The story
Not a place that overwhelms you. It is the easy one: shore entry, flat water, no schedule, no boat to catch. The awe here is freedom rather than spectacle.
Destinations · Bonaire · Shore diving
Bonaire
You have a truck, a pile of tanks and eighty-odd numbered stones along the roadside. Nobody is going to tell you when the day starts or when it ends.
Scored belowContentsBonaire · Bonaire
01Why Bonaire
Freedom, and what it does to a week
The core of it is control. You are not waiting on a boat, not queuing for a briefing, not being told the day is over at two. Sunrise dive, long breakfast, drive south for the afternoon, night dive off the pier if the energy holds. Very few destinations make that shape of day this simple.
It matters more for photography than people expect. You can go back to the same site in different light on three consecutive days. You can spend an hour on one frogfish. You can leave a subject and return at dusk. Repetition is how images get better, and Bonaire is built for repetition.
Check the tides and the nearshore current and then relax. For the most part the west coast just works. Klein Bonaire is worth scheduling a boat day or two for; the sites there are a genuine step up and they break the rhythm before shore diving gets samey.
The best diving on the island is in Washington Slagbaai National Park, and it costs you something to reach. It is further, the park roads have rough patches, and getting tanks to a site is real work. Fewer divers go, less human pressure lands there, and the reef shows it. Earn it once and you will plan the next trip around it.
02Scored
Scored · the place on six axes, the operator on its own
63
Place
68
Operator · Coral Paradise + Buddy Dive
C+
Overall
Bonaire is the easiest diving I have done, and easy is doing real work in that sentence. Shore entries, calm western coast, simple navigation, and a marine park that has been protected since 1979. You wake when you wake, dive when you like, and come back out after dark if there is anything left in you.
Scored on the same rubric as every other place here, and published whether or not the number flatters. Seven of the seventeen came in under seventy; the lowest is forty-five.
Underwater · the place
Macro7
Wide7
Terrain6
Diversity7
Fish biomass5
Health6
Total38/60 · 63%
The dot is Bonaire; the pale band is where the other sixteen places on this site fall on that axis. How the scoring works
03The story
04What it asks of you
Am I good enough for this?
The easiest diving on this site, and the risk is exactly that. Self-guided shore entries mean your gas plan, your navigation and your read of the surface conditions are yours alone. Nobody is counting you back onto a boat. Treat every entry as a dive you planned rather than one you wandered into.
LevelOpen WaterIntermediateAdvancedDemandingExpeditionOpen Water
CurrentnonemildmoderatestrongMild
Visibility51530 m20–30 mConsistently good
Water6°12°18°24°30 °C26–29 °C3 mm or a rash guard, never bare skin
Best months
Year-round
Outside hurricane season
Format
Shore diving
Truck and tanks
Getting there
Bonaire (BON)
Direct from several hubs
05When
February to June and September to October is what you are aiming for
February to June is when Bonaire is at its best. Tap any month for what the water is actually doing.
Visibility, sea state, what is in the water and how much of it you can count on. The season turns at February and again after June.
06The money
Flights, transfers and what to sort first
Book accommodation with a dive package and a truck. That combination is the whole product.
- DAILY RATE
- $150 to $300 a day, USD, at the operator
- The package
- Book accommodation with a dive package and a truck. That combination is the entire product.
- Marine park tag
- Mandatory, and it funds the protection that makes the reef work. Buy it and wear it.
- Shore entries
- Over rock, in surge, carrying tanks. Bring boots you trust.
- Night diving
- Unlimited shore access means you can night dive whenever. Most people underuse this.
- Eating
- Capriccio in Kralendijk is the Italian meal worth planning around. Closed Mondays and Tuesdays.
07What you see
The evidence
What Bonaire actually looked like
Twelve of the nineteen photographs from Bonaire, the prints among them marked.
Any frame on this page can be licensed for editorial use. Licensing terms.
What came out of the bag
16–35 mm the reef, and what swims over it
2 of 17 frames
ISO80–100
Shutter1/100–1/200
Aperturef5–f6.3
100 mm macro the small animals, at working distance
15 of 17 frames
ISO100–400
Shutter1/100–1/320
Aperturef3.2–f14
From the lens recorded in each frame. The settings are what was used here, not a recommendation. Lighting on the print frames: Sea & Sea Alpha strobes.
Repetition as a technique
The advantage here is time. Unlimited shore diving means you can return to a subject until you have it, which is rarer than it sounds.
Macro is strong along the shallow reef, and the double reef structure gives you more variety than the flat coastline suggests.
Wide-angle is decent without being a reason to travel.
Prints from Bonaire
Every frame here was made in Bonaire. Prices in US dollars. Printed on Canson Platine and shipped from British Columbia.
08The dives
Six entries off eighty roadside stones
Six I dived more than once and would plan a week around, named as the resort names them.
01
Salt Pier
The industrial wide-angle benchmark
Sunlight in shafts between commercial pillars, grunts schooling in the columns, tarpon working the edges. The best structure on the island and the reason to own a wide lens here.
