"Reef Fish" wrote in message
oups.com...

Joe English wrote:
Caribbean Girl wrote:

I wonder WHY the same post under two different subjects

Ok, I take it as a valid reason that the one I responded to was posted
ONLY in rec.travel.cruises, and perhaps as an after thought that the
scuba divers may know more, that this was cross-posted to three
other groups, including rec.scuba and rec.scuba.locations -- the latter
should draw useful INFO about diving in Bonaire.



Bonaire is well known for its shore diving - my advice would be to not
book thru the boat - if he has his gear go to a dive shop rent a couple
of tanks and dive - he can probably get in 3 - 4 dives depending how
long you are in Bonaire.

Doesn't need a boat - just gear and tanks (you can rent the gear too)

Good advice about the shore diving on rented tanks. The itinerary:


Day Port Arrival Departure

1 San Juan, Puerto Rico 11:00 PM
2 St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands 7:00 AM 6:00 PM
3 St. Kitts, St. Kitts & Nevis 7:00 AM 3:00 PM
4 Grenada 9:00 AM 3:00 PM
5 Bonaire, Netherlands Antilles 12:00 PM 7:00 PM
6 Aruba 8:00 AM 5:00 PM
7 At Sea
8 San Juan, Puerto Rico 6:00 AM

There are scuba diving opportunities at St. Thomas, St. Kitts
(crummy),
Grenada, Bonaire, and Aruba.

For those like myself who are over the 4-5 dives a day on liveaboards,
this will be a suitable "dive cruise" to do one or two dives per port
over
several of the well-known Caribbean dive locations.

Then any reef shore dive off any of the common sites in Bonaire would be
spectacular. By far, the best diving of the places above. St Thomas, imo,
had some pretty nice diving and I was pleasantly surprised, although I was
there only briefly (via a cruise). Diving in Aruba is just a watered down
version of diving in Bonaire. Aruba has many other things to offer and I'd
recommend spending your time and dollars elsewhere. If you haven't been
there, I'd recommend one of their "jeep adventure tours" which gets you to
most of the cool sites and you get to drive across the back side of the
island in a jeep, which is fun all by itself.

As another poster mentioned, you should try to take care of getting your
marine dive permit which is required (annually) to dive in Bonaire. I
think it's still $10.