Diver’S Paradise If You’Re Looking For A Relaxing Getaway, This Is The Place - But Don’T Go For The Beaches, The Nightlife Or The Shopping

At a glance, the Caribbean island of Bonaire doesn’t seem like a tropical paradise. The main vegetation is cactus, growing in dense, inhospitable forests. Cactus is so common, in fact, and wood so scarce that Bonairean fences consist of woven lengths of living cactus.

Cinderblock is the construction material of choice, disguised by stucco and painted pastel pink, blue, yellow and peach.

Miles of sparkling beach? Nope. On the island’s wave-crashed windward side, sand beaches exist, but on the lee where it’s safe to swim, the few sandy pockets once available mostly washed away in a storm last December.

The most ubiquitous creatures are goats, which wander everywhere that the cactus fences allow and are fed — you guessed it — de-spined cactus. What do the people eat? Goat for starters, since there’s little agriculture.

Anywhere there’s not a goat, expect lizards. The creatures are so thick that the island’s narrow roads are sometimes dancing with them, becoming lizard obstacle courses. A driver’s lackadaisical swerve will be punished by a sound exactly like the snap of fresh celery.

The reptiles eat everything goats don’t. That helps explain why flower-filled gardens and glossy-leafed tropical fruit trees are not common.

The other reason Bonaire little resembles paradise is that this tiny, hilly island off the coast of Venezuela is dry, dry, dry. The island receives only 20 inches of rain per year, much of it during the fall rainy season, which explains the cactus.

It also begins to explain why Bonaire is, in fact, a unique sort of paradise: year-round temperatures average 82 degrees, but the heat feels dryer — lighter on the back of the neck than that of lusher islands.

More attractive than climate and certainly the cactus is Bonaire’s relative seclusion. Past visitors to the bustling Bahamas or cacophonous Cancun sometimes have trouble relaxing into the pace of an island just less than twice the size of Spokane, but with only 14,000 human inhabitants and 60,000 annual visitors. High-rise hotels? There are none. Discotheques? Sorry. Shopping? About an hour’s worth.

Many of Bonaire’s fans are those who like paradise small and undiscovered. But not the majority. What draws most of the island’s visitors are dreams: dreams of skating across the warm blue Caribbean like a skipped stone, wind clenched in their hands. Or dreams of slipping beneath its silvery surface, an hour of oxygen cinched to their backs.

For these dreamers, windsurfers and scuba divers and most especially those who wish to learn these sports, this island of cactus soup and goat stew is probably the best destination in the entire abracadabra-blue Caribbean.

Divers’ Paradise

Bonaire has hung its small but spreading tourist reputation almost completely on scuba diving. Even the license plates advertise the island as “Divers Paradise.” Expert divers are drawn in droves to the tiny island, the B in the ABC chain, along with Aruba and Curacao. The ABC islands, with Saba, St. Eustatius and St. Maartin, comprise the Dutch Caribbean.

Bonairean dive shops provide air-filled tanks 24 hours a day. They offer unlimited air packages so aficionados can dive, dive and dive. One shop, Buddy’s, provides drive-thru air service. Until recently, another offered swim-through tank swaps. Even at night, you can hear the ringing of air tanks being unloaded from trucks or see ghostly beams of light playing along the submerged pillars that support Town Pier.

Not even committed, expert divers run out of sites on Bonaire. The island’s west-facing lee side shelters nearly 60 top-notch dive sites. More cluster around tiny Klein Bonaire, an uninhabited islet just offshore.

But it’s the beginner diver who really ought to book a flight to Bonaire.

Why? Well, it’s not the well-preserved coral reef that encircles the island, protected as a national marine park since 1979. Most Caribbean islands boast intricate walls, domes, arches and forests, all of coral. And these days, many islands attempt to protect that resource. It’s also not the sea turtles, the clouds of bright wrasses, creole fish or the occasional 5-foot moray eel or eagle ray. It’s not even the warm, swimming-pool blue water, 82 degrees on average.

What makes Bonaire unique is the vast number of dives that can be made from shore instead of from a boat. These dives are in still water with little surf and few if any currents to contend with. Visibility can exceed 100 feet, which gives the new diver added confidence. Shore diving, as it’s called, not only provides a confidence-building first experience, it’s also cheaper than the boat diving typical to other Caribbean islands.

A typical Bonairean shore dive begins as you climb from your rental pickup next to a bright yellow marker rock with a painted-on name: 1000 Steps, Red Slave or Playa Funchi, perhaps. The water is warm, so maybe you pull on a wetsuit for thermal protection. Maybe not. You check your gear, then don it. You and your partner wade into the clear blue sea, careful not to step on the spiny urchins that look like giant black kitchen scrubbers from hell.

