Need advise about Bonaire.

[MikeM_scuba]

Hi, I'm planning trip to Bonaire with my wife and daughter.
I'm the only diver in the family, my daughter loves snorkel but no diving yet - she is six.
I need to find a nice resort in Bonaire, not just for divers. Place where I could leave my family while diving. Huge plus would place by the beech with places to snorkel.
Also, please tell from your experience about food over there. How are local restaurants? What are the prices? Is it easier to get food package from the hotel or better to go get something to eat in the city.
How much is track rental? Do they have tracks with automatic transmission?
If you have recommendation about hotels / dive operators I would appreciate sharing it with me.
Thanks in advance.

 

[Natasha]

Check Out www.Plazaresortbonaire.com
They have a great program for your six year old.

Also, if the dates work for you, scubaboard is going there in September.http://www.scubaboard.com/showthread.php?t=135694

 

[ocellaris]

Check out the "Bonaire talk" site. you will find out all kinks of local information about Bonaire there.
We dove the last two years with Toucan, they are located at the Plaza and they are a great operation.
http://www.bonairetalk.com/cgi-local/bbs/discus.cgi?pg=topics

 

[scubaaaronh]

Hi, I'm planning trip to Bonaire with my wife and daughter.
I'm the only diver in the family, my daughter loves snorkel but no diving yet - she is six.
I need to find a nice resort in Bonaire, not just for divers. Place where I could leave my family while diving. Huge plus would place by the beech with places to snorkel.
Also, please tell from your experience about food over there. How are local restaurants? What are the prices? Is it easier to get food package from the hotel or better to go get something to eat in the city.
How much is track rental? Do they have tracks with automatic transmission?
If you have recommendation about hotels / dive operators I would appreciate sharing it with me.
Thanks in advance.

Plaza was great we did the drive and dive package. Plaza has a beach and a nice house reef, 18 palms.

You can get a rental truck from ABC car rental our truck was a stick http://www.abcarrental.com/

for a lot of info check out:
http://www.infobonaire.com

for food check out this thread:
http://www.scubaboard.com/showthread.php?t=128138&highlight=bonaire

I wouldn't do a food package except breakfast. There are to many good places to eat. Dinners at Plaza were OK but the other places were better. Dinners were btwn 15 to 25 us per person and about six to ten bucks for lunch.

Have a great time we now have 44 weeks left till we return

 

[herman]

There are several nice places to stay on Bonaire. My short list for on water resorts would be the Plaza, Buddy Dive (my preferred resort), Sand Dollar, Capt Dons and there are others. From what I understand the Plaza has a good beach but realize that there really are no big sandy beaches on Bonaire. Most resorts have some sandy area around the water but no big natural beach. The best beach I know of is at Eden Beach Resort but to be honest it's my least favorite dive site. Eden Beach is the one seen on the Bonaire web cams. The good news is you really can't go wrong on a resort or dive op, I don't know of a bad resort or dive op on the island. IMO there is not enought difference in the beach/water area of most places to make a decision on, esp if price is an important factor. Snorkeling off any of the resorts is really good and easy. Even places like Buddy which do not have a sandy beach offer steps into the water making entry and exit easy.
The dive shop at Sandollar Resort use to have a kids program that was always raved about (I don't have any personal knowledge).
Most of the places offer a package deal with room/truck/breakfast/diving. This is usually your best bet to get it all in one package, makes life a lot easier for you. I would NOT recommend getting any food with your plan other than breakfast, there are just too many really good places to eat on Bonaire to limit your self to one place. This is not to say the food at the resorts is bad, quite the contrary but a lot of the fun of travel is exploring, at least to me. As to the prices, I really don't see much difference in the cost of restaurant food on Bonaire and here in Raleigh. Lunches run us in the $6-12 range and supper anywhere from $10 up depending on your taste and number of drinks. We do a lot of PBJ's for lunch. The bread from the local market is fresh baked.

I would suspect some of the vehicle rental places have automatics but I have never ask, manual is fine with me.

 

[trigfunctions]

I'm sure you've read about it - be sure to do the Town Pier night dive. It is amazing!

We stayed at Captain Don's and it was nice, but there is no beach and not much to do for kids. You can snorkel and dive right off of their pier.

 

[DiveTyme]

I believe Buddy Dive has a kids program. Some activities for the non divers might be kayaking, geocaching (three on island), of course snorkeling and sight seeing. This year we got off the beaten path and saw some caves on the otherside (from hotels) of the island. Also you can take a water taxi to Klein for a few hours.
Tim

 

[chuckrt]

I was there in March and dove wth Buddy Dive Resort while staying at Lagoen Hills. I would recommend buddy's highly. They have nice pools and a beach area to sun on but not swim from. You can snorkel and dive from the docks ,there are two, and they have easy stair entry/exit. There is a childrens area and they do Bubble makers dives. I think you can get an automatic I'm stupid if needed but most are standards. Buddy has their own rentals on site. We ate out at different rest. each day and didn't have a bad meal. The prices are about what you will pay in a good rest. at home. Most everything on the Island is outside ,he rest.,and airport and checkin at hotels etc. We drove by many very nice places to stay but we were really impressed with the staff at Buddy's they were very pleasant and always helpful.

chuckrt

 

[D_O_H]

Some very good advice above - I don't think I disagree with any of it.

Just to echo a few things.

We stayed at the Plaza and really liked it. Nice rooms, nice grounds, good dive operation, friendly staff. My only complaint (if you could call it that) is that their food was pretty average. We got the breakfast only plan, and that's probably what I'd recommend. I thought the food at most of the other restaurants on the island was almost uniformly outstanding.

And be sure to spend a day taking your family to Washington Slagbaai park. Amazing scenery and good snorkeling to be found at some of the beaches toward the end of the loop.

Have a great time - I wish I was going back!