing of night divers at a favorite local spot, Town Pier, right off the busy main drag in the capital Kralendijk.

The chance to swim with and observe up close the exotic creatures, plants and corals that live in the ocean always had tremendous appeal to me, but I put off getting certified to dive because I feared brain-numbing technical knowledge was required, including dreaded math. Note to fellow math illiterates: It's not that hard, Yes, there are numbers involved, but if I can understand the general concepts of buoyancy, air pressure and water depths, just about anyone can. Plus, the equipment has gotten so good, the sport is safer and small wristband dive computers practically do the thinking for you. PADI (Professional Association of Diving Instructors) is one of the organizations that offers training and certifies divers as competent to rent scuba equipment.

At Bonaire's Toucan Diving, I spent two days reviewing skills and diving on the reef that was within a stone's throw of our hotel room with PADI instructor Monique Reichert. Two years on Bonaire, hailing from Holland, Monique learned to dive in the cold waters of the North Sea and inland lakes. In four dives over two days I in the pool back repeated the skills and then was rewarded with a lovely dive along our local reef. As we glided underwater, she used a small writing board to point out five squid hovering before us like little submarines, a moray eel hiding between some rocks, a chameleon-like, color-changing peacock flounder fish that disappeared into his surroundings and an alien-looking sea cucumber.