It was my first trip to Bonaire and it was wonderful.

Flew out of Atlanta, GA Air Jamacia transfer in Montego Bay- nice big plane easy transfer didn't have to get luggage. Plane less than half full both there and back.

Stayed at Buddy Dive Resort requested an ocean view condo was quite rustic and run down VERY DISAPPOINTED! looked nothing like the brochure so called front desk they moved us to remodeled condo (MUCH NICER) staff was very nice and eager to please. Would stay there again.

Hubby had a little ear problems so only did 6 dives but they were awesome. Did Buddy reef a few times so much to see. did night dive at buddy reef. Convenient entry and access to dive tanks/equipment. Drive thru air station incredible. Did 1,000 steps nice dive (my favorite) felt like 1,000 steps on the way up. Loved the layed back diving options. did all shore dives.

Explored island one day great rocky coast with crashing waves. Salt mines - pink water - huges mountains of salt a sight to see. Flamingos donkeys goats all sorts of exotic birds. Mountains and cliffs an array of coral shapes and landscape. breath taking views. Even went to Sorbon beach (yeah, when in rome...) it was a unique experience and they have a pristine piece of beach!

Food - went to the grocery store and didn't recognize alot of the products. Hubby said Pepsi nasty but the diet tasted the same. Ate at Chibi Chibi (spelling) at the Divi Flamingo and the atmostphere was incredible...loved the blackened wahoo. Best place we ate was Doc of the Bay right at Buddy's Resort. GREAT food, good prices , good service!! Pasta great even sandwiches were special. Got subway a couple days for the road it was good.

Island was relaxed No traffic lights, no stop signs, no one in a real hurray. It was nice. When we got back to Atlanta and saw the business men & women with cell phones and pagers and the tense scrambling of all the stressed out folk we wondered why we returned.

Diverse people from all over. speaking lots of languages but everyone seems accepted. One night a family was hitchhiking and we picked them up the guy was from Chek the girl from California we tried to guess his nationality and they immediately recognized us as HICKS (South Carolina) amazing!

Thanks for all the tips and advise prior to my visit. I am pretty depressed at this point but ya'll told me I would be!

My only regret is that I didn't know where the web cams were and didn't get to pose HAHA

Sincerely,
Janet

Great trip report and glad that you had a great time! So when is your next trip?

We were in Bonaire 1/12-1/20. We stay at Divi Flamingo because we are Divi timeshare owners. Over the last 4 years, it has been interesting to watch the progress of the renovations at the resort. They're definitely steadily improving. We are snorkellers, not divers, so we spent a lot of time snorkelling right off of the beach. Lots of fish around the stone pier, plus a few spotted eels, a barracuda, even a couple of dolphins. We went out on the Woodwind several times with Renee, including the Wednesday all-day barbecue on Klein, which we look forward to every year. It's a blast. On our first day out with Renee, we had been in the water only about 2 minutes before we saw a Hawksbill turtle!!
She also took us to a spot near Green Submarine where she had spotted a seahorse earlier in the week; she eventually tracked him down, and we got a couple of good pictures. We also saw about 20 spotted eels in the same area.
We usually spend a week in Aruba before going on to Bonaire, and we had a terrible time with our connections this year beceause of ALM going bankrupt. We had been assured (by American AL)before we left that our connecting tickets would be honored by the airline taking over ALM's routes, but we had to buy new tickets at the airport and are now awaiting refunds. No big deal, and the travel agent assures us that everything will have settled down by our trip next year. We love Bonaire and the whole relaxed atmosphere. We ate at the Chibi Chibi at Divi, Den Leman, and the Blue Moon. We wanted to try Kon Tiki, but we were never there in time for lunch and didn't want to drive that far for dinner. We had no trouble with mosquitos or noseeums this year, I think the breeze was keeping them away most of the time. The only snag (other than the tickets) was having to have our luggage hand-searched at the airport on our way home. The zipper had broken on our big suitcase somewhere between Miami and Aruba, and we had used good ol' duct tape to keep it shut. Of course, we had to untape and then retape, but it wasn't really a problem. The people in line behind us were attempting to take home softball chunks of coral, and they were given a stern talking-to. Oh, and we had to put our shoes through the X-ray machine!! Otherwise, a wonderful trip, as usual, and we have a great underwater video that Janice Huckaby (JanArt) took of us on one of our snorkel trips. We'll take it out periodically to remind ourselves of what a great time we had.