Bonaire

Bonaire is a dive paradise for people that are independent. The recipe for fun is pretty simple: choose a dive resort, rent a pickup truck and pick your shore dives. At any time (day or night), load your gear into the pickup truck, get air tanks from the drive though and then go start exploring. Please remember to bring nothing else and leave all the windows open when parking. Just to be clear: We had never anything stolen and we felt absolutely safe.

The diversity of sea life is amazing. Those who seek, will find.

Spotted Moray Eel

Curious Cuttlefish 

Anemone Shrimp

Spotted Eagle Ray

Large Barracuda

Coral Crab

Each dive site is nicely marked and easy to spot. Park you car and leave all the windows open. After getting ready, just walk down to the beach and enjoy your dive. We found a portable shower to but on the roof of the car, so that when we came out we could rinse off the salt water. The water was nice and warm.

The island has a history of slaves working here under very primitive conditions. The red as well as the  white slave huts would tell you all about it. They can be found at the Southern end of the island where the salt is still being mined.

Instead of eating at the Buddy Dive Resort, we ventured out to Kralendijk and found plenty of great restaurants.

Before flying back home, I can highly recommend visiting Washington-Slagbaai National Park. There is plenty of beaches and cacti to explore. The East Side has blow holes to offer and is pretty wild and it looks like you're on a different planet.

Bonaire

Since Bonaire is one of the three islands off the coast of Venezuela, it's part of the Netherland Antilles and most important it is a gem for shore diving.

It's a simple concept: you rent a truck and with your own scuba gear you get your tanks from the resort's drive-through and then drive to the numerous dive sites any time you want. Let's say you want to see who's hunting at 2:00AM then you do what we did, you just do it.

The slave huts are a reminder of another time when not even the Europeans were disturbed by owning other humans.

They were freshly painted and stood out in the bare landscape, close to a still operational salt production.

During one of those night dives we encountered a box jelly fish that was just hovering in the water column as if it took a break from an interstellar journey. We spent quite some time with this "monster", partly because we were intrigued, partly because we tried to imagine how close we got to these tentacles. Are they dangerous to humans? What would happen? How would we do if we got in contact? If anyone has an idea what type of box jelly fish this is, please let us know in the comment section.

When night diving, it's good to know that the large silver fish that flies by you from behind is just a 6 foot Tarpon. They use your light beam to hunt for their dinner.