Having recently been diving off the shores of Bonaire during their worst rains in living memory, the mosquitoes have been out in force. They were a pain, especially when we were warned about the big mosquito with black and white legs, the Dengue mosquito. All sorts of myths abound about its biting habits, some say dawn & dusk, others all day long. Certainly if they are in your apartment they bite all night long as well.
We had hundreds of bites, didn’t matter when we went diving off the shore, they were there. 6 to 7pm was an absolute disaster and it is well known they like dark damp places. Damn it every wet suit I have ever seen is dark and damp and these fellers loved hiding in them. They bite through thin material so dinner at dusk is a disaster too. An electrified tennis racquet was the perfect killing machine but not really practical in the field, or on the shore.
The good news from a personal perspective, and I haven’t seen anything untoward in the medical press either, is that despite being bitten repeatedly during this freak winter I nor anyone else I know went down with Dengue fever. So if that’s what it’s like when its bad, let’s not worry about the flying bugs and concentrate on what’s in the water. After all that’s why we go to beautiful Bonaire. The diving is amazing and the coral pristine. No bleaching or pollution. But do be prepared to be bit, and take precautions , anti-itch and anti-bite as well as anti-everything else, and wait for the sunshine to dry up the breeding grounds and let divers do what they do best, Dive Bonaire.
We stayed at Coral Paradise Resort where they supply free electrified Tennis racquets , the good news is you don’t have to wait for an opponent to play ‘mosquito tennis’ they just sort of turn up !!
