Although my "package" was to arrive on Saturday and leave the following
Saturday, my airfare was out of Atlanta which necessitated an overnight
stay so I actually left on Friday and returned home on Sunday.

Security going to Bonaire in the Atlanta airport went quite smoothly
considering the massive number of people that needed to be screened.
The line, while quite long, moved quickly and I was through the
screening area in about 30 minutes or less.

Our flight from Atlanta was on Air Jamaica which included a stop in
Montego Bay for about an hour or so layover.  Finally arriving at the
Flamingo airport on Bonaire we were met by the car rental agent who
provided us with our 8 rental trucks.  The forms were signed, the trucks
were assigned to our groups and we were on our way.  We had a fairly
large group from our area, 28 divers in all.  Sunday morning brought a
briefing on local diving conditions, resort policies and familiarization
 and the purchase of the Marine park tag ($25).  We needed to make a
weight checkout dive and afterwards we were on our own.  The briefing
which lasted 2 hours, seemed like it went on forever but only because I
was so anxious to get in the water.

We stayed at the Sand Dollar condominiums and resort which is located on
Bari Reef.  The condominium where we stayed was clean, well accomodated
with a full kitchen, living room area, 1 bath, and two bedrooms. The
condos had satellite TV with quite a few US networks featured, however,
I found very little time to watch TV.  My roommate and dive partner, is
a retired Geology professor from a local university.  We also teamed up
with a fellow who teaches computer technology in the local school
system.  The other 2 people in our condo had just married and were using
this as their honeymoon trip.

While we had a fairly large group from our area (28 people), we saw very
little of them during the week.  Occasionally we would pass someone we
knew on one of the dive sites or sometimes wind up at the same dive site
with someone in our group but that was only by chance.

All of my dives were shore dives, however, a boat trip to Klein Bonaire
was taken by my dive buddies one morning.  Klein Bonaire, I was told was
once owned by Harry Bellafonte and purchased by the island of Bonaire
and remains uninhabited except for the sea turtles that lay their eggs
there.

We essentially had 5 days of diving considering the first part of Sunday
was taken up with the briefing and the Marine Park tag purchase.  We
chose not to dive in the afternoon of the Friday before we left.

Sand Dollar offers free nitrox for those appropriately trained.  All of
the mixes measured 29-31% and tanks could be obtained by the boat dock,
or at a parking lot area behind the dive shop near the compressor for
easy loading into a vehicle.

For those who may not be familiar with Bonaire, while boat diving is
offered, many divers choose to load their gear in a truck and dive from
the shore.  The dive sites are marked by moderately sized rocks that are
painted bright colors and feature the name of the dive site.  Naturally
we dove Bari Reef multiple times since is was a mere 200 yard walk from
our room to the dock and into the water.  But we also visited "Angel
City" where we entered, did a leisurely drift dive to the "Hilma Hooker"
(wreck), and exited.  We parked our vehicles so we would not have to
haul the gear a great distance back to our entry point.  We also visited
"White Slave", "Oil Slick", "Tori's Reef", "Ol Blue", "Front Porch",
"Soft Coral Garden", "Alice in Wonderland" "18th Palm" and "Karpata".
Some of the shore diving was relatively easy, but some a bit more
challenging having to contend with a somewhat heavy surf that seemed to
enjoy knocking you down.  I have the battle scars on my left shin and
knee and a torn wetsuit so subtantiate my story but my tenacity to
intermingle with the Bonaire marine life overcame even natures attempts
to keep me out.

As I mentioned previously, my dive buddies were the professor and a
teacher.  I have been trying to figure out some way of getting some
"Gilligans Island" connection in here but I have given up on that.  The
professor has been diving for quite a few years, but many of his dives
were research dives.  Some quite fascinating stories, and some humorous,
as he told of diving the frozen regions of Antarctica.  Turned out, my
dive buddies enjoyed night diving as much as I did, so we were out every
night.  On one night, we made a trip north from "Bari Reef" for a
somewhat uneventful dive other that a moray eel or two and I spotted a
very small octopus.  However, on the way back we were joined and
"escorted" by 3-4 very large tarpon.  The professor and myself were
using HID lights and the teacher had an 8 cell halogen light.  The
tarpon stay close to us swiming within touching distance in front, from
behind underneath, and all around us.  They were most interested in our
lights and were obviously using the illumination for hunting.  While the
tarpon did not act aggressive towards us at all, it was still a bit
unnerving to have one pass directly underneath you from behind.  We
found we could actually direct the path of the tarpon by pointing our
HID lights at various spots.  The professor found this quite amusing and
talked about that dive for days.  Another favorite location for our
night dives turned out to be "Oil Slick" which was on the northern end
of the island.  "Oil Slick" is fairly remote with only a few houses
around and no city lights to intrude on our dive.  Entry to "Oil Slick"
was a 5ft giant stride from either a nearby flat block of concrete or a
ladder attached to the rocks. While the moon was nearly full and
provided some light for our dives, there is something about doing a
giant stride 5 feet into the water below at night that gives you a bit
of an adrenaline rush.  A buoy nearby provided us a rope to hang a
strobe marker beacon for our return navigation.  One trip to "Oil Slick"
showed us the largest lobster any of had ever seen.  I am certain we
could have ridden him back to the resort but that would have left our
vehicle stranded there.

