shrkdive
Registered
My family of 5 spent the week of Aug 9-16 on the island and had a fantastic vacation relaxing and diving every day. This was my fourth trip to Bonaire and I look forward to returning again soon.
Getting there..... we took the weekly United Airlines flight to/from Newark.
We rented a private house; eating only breakfast at the house. Lunches were mostly at Buddys after morning dives which became repetative after a few days as the lunch menu is limited.
Dinners
I made reservations before arriving on the island for most evenings. Chez Madelines, At Sea, Capt. Dons (late night pizza), Ingredients, Wils, and Sebastians.
The best dinner hands down was at Sebastians. We reserved weeks in advance the private table at the end of the pier in front of the restaurant. There is only one seating at this table each night so plan ahead if interested. The service and view was phenomenal in addition to the food. I had the lamb chops while my wife and kids had the pepper steak and various fish dinners all extremely well prepared. After sunset there were lights under the pier illuminating the fish including an eagle ray passing by during desert.
Chez Madelines was probably our 2nd favorite meal. In fact this restaurant had the best wine list for those interested. Most restaurants on the island have a fairly limited wine selection. Madeline was also a very gracious hostess.
Diving
Although we were staying in a private rental house we still used Buddys for unlimited air and 8 boat dives. Id have to say that something has changed since our previous 3 trips to Buddys over the past 12 years. Many of the regular dive masters were gone. Most of them are new in the past 2 years. My biggest complaint is that their boats have become cattle cars. They pack 16 divers now on each boat with a single dive master when in the past they would have at least had 2 dive masters in the water. Secondly, I never had a tank all week over 3000psi. Most of our tanks were 2600-2900 psi. Many times were would find tanks with less than 1500psi or bad O-rings. This forced us to carry extra tanks with us when we went shore diving just to make sure we had enough good tanks. Next trip I will try another dive op.
Our two youngest kids both got their open water certs this trip and I felt the instruction was very good though.
Best dives of the week were Oil Slick (shore dive), Bachelor Beach (shore dive) and Small Wall (boat dive). On this trip we saw so lots of eels, turtles, squid, rays and other unique critters. While we did see lots of larger lion fish we did not see any more this time than we did two years ago seems the population is somewhat under control.
Getting there..... we took the weekly United Airlines flight to/from Newark.
We rented a private house; eating only breakfast at the house. Lunches were mostly at Buddys after morning dives which became repetative after a few days as the lunch menu is limited.
Dinners
I made reservations before arriving on the island for most evenings. Chez Madelines, At Sea, Capt. Dons (late night pizza), Ingredients, Wils, and Sebastians.
The best dinner hands down was at Sebastians. We reserved weeks in advance the private table at the end of the pier in front of the restaurant. There is only one seating at this table each night so plan ahead if interested. The service and view was phenomenal in addition to the food. I had the lamb chops while my wife and kids had the pepper steak and various fish dinners all extremely well prepared. After sunset there were lights under the pier illuminating the fish including an eagle ray passing by during desert.
Chez Madelines was probably our 2nd favorite meal. In fact this restaurant had the best wine list for those interested. Most restaurants on the island have a fairly limited wine selection. Madeline was also a very gracious hostess.
Diving
Although we were staying in a private rental house we still used Buddys for unlimited air and 8 boat dives. Id have to say that something has changed since our previous 3 trips to Buddys over the past 12 years. Many of the regular dive masters were gone. Most of them are new in the past 2 years. My biggest complaint is that their boats have become cattle cars. They pack 16 divers now on each boat with a single dive master when in the past they would have at least had 2 dive masters in the water. Secondly, I never had a tank all week over 3000psi. Most of our tanks were 2600-2900 psi. Many times were would find tanks with less than 1500psi or bad O-rings. This forced us to carry extra tanks with us when we went shore diving just to make sure we had enough good tanks. Next trip I will try another dive op.
Our two youngest kids both got their open water certs this trip and I felt the instruction was very good though.
Best dives of the week were Oil Slick (shore dive), Bachelor Beach (shore dive) and Small Wall (boat dive). On this trip we saw so lots of eels, turtles, squid, rays and other unique critters. While we did see lots of larger lion fish we did not see any more this time than we did two years ago seems the population is somewhat under control.