Bonaire

Bonaire is the Caribbean's diving capital — an island that has organized its entire identity around the protection of its extraordinary reef system. The Bonaire National Marine Park surrounds the entire island and its offshore nature reserve Klein Bonaire, protecting one of the healthiest reef systems in the Caribbean. Dive sites are marked with yellow painted stones along the entire coast — visitors can shore dive independently without a boat at over 60 sites, making it the most accessible world-class diving on earth.

The island is flat, dry and covered in cactus and salt flats — not the lush tropical Caribbean of popular imagination, but a landscape of spare, dramatic beauty. The pink flamingos that feed in the salt pans near the slave huts are among the most photographed images in the Dutch Caribbean. Washington Slagbaai National Park in the north preserves the island's wild interior.

Bonaire sits outside the hurricane belt, receives less than 500mm of rain annually and has warm, clear water year-round — making it the most reliably excellent diving destination in the Caribbean across all seasons. It attracts serious divers and underwater photographers from across the world who return again and again to the same sites.