Dive conditions were always superior.  Visibility was always at least
100 ft and often time more.  Water temperatures varied but stayed in the
77-81 deg F range.  An exception to that was one day, I did hit a
noticeable thermocline at 108 ft which brought the temperature to 73
degrees.  While I using a .5 mil skin for protection, the cooler
temperature didn't bother me.

One of the divers in our group spotted a manta ray.  This was met with a
bit of skepticism back with the resort until they were shown the
photographs.

Friday, we ended our diving with a morning dive at "Karpata".
Negotiating the steps in a full rig was challenging but not nearly as
challenging as entering the water and trying maintain your balance on
the rocks just a few inches under the surface of the surf, and avoiding
the sea urchins that have posted themselves as little mines between the
rocks.  We returned to the resort and dove one last time on Bari Reef
spotting a few morays and just minutes before starting our safety stop,
saw and photographed a sea horse clinging to some coral.

Sand Dollar resort and I think most other dive operations on Bonaire are
pretty much a "do your own thing" type of diving.  We certainly had very
little inter-action with any of the dive staff aside from the first day
orientation.

All in all, I logged 19 dives, 5 of them night dives, and 15 hours of
bottom time.

Topside activities are somewhat limited, as Kralyndyke, being the major
population center of the 6 mile by 25 mile island, is relatively small.
 For people from the US that might get homesick, I did manage to locate
a "Subway" and a "KFC" and even a Harley Davidson shop.  Sand Dollar has
a nice open air restaurant overlooking Klein Bonaire and facing west.
Meals were pricey but very good. One of the things I noticed about all
of the restaurants on Bonaire, the wait staff does not refill you
beverage as is commonplace in the US.  You most often have to ask for it
and then it is an extra charge on your bill.

While our room had no phone, internet was "available"....well sort of.
There is a small convenience store near the resort that runs a wireless
internet service.  I located what appeared to be nodes or relay stations
on all of the resort buildings but could never get a signal.  So I took
my laptop to the store where they had some small tables and chairs set
up for people to access the internet.  You could either access it with a
WiFi card or there were two ethernet plugs run through the front wall.
Internet access cost $35 for the week which I paid, mainly to keep in
contact at home.  I did share this with the couple we shared our condo
with.  The owner of the convenience store was a likeable chap who told
me I was welcome to use the phone on the wall and call home.  He told me
he was using "voice of internet" which was a minimal cost and he let his
customers call home for free.  I called my wife and spoke with her.  She
was quite suprised to get the call.  The shop owner did caution me about
using the phone.  He wanted to know if I had caller ID on my home phone,
which I do.  He had one customer who used the phone to call home and the
caller ID showed "Florida" to the wife whose husband was supposed to be
in Bonaire.

Saturday was our return day with our flight scheduled to take off at
3:15.  We kept getting varied reports the flight was early, the flight
was late, there were inadequate security people at the airport and
checking in was going to be delayed.  Our flight finally arrived and we
were about 3 hours late taking off.  While this didn't affect anyone in
our group, others on the plane had to spend the night in Montego Bay.
It did however, put me into Atlanta around 1am and I was quite tired.
I found it quite odd, that on my arrival from Bonaire, I picked up my
luggage from the carousel and met with some Air Jamaica employees who
took my bags from me and put them on yet another belt.  I then proceeded
through yet another security checkpoint complete with the x-ray
machines, metal detectors, etc, to get me OUT of the arriving passenger
area and into the terminal.  I guess they didn't want to take a chance
on a hotel shuttle bus getting hijacked by someone who might have
smuggled a weapon of minimal destruction on the plane.
My return flight from Atlanta was at 10:45.  I got there a little over 2
hours early, but again, the security screening process went quite
smoothly and I spent a lot of time waiting in the concourse.  I guess
thats better than missing the flight all together though.

Delta airlines, bless their heart, were constantly making announcements
over the PA system in the concourse about flight delays, broken planes,
etc.  My flight was delayed about 30 minutes and they left my dive bag
in Atlanta.  Just got it back today (everything intact) and have cleaned
of all the gear and I am now ready for my next dive.