02
Karpata
The best coral on the leeward coast
Sheer sloping hard coral in genuinely good condition, at the north end of the road. Further to drive, better when you get there.
03
Hilma Hooker
One targeted dive, not a week
A 240-foot cargo ship lying on her side between the double reefs. Deep-ish, photogenic, and worth exactly one planned wide-angle dive rather than repeated visits.
04
1000 Steps
The classic, and the exit
An easy dive with a walk that gets longer on the way out with a full rig. Go early, and decide before you get in whether you are carrying two strobes back up.
05
Klein Bonaire
The boat day worth scheduling
A step up from the shore sites and the thing that stops a week of drive-and-dive becoming repetitive. Book two days of it.
06
Washington Slagbaai
The best diving on the island, and the hardest to reach
North end of the park. Further, rough road in places, and real work getting tanks to the water. Fewer divers go, less pressure lands, and the reef shows it.
09Who with
Operators, and a trick worth knowing
Two shapes of trip here. Coral Paradise is apartment-style with a kitchen, cheap, and suits divers who want to run everything themselves. Buddy Dive is the full drive-and-dive resort: unlimited shore diving, tanks on tap, breakfast, boats to Klein Bonaire. Worth knowing before you book: some apartment operators have arrangements with the resorts that let you use the pool and take breakfast there. We stayed at Coral Paradise precisely because it was inexpensive, and still had the run of somewhere smarter. Ask the question before you pay for the smarter one.
Operator · scored 2009, 2010
Coral Paradise + Buddy Dive
68%
Price band
$$
$150 to $300 a day, USD
Format
Shore diving
Dived
2009, 2010
Scored on the last visit
Two different trips. Coral Paradise is apartment-style with a kitchen: cheap, quiet, and suited to divers who want to run the week themselves. Buddy Dive is the full drive-and-dive resort: unlimited shore diving, tanks on tap, breakfast, boats out to Klein Bonaire. Worth asking before you book the second one: some apartment operators have arrangements with the resorts that give you pool access and breakfast. We stayed at Coral Paradise because it was inexpensive and still had the run of somewhere smarter. Either way the truck and the tanks are the actual product. A week of unlimited shore diving here costs less than three days at the top of this library, and you choose every entry yourself.
Three things nobody tells you. You'll need a rental car — most dive operators offer dive-and-drive packages, and there are stations around the island to swap or refill tanks, so you're not always driving back to base. Bonaire runs hot, and most of the shore sites have almost no shade. Bring water for your camera gear as well as yourself — there's no rinse infrastructure at the shore sites themselves, only at some of the dive centres. Klein Island is some of the best diving here and boat-only — plan an actual day of boat diving for it rather than folding it into a shore-diving itinerary.
10Before you go
The questions that decide whether the trip works
Asked in the order they actually matter, answered with specifics.
01
Do I need a truck?
Yes, and it is the whole product. Without one the island shrinks to whatever is walkable from your accommodation. With one you have eighty-odd marked entries and complete control of your day.
02
Is it really all shore diving?
Mostly, and that is the appeal. Klein Bonaire is worth scheduling a boat day or two for, and it breaks the rhythm before shore diving gets samey.
03
Where is the best diving?
Washington Slagbaai National Park, at the north end. It is further, the park roads are rough in places and getting tanks to a site is real work. Fewer divers go, and the reef shows it.
04
Which accommodation?
Coral Paradise for apartment-style independence, Buddy Dive for the full drive-and-dive resort.
Worth asking before you book. Some apartment operators have arrangements with the resorts that give you pool access and breakfast. We stayed cheaply and still had the run of somewhere smarter.
05
When should I go?
Any time. Bonaire sits south of the hurricane belt and the diving is dependable year round, which is a large part of why people return.
And who should cheerfully book elsewhere
The right-hand column is the useful one. Bonaire asks something specific of you, and going for the wrong reason is an expensive way to find that out.
Book it if
- You want to run your own week. Rent the truck, load the tanks, pick the site, go. Nobody else's timetable touches you.
- You are building skills. Repetition without pressure is how buoyancy and composition actually improve, and this is the cheapest place on the site to get a lot of it.
- You want value. Bonaire sits with Murex Bangka and northeast Bali as the best value in this library: good diving, no frills, and a fraction of what the top end costs.
- You will drive to Washington Slagbaai. That is where the reward is.
Book elsewhere if
- You want spectacle. There are no walls of trevally here and no oceanic mantas. It is a healthy Caribbean reef doing what a healthy Caribbean reef does.
- You want to be looked after. Self-guided shore diving means your gas plan, your entry, your exit and your call on the surface conditions. The ease of it is exactly what makes people casual.
- You do not want to drive. Without a truck the island shrinks to whatever is walkable from your accommodation, and that is not the trip.
11If not Bonaire
12The trip
Would you dive Bonaire?
Put your hand up and I will tell you when a trip is planned
There is no trip here yet. Where they go next is decided by who puts their hand up, so this counts as a vote for Bonaire — and it also gets you each new guide as it is finished. Four or five emails a year.
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