I've usually paid about $650 for airfare to Bonaire. Each time I've looked for airfare to Cozumel,its been about the same. The trick is, there's only one flight to Bonaire a week and you have to fly through Houston. Otherwise you're going to spend a fortune and overnight in Florida or Puerto Rico, plus change flights on another island, Aruba or Curacao, I think.The first time we went, we didn't know this and I made this mistake. We stay in a house/condo so that we have a small kitchen which saves money because we prefer to eat in, since we don't go there to eat. So, we don't spend a bunch of money on food. We often eat lunch at Buddy Dive but eat breakfast and dinner at our place. Or, we pack a lunch to take with us diving and eat dinner out, before our night dive. We buy wine/beer at the grocery store so never spend much on alcohol,either.
Our average house cost has been $125 and includes truck, unlimited nitrox for two people. Everday, we would just load the truck and go dive.
however, we never chose to go boat diving or to take a guided shore dive. We are self sufficient, even on the more difficult dives in the on the farther ends of the island, so we have plenty of variety. We even enjoy night dives to more remote spots and dives up in the park by ourself, which apparently most people pay a guide or boat to do.
It doesn't get much cheaper than that!
Last time, my parents even stayed with us our second week so it ended up really cheap, although they don't dive. Still, they snorkeled, fished and had a wonderful time. No additional cost.
We typically average 4 dives a day but we have done as many as 5, as few as 3.
Haven't been to Roatan,yet. We love shore diving so we continue to return to Bonaire. However, I want to do cave training so we'll be doing some other trips soon.
We also enjoy Catalina and I'm trying to talk hubby into Puget Sound or British Columbia, since I loved learning to dive up in the Olympia area.
I do love diving Hawaii because of the shore diving as well but the last time there we noticed the reef life didn't seem very healthy or abundant.
Coz is great but we just don't enjoy being on somebody else's schedule to make the boat on time each day.
When I lived in Southern OK, it was a no-brainier. Flights from Dallas are very cheap to Coz and the packages were incredible. From Phoenix, not so much.