Spent last week (May 12-19) in Bonaire with my wife. This was my first trip to Bonaire, but my wife's third.
Took the Delta flight even though it was a lot more expensive and had to fly through Atlanta rather than fly direct, as we didn't want to take the risk of luggage issues and flight delays on the Insel flight. Travel was without a hitch.
We stayed at Coral Paradise. My wife had stayed at Captain Don's on her two previous trips, but the good reviews and smaller/quieter aspect of the resort convinced us to give CPR a shot. The reviews were true!
Coral Paradise arranges for a cab to pick you up at the airport, and your car is waiting at the resort. We got upgraded to an SUV, which initially we had concerns about (since loading up and gearing up with the truck would be easier...and we couldn't have a big tub of water to soak the camera) but after a couple dives and bringing bottles full of water to runse the camera we had a system down. The SUV had much larger tires than the rental trucks, so I presume that smoothed out the bumps on the road as well.
The room was very clean, and had everything we needed in the kitchen to cook nearly all of our meals. The only meals we ate out were at the "Creature Feature" at Buddy Dive's pool bar, a pizza at Rum Runners, and then dinner Friday night at Cappricio. We had the end unit on the first floor, so hauling gear was a very short walk from the car. We were also able to gear up on the patio for a short walk to our night dives on La Machaca and a day dive on the Cliff. Kenny and Margaret are great, truly interested in their guests, but not imposing. We will be going back and also referring any of our friends there.
We chose to use Buddy Dive due to the free Nitrox upgrade and drive through tank station. Did the briefing with them and our first dive on their house reef. That all went very smoothly and they have a really nice dock setup. Also went to the "Creature Feature" photo/video presentation and it was really well done, and we learned some new things. The drive through tank setup worked pretty good. One time there were only around 6 tanks left and another time only 3. We had to ask the attendant for another tank, and he was actually not helpful at all. He walked in the fill station area and moved the fill whips around but did not offer us a full tank or even mention that we could take one. He simply walked away and didn't say anything. We finally said to ourselves "screw it" and went into the fill area and grabbed a tank with a cap on it. It was full and we were on our way. The resort seemed to have pretty low occupancy so I wonder what the tank availability is like when it is the busy season....do people frequently have to wait for tanks to come in...or do they bring out more tanks from somewhere? All-in-all the experience at Buddy dive was positive and since we'll likely return in the low season we would use them again. We did not do any boat dives so we can't comment on that.
The diving was fantastic. We did 19 dives in 5 days, taking Friday off to go to the national park and off-gas, as well as let our gear dry fully. Our first dive after the check-out was the salt pier, and it was really cool. I did find out that there was some surge and thus had to track down some sea-sick meds (buddy dive shop.) The wind was whipping when we got there, but on monday after our first dive we drove down to Red Slave anyway. Some smallish (1-2') waves breaking on the south end of the site, but we figured we would try to dive it anyway. Surprisingly almost zero current so it was a very pleasant dive. Our favorite dives during the week were a combo of Ol' Blue and Karpata. We repeated that dive combo on thursday. We found it very interesting how much Bari reef contrasts with Front Porch. While Front porch seemed really barren, my wife had her macro lens on and we were able to find a bunch of critters to take pics of. Also, after hearing all week how there haven't been many frogfish sightings for several months (or the sales pitch of "come on our boat to see a frogfish") I stumbled across one on our second to last dive....while looking for nudis! It was a little yellow guy, maybe the size of a ping pong ball.
Food shopping at Van Den Tweel was a lot of fun, food prices were a lot more comparable than I expected (except for ice cream and soda!)
Looking forward to return again...next time we have to stay longer!
Took the Delta flight even though it was a lot more expensive and had to fly through Atlanta rather than fly direct, as we didn't want to take the risk of luggage issues and flight delays on the Insel flight. Travel was without a hitch.
We stayed at Coral Paradise. My wife had stayed at Captain Don's on her two previous trips, but the good reviews and smaller/quieter aspect of the resort convinced us to give CPR a shot. The reviews were true!
Coral Paradise arranges for a cab to pick you up at the airport, and your car is waiting at the resort. We got upgraded to an SUV, which initially we had concerns about (since loading up and gearing up with the truck would be easier...and we couldn't have a big tub of water to soak the camera) but after a couple dives and bringing bottles full of water to runse the camera we had a system down. The SUV had much larger tires than the rental trucks, so I presume that smoothed out the bumps on the road as well.
The room was very clean, and had everything we needed in the kitchen to cook nearly all of our meals. The only meals we ate out were at the "Creature Feature" at Buddy Dive's pool bar, a pizza at Rum Runners, and then dinner Friday night at Cappricio. We had the end unit on the first floor, so hauling gear was a very short walk from the car. We were also able to gear up on the patio for a short walk to our night dives on La Machaca and a day dive on the Cliff. Kenny and Margaret are great, truly interested in their guests, but not imposing. We will be going back and also referring any of our friends there.
We chose to use Buddy Dive due to the free Nitrox upgrade and drive through tank station. Did the briefing with them and our first dive on their house reef. That all went very smoothly and they have a really nice dock setup. Also went to the "Creature Feature" photo/video presentation and it was really well done, and we learned some new things. The drive through tank setup worked pretty good. One time there were only around 6 tanks left and another time only 3. We had to ask the attendant for another tank, and he was actually not helpful at all. He walked in the fill station area and moved the fill whips around but did not offer us a full tank or even mention that we could take one. He simply walked away and didn't say anything. We finally said to ourselves "screw it" and went into the fill area and grabbed a tank with a cap on it. It was full and we were on our way. The resort seemed to have pretty low occupancy so I wonder what the tank availability is like when it is the busy season....do people frequently have to wait for tanks to come in...or do they bring out more tanks from somewhere? All-in-all the experience at Buddy dive was positive and since we'll likely return in the low season we would use them again. We did not do any boat dives so we can't comment on that.
The diving was fantastic. We did 19 dives in 5 days, taking Friday off to go to the national park and off-gas, as well as let our gear dry fully. Our first dive after the check-out was the salt pier, and it was really cool. I did find out that there was some surge and thus had to track down some sea-sick meds (buddy dive shop.) The wind was whipping when we got there, but on monday after our first dive we drove down to Red Slave anyway. Some smallish (1-2') waves breaking on the south end of the site, but we figured we would try to dive it anyway. Surprisingly almost zero current so it was a very pleasant dive. Our favorite dives during the week were a combo of Ol' Blue and Karpata. We repeated that dive combo on thursday. We found it very interesting how much Bari reef contrasts with Front Porch. While Front porch seemed really barren, my wife had her macro lens on and we were able to find a bunch of critters to take pics of. Also, after hearing all week how there haven't been many frogfish sightings for several months (or the sales pitch of "come on our boat to see a frogfish") I stumbled across one on our second to last dive....while looking for nudis! It was a little yellow guy, maybe the size of a ping pong ball.
Food shopping at Van Den Tweel was a lot of fun, food prices were a lot more comparable than I expected (except for ice cream and soda!)
Looking forward to return again...next time we have to stay longer!
