| Winding down during the Holiday season? At Dive Friends Bonaire, we’ve done anything but that! Read about our latest and most exciting adventures of the past three months in this News Splash. In short, we will tell you all about boat diving from brand new boats and the opportunity to go freediving with a world champion, give you an update on the bustling activity at our newest Delfins Beach location, and introduce our newest staff members to you.
Bonaire is world famous for shore diving, but don’t forget that some of the island’s treasures can only be visited by boat. Our boat dives to Klein Bonaire and the north of Bonaire are an absolute must for guests, from the newly certified to the most experienced divers. We aim to give you the best boat diving experience possible. Thus, we are very happy to introduce you to two brand new boats that we started using early on in 2018. After a heated competition amongst staff members, who could send in names for the new boats, their long-awaited names were announced: Pascal and Dushi Diver! Pascal is named after our general manager, without whom Dive Friends Bonaire wouldn’t have been the social, friendly place it now is. And Dushi Diver… well, we can all relate to that! Both boats have room for ten divers and provide all the comfort and shade you want while you’re on your way to amazing dive sites. Naturally, the boat launch was a great opportunity for the staff to get together and celebrate.
Speaking of staff members – there are quite some new faces here at Dive Friends. Maria has traded bustling Turkey for Diver’s Paradise, whereas Iris hopped on a plane from the neighbouring island, Curacao. Pauline was already working on Bonaire as a divemaster, but is now happy to pursue her further diving adventures with us! Eva stuck around after finishing her training as a divemaster. And finally, we would like to give a very special welcome to our new General Manager Bart. We wish all our new staff a lot of fun and fulfilment while working for Dive Friends! Unfortunately, we’ve said goodbye to Daniel, Jesika, Paul and Jasper. We wish them all the best in their future career elsewhere.
If you’ve paid us a visit lately, there’s a good chance you’ve bumped into one of our hardworking divemaster trainees. Ann has recently become a divemaster: congratulations! Eddy and Christian are working hard to become one in the near future, and we have no doubts that they will do a great job.
Dive Friends always aims to give everyone the best diving experience, whatever your interest may be. We are therefore very excited to provide you with a new experience: freediving! Together with Deepsea Freediving, we are now offering PADI Freediver courses for all entry levels. These courses are led by Carlos Coste, who has been crowned World Record Freediver twelve times! Are you looking for a new way of diving? Or were you always reluctant to learn to dive because you don’t like the idea of a heavy scuba tank? This is the way to go for you! Learn to enjoy the peacefulness of the ocean guided by your own breath and experience a completely new world. In one of our upcoming blogs, Carlos himself will explain why freediving is so extraordinary and definitely worth trying!
Additionally, Deepsea Freediving offers the Mermaiding experience. Here, you can learn how to swim with a monotail and feel like a mermaid for a day… or for your entire life. This is also a great experience for your kids, as everyone from six years old can join!
Despite all these exciting developments, many of you might just love Bonaire for the simple fact that it is so easy to grab a tank and hop in the water! Since November, this has become even easier as the newest Dive Friends location opened at Delfins Beach. Three months after the festive opening, we can definitely say this location is a big success! Dive Friends @ Delfins Beach has already welcomed more than 250 divers, as well as a lot of cruise ship visitors and snorkelers. The shop offers some great items and that has not gone unnoticed. Simultaneously, the convenient drive-through is used extensively. Don’t miss out on this great place when you’re coming to Bonaire!
Finally, there has been some very recent excitement. On January 27th, we hosted our quarterly clean-up dive at Coco Beach. We want to thank the 116(!) divers that helped us clean Bari Reef. Naturally, we are also grateful to those who decided to stay on land to help us with a beach-cleanup or with counting the collected debris. We had a blast and look forward to cleaning another part of the reef on April 21st!
In the first weekend of February, our Dutch and Belgium Dive Friends could visit us at Duikvaker in the Netherlands! Our crew members Nienke and Veer had a blast and just loved chatting away about diving on our precious little Caribbean island. We hope that those of you who came to see us at the show are now just as excited about Bonaire as we are, and we can’t wait to blow some bubbles here with you!
COMING SOON: Rebreather try-out at Courtyard by Marriot, and a true photography center including retail, rental and courses. Stay tuned for more…
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