Chest-deep, you strap on swim fins, wrap your lips around your snorkel and swim easily on the surface for perhaps five minutes. You float easily in salt water, even with a tank and weight belt. But if you didn’t, you’d just inflate your BCD - your buoyancy control device, the scuba diver’s life jacket and reverse-ballast all in one - a bit more. You watch the bottom, sandy and sun-dappled, begin to fall away.

When you reach the boat mooring that marks the beginning of your dive, you see the top of the coral reef, usually 20 feet below you and sloping to about 130 feet. Boulder star coral bulges into giant mushroom heads. Pencil coral wafts long thin tendrils toward the surface. Even from here you can see the Dr. Seuss-like purple of stove-pipe sponges, the brick-orange mass of elephant ear sponges. A reef is made up of many different kinds of life and spangled with a bewildering assortment of fish and creatures, some so strange they’re hard to recognize as animals. You signal your partner. It’s time to head down for a closer look.

But on Bonaire, divers don’t have to go deep. The prettiest colors and most prolific sea life are found near that drop-off zone, so shallow depths are easy to keep to. That’s another reason beginner divers can be at ease so quickly on Bonaire. At sea level, 60 miles of air press upon a person. We’re used to that. But 33 feet underwater, that pressure has doubled: the equivalent of 120 miles of air now presses down, compressing air spaces and even air itself. That’s why your ears ached when you were a kid diving for the swimming pool drain. Every foot of depth adds to the physiological changes a diver undergoes, and can increase the risk of problems if a new diver makes mistakes. So even though recreational divers may descend to depths of 130 feet, and experts even deeper, shallow diving is safer.

Divers on Bonaire can find that the entire, short equatorial day evaporates between dives and the necessary resting times, called surface intervals, during which divers recover from excess nitrogen saturation accumulated at depth. But for those who want to try their hand at another new sport, the windward side of the island awaits.

Windsurfers’ Paradise

The kick-back, hang-loose resort called Jibe City perches in the sand at the edge of baby-blue Lac Bay. Jibe City provides sailboards and lessons for beginners and experts, although what the bay is tailor-made for is the beginner.

Unlike many windsurfing areas, the wind at Lac Bay always blows onshore - you can’t get blown out to sea. Second, a coral reef blocks the entrance to the 3-mile long, 1.5-mile wide bay. Outside the bay, waves roll in with the force of the open sea behind them. Inside, the water is waist-deep, sand-bottomed and calm. Fall off? Just step back on board, hoist the crayon-striped sail, and let the wind skim you across the bay.

Even during the rainy season, from October through January, days are mostly sunny. Water temperatures stay above 80 degrees, so you’re unlikely to get cold. When you’re finished, step into the open-air bar or relax on the sand beach in a slatted wooden lounge chair.

Board sails start at $20 per hour and are available in a variety of sizes to match your strength and skill.

According to Scuba Schools International, scuba diving is a sport best approached with care by those who smoke, are over 45, are in poor physical condition, have had recent surgery, take medication or have had heart, respiratory or other medical problems. Windsurfing, on the other hand, is for anyone who likes water and doesn’t mind a little soreness in the shoulders the next day.

About Paradise

During late fall and early winter, while we dream of warm sun and bright sand, hurricanes crash through the real-life Caribbean. But not on Bonaire: It’s below the hurricane belt. The last tropical storm to approach the island, Lenny, rolled huge waves into the lee shore for a week in late 1999, but a half mile inland, it was impossible to tell Lenny existed.

On the islands of the Dutch Caribbean, Dutch is the official language, but English is commonly understood. Native Bonaireans, mostly descendants of African slave labor brought to the island hundreds of years ago, are almost all at least trilingual, since they also speak a Creole language called Papiamentu, which sounds familiar if you know any Spanish. Papiamentu draws heavily on Spanish, but borrows words, with relaxed, phonetic spellings, from Dutch, English, Portuguese, German, African languages, and anything else it needs. For example, air conditioning, a fairly recent luxury on the island, birthed this Papiamentu word: erco, pronounced AIR-co.

Excluding Aruba, the Dutch Caribbean comprises a country called the Netherlands Antilles. The currency is the Antillean guilder. However, American dollars are accepted almost everywhere, lately at a rate of about $1.75 NA guilders to $1 U.S.

This does not make Bonaire a cheap destination, though. Accommodations in particular are expensive and startlingly simple for the price tag. An $80 per-night room will have air conditioning, but perhaps not hot water. Bonairean architecture does include this charming perk, however: Rooms often have semi-private, postage-stamp gardens of cactus and palms outside the front or back door.

Three activities to try

Slide shows: Nightlife doesn’t exactly rage on quiet little Bonaire. One activity that replaces party action is the slide show. Shows are sponsored by Sea Turtle Conservation Bonaire, Capt. Don’s Habitat, Dee Scarr’s Touch the Sea and Photo Tours Dive School. Learn about the reefs, their inhabitants and meet colorful characters from Bonaire’s diving history.

