Lionfish and Tiger Groupers and bare feet…Oh My!
Thursday, November 03, 2011



At the end of August, six NATCAvists ventured to the Southern Caribbean island of Bonaire, in what will hopefully become an annual event.  Ham Ghaffari, Garth Koleszar, Steve Wallace, Mark Nullman, Leanne Martin and Gini Briggs enjoyed a week of scuba diving, sun worshiping and camaraderie on the tiny island, known for being the best shore diving location in the world.

Bonaire, a municipality of Holland, lies 30 miles from Curacao, 50 miles north of Venezuela, 86 miles east of Aruba, and well outside of the Caribbean hurricane belt.  The island is 24 miles long by seven miles wide (112 square miles) with a population of only 14,000 and has no traffic lights.  While Dutch is the official language of the island, virtually all residents also speak English, Spanish and Papiamentu, the local Creole language.

The NATCA group stayed at Hotel Roomer, a small boutique-style hotel with clean comfortable rooms, a beautiful pool and bar area, and great local-style food.  We enjoyed wonderful shore dives along the west side of the island and spent one day aboard a chartered boat diving to rarely explored dive sites within Washington-Slaagbai national marine park.  

This was the first gathering of the NATCA Underwater dive club and welcomes any NATCA member or supporter interested in scuba diving, whether certified or not.  The group will be returning to Bonaire August 18-25, 2012.  Those interested in participating in dive trips and other activities can contact Gini Briggs gbriggs@natca.net to be included in the mail list and added to the Facebook group page.