Travel coordination:
We spent a relaxing week in August 2013 at Captain Don’s, as part of a group package for our dive club. This was our second trip to the resort (our first was in 2008). We arrived in Bonaire in the late afternoon, and were greeted at the airport by the resort staff, who helped us with our luggage and shuttled us quickly to the resort. Our arrival formalities were simple: we presented our vouchers at the resort lobby and then headed to the bar, where we enjoyed the view and a complementary welcome drink (rum punch, of course).
At departure, we brought our bags back to the lobby, and were taken by a shuttle bus back to the airport. It would have been a bit easier if the resort had some luggage carts available to help bring our bags from our room to the resort lobby, but everything was otherwise efficient, and very pleasant.
Accommodations:
We stayed in the newer Oceanfront Junior Suites, which I believe opened in 2012. Our rooms were perfectly located, a few steps away from the dive center/lockers and dive piers, making it very quick and easy to go diving anytime we wanted.
Some online reviews have been more negative, stating that the rooms and the grounds need updating, but we did not find this to be case. The rooms at Captain Don’s are not overly luxurious, but the rooms are comfortable, and correctly furnished/appointed for a dive resort. Our rooms were spacious, clean, and very comfortable, with A/C, ceiling fan, a small kitchenette, and a large patio (with 2 chairs, drying rack, and table) overlooking the water. The resort faces west, so we enjoyed a gorgeous sunset view every evening, either from our patio, or at the resort bar, which overlooks the main dive pier.
Resort features
The resort is laid out along a short stretch of Bonaire’s west coast, on 20-foot bluffs facing towards the island of Klein Bonaire. There is a pool, a day spa (where I enjoyed a very good back massage on the last day), a photo studio (BonPhoto – where I took an excellent underwater photography course), the dive center, the bar, and the restaurant (Rum Runners), which sits in the center of the resort.
Restaurant/Bar/Food
Rum Runners is Captain Don’s outdoor restaurant that sits on the bluffs overlooking the sea, facing towards Klein Bonaire. They serve all three meals, and our package included a full breakfast buffet (which includes an omelet station). (Note: there are other full board packages available with all 3 meals at Captain Don’s). Overall, we were happy with Rum Runners, and ate virtually every meal there, because of the outdoor ambience, as well as the convenience, since it is relatively long walk to the restaurants at neighboring resorts. The atmosphere is casual (as you would expect at a dive resort) but the food was good, though not stellar, and the menu was limited, focusing heavily on seafood options (which makes sense given what is locally available). The service was good, very friendly and casual. The bar had great rum drinks (what else of course, it is the Caribbean!). It’s certainly worthwhile to try out restaurants at the neighboring resorts, or to take a short cab ride into town (which I have done on previous trips). The Buddy Dive resort next door has a new, more upscale restaurant next door called “Ingridients” (named after their chef, Ingrid), which was excellent.
Diving:
My husband and I both have a preference for live-aboard dive yachts, BUT, Captain Don’s is exceptionally good when it comes to shore-based dive resorts. Our package included 12 boat dives, plus unlimited shore diving (note: there are different package options available, including car rental to try out Bonaire many shore dive sites). The heart of the resort is the dive center, where they focus on making the diving “easy”. They have been organizing diving for years, and they know how to make it both flexible and efficient for divers.
We had our dive briefing on the first morning after our arrival, and began diving immediately thereafter. Captain Don’s runs a couple of boats (usually 2 at a time) off the larger main pier, offering 2 morning dives, and one afternoon dive. The dive center posts a sign up board for the boats on the outside the door. In addition, they have tanks available if you want to rent a car/pickup truck to try out the other shore diving sites around the island, and have tanks available around the clock if you want to dive on the “house reef” (La Machacca), right off the smaller 2nd dive pier (always a good and interesting dive site). There is an open-air locker room, right next to the dive piers, so you can leave your dive gear securely, if you don’t want to drag it back to your room at the end of the dive day. When you combine the boat dives with the shore diving, it is easily possible to do 3-4 dives a day (or even 5 dives a day), which is pretty good for an onshore resort.
Most of the dive sites are on Bonaire’s west side (as the east side has rougher seas), or around the small island of Klein Bonaire (directly facing Captain Don’s and Buddy Dive resorts). On this most recent trip, in August 2013, water temperatures were between 80-82 F, so after the first day I dispensed with the wetsuit and just dove with a rash guard and swimsuit, which was truly liberating. Bonaire is known for easy and pleasant diving, with beautiful reefs that have been well protected by the government, but without much in term of large pelagic species. That said, I ran into a pod of dolphins and photographed them underwater when I was diving off of Klein Bonaire on my previous dive trip (in 2008), but that was a freak occurrence. On this most recent trip, I was doing wide-angle photography and videography, and I found plenty of interesting seascapes, and larger noteworthy creatures to photograph, like eels, turtles, rays, and a colorful schools of all sorts of reef fish. Macro photographers will not be disappointed, as Bonaire’s reefs have plenty of nudibranchs, lobsters and sea horses among many other things. Among the dive sites of note that I tried out this were:
Hilma Hooker: This is a well-known wreck dive, in about 90 feet of water. The boat was a drug smuggling vessel that was abandoned in Bonaire’s main harbor, and “accidently” sunk while being towed away. The rudder is covered with barrel sponges and coral, and tarpon and eels are frequently seen cruising around.
Joanna’s Sunchi/Klein Bonaire: This was a long beautiful dive on a pretty reef, reportedly named for one of Captain Don’s girlfriends. I saw seahorses, cowfish and barracuda.
Bloodlet and Rappel: These were my favorite dive sites of this trip, they are adjacent to each other. They are both beautiful wall dives, covered with a verdant reef, and lots of sponges. I shot a lot of video and photos here, with squid, moray eels and porcupine fish.
The video link below should give you an idea:
https://vimeo.com/73991604
Additionally, Captain Don’s is host to the BonPhoto studio, which is owned and operated by a charming young couple, Zsuzsanna & Leo. Zsuzsanna is a talented photographer and photography/videography instructor, and I took an underwater photography class with her that helped me enormously. Leo, her husband, teaches free diving, and also leads nighttime scuba dives (as a separate company, called Flow), using fluorescent lights and visors over our masks. We went on a fluorescent night dive on Captain Don’s house reef (La Macchaca), and it was the best night dive we have ever done. The fluorescent lights lit up all sorts of creatures that you would not normally see on a night dive with regular lights, like tube worms, and fire worms, and we saw brittle stars hopping around the reef in a mad dash to spawn (it was incredible – who knew they could move so fast?). In addition, we had tarpon and barracuda trailing us to hunt smaller prey lit up by our lights. It was an amazing dive!
Staff:
The staff are polite, laid back, and very experienced. I had a dive computer die at the beginning of the trip, and they correctly diagnosed the problem (sensor failure – confirmed when I returned) and rented me a substitute computer on the spot for the week.
Tipping:
We tipped a standard 15% at the restaurant for our meals that we ate at Captain Don’s (except for breakfast, which was included in our package). As for the diving center staff, we gave a modest tip to one of the boat captains (Neto – he was fantastic), and then left the bulk of our tip (around 10%) in a recycled air tank where staff collect and share tips.