Snorkel: Because the reefs are an easy swim from shore and visibility is often so good, snorkelers can enjoy many of the sites divers love.

Before tropical storm Lenny sent waves crashing onto the usually protected leeward side in late 1999, staghorn and elkhorn corals abounded in shallow water. Now most of the coral exists at 15 feet or deeper, but many beautiful formations are still visible from the surface.

Feed the lizards: They’re everywhere, from big, slow-moving iguanas on down. And particularly in the dry season, they crave your apple core or banana peel. A favorite tourist photo, believe it or not, is of a person playing mouth-to-mouth tug-of-war with a bit of fruit and a determined lizard.

Four creatures to seek

Flamingo: Bonaire is one of only four places where flamingo colonies breed. The gray-feathered young are born in late winter.

The gawkish, pink adults can be seen in several locations around Bonaire, including ponds just south of Kralendijk, the capital. Near the southern tip of the island, they congregate by the thousands.

Frog fish: He looks like a lump of coral, perhaps 4 inches across. Even his eyes mirror the color of whatever he perches upon. He has mastered absolute immobility. Before his face he dangles a nearly invisible “fishing pole” that attracts his prey. You’re unlikely to find this weird fish without help from a local expert.

Seahorse: Another fish that’s hard to see without a guide, seahorses exist in relative plenty around Bonaire. They also use color, immobility and the improbable shape of their sinuous bodies to disappear among clumps of soft coral.

Lora: Found only on Bonaire, this yellow-headed parrot is endangered. Only about 300 wild parrots remain, although it’s thought that more than 1,000 exist in cages, raised in captivity from stolen - and very lucrative - eggs.

Two stories to fall in love with

Biologists say that every evening, flocks of flamingos, sometimes a few, sometimes dozens, lift into a sky as pink as they and fly 50 miles to Venezuela to feed in life-rich mainland waters. In a day or two or three, they again rise into the sky, fly like winged arrows across the Caribbean Sea, returning to their young and their island home.

Like flamingos, loras mate for life. In fact, it’s said that if a lora’s mate is killed, the bird will sicken and die. That is why you will never see a lora alone, but rather glimpse a lightning flash of green and yellow, followed moments later by another.

One problem

The beers are tiny (8 ounces) and expensive ($1.75 each).

This sidebar appeared with the story:

IF YOU GO

Bonaire

Getting there: A search on expedia.com turned up a hopscotch of flights from Seattle to Chicago to Miami, starting on United Airlines and skipping to American Airlines before finishing with Antillean Airlines, for a roundtrip, per-ticket cost starting at around $1,100. The quickest flight plan takes 11 hours.

Diving: Plan to take a $75 resort diving course on the island. Resort courses involve an hour or two of instruction followed by a shallow, closely supervised dive. Reservations can often be made a few hours in advance.

Or get certified as an open-water diver. This costs around $300 on Bonaire and takes four to five days, including four practice dives, classroom time, book work and tests. Advance reservations are recommended.

Or get certified here at home: The cost ranges from $169 to $225. Your winter open-water dives will be in 45-degree water in the Puget Sound. In summer, you’ll do those practice dives in Lake Pend Oreille or Lake Coeur d’Alene. Local shops that recommend this route name three reasons: it’s cheaper, it has less impact on your vacation, and “You’ll certify in the worst conditions possible,” said Scuba Center of Spokane’s Jared Beerbohm. “When you jump into warm water after that, it’s pretty much jumping into a pool of fish. It’s easy by comparison.”

Or get the boring part out of the way at home and complete the four open-water dives on Bonaire. “A lot of divers don’t have the slightest inclination to dive the cooler waters available here,” said Divers West owner Larry Knudsen of Coeur d’Alene. “We do referrals all the time to Hawaii, Fiji, Florida, Mexico, you name it.” Four practice dives cost around $175 on Bonaire. The three major dive instruction agencies, PADI, NAUI and SSI, all allow this type of certification, called an open-water referral. Local dive shops charge at least $165 for the book work and classroom time. Some charge the same rate whether you do practice dives with them or in the Caribbean, so ask.

To try windsurfing, you need only sunscreen, cash (Jibe City’s credit card machine is often on the fritz) and your swimming suit. No reservations are necessary.

Dive shops - In Spokane: Atlantis Aquatics, 534-2144. Landlocked Divers, 534-7313. Scuba Center of Spokane, 326-4653. In Coeur d’Alene: Divers West, (208) 664-0751. Tom’s Diving Adventures, (208) 664-0852.

To learn more about Bonaire, try www.bonaire.org, tcbinfo@bonairelive.com, or call (800) BONAIRE. The Web site offers information on all manner of accommodations, from budget hotels to resort spas.