Hi,
Since I’ve had so much fun preparing our honeymoon to Bonaire, partly because of reading this newsgroup, I’ve decided to post a trip-report myself. Here it goes….
Plane - We left for Bonaire from Amsterdam with Martinair. Plane was full both ways, service was good. No problems whatsoever with luggage.
Accomodation - We stayed at Captain Don’s Habitat. Lots of nice personnel around. We had booked a two-bedroom cottage (we like the freedom to cook for ourselves if we want to), what we got was a one-bedroom cottage. That was not a problem at all, because we had the same space, but the second bedroom was rebuilt into a really spacious bathroom. To keep away the mosquitos every window and the doors had a fly screen; there was also a can with spray available. The cottage had lots of space, a nice patio, and a small kitchen. Good pans were missing at first but after asking, we had them within a few hours. The cottage was cleaned everyday but not always very well (especially the toilet). The floors etc. were cleaned well, they even cleaned the used coffee cups! The cottage was situated in a really nice garden, lots of flowers and plants around. Captain Don’t habitat has a nice pool with dock. A pity that they didn’t have enough chairs and shades for everybody (to get one you had to lay your towel on it before breakfast – that was crazy!) but they said they were ordered. There’s a good restaurant (RumRunners) and a nice but expensive bar, which has live music a few days a week. The manager’s cocktail party on Mondays is great! We missed Dee Scarr’s slide show and regret that a lot. The slide show of captain don himself is fun, but try to sit in the front because he mumbles a lot and not being native english speakers he was sometimes hard for us to follow.
Weather – Since we were there in september, it was really, really hot. Almost no wind. We spent hours just sitting in the pool talking to the other guests. When we go back again it won’t be in September. We were very happy with our aircontioning!
Transportation – Because the island is not that big we decided not to rent a car. Kralendijk is too far from the Habitat to walk with groceries. At night, when the temperature drops down a bit, the walk from Habitat to Kralendijk is OK. We decided to rent bikes (the standard dutch ones, not mountain bikes, at Hot Shot, good service) which went really well. You should take the heat into account and just ride it leisurely. The bikes have massive tires so you don’t have flats. We were a bit sceptical at first but found the tires very comfortable. Others at the hotel used taxis, which cost 6 dollars for a single run, so just for doing groceries it was still a lot cheaper than renting a car for the whole two weeks. We rented a 4WD car to go into the park and a ‘normal’ car for a tour of the the southern part of the island at ABCarrental. Service was good, cars were great, girl at the desk at Habitat very unfriendly (and not only to us). By the way - I think everybody should go to Slagbaai park – it’s great!!! When you go there, include in your trip a visit to Boca Onima (outside the park) to look at the indian inscriptions and feed the lizards there! We did the long route in the park and found that really nice. Took a stop for lunch and some snorkeling at playa funchi – also very good!.
Food - We didn’t pre-book any food, since we rented a cottage and like to do a lot ourselves. However, when we got there we liked the breakfast-buffet at RumRunners so well we decided to take that every day (and it turned out to be cheaper than when we would have pre-booked). For the Dutch reading this: Pre-booking (through TravelTrend) of breakfast would have cost us 21 guilders per person per day. When you’re there, it is 9,50 dollars with every 7th day for free. Which, when I recalculate, amounts to about 17 guilders a day. So – book it when you get there! For lunch we usually made a sandwich or something at the cottage (after the breakfast buffet we did’t need that much food for lunch), when we went away for a day we got ourselves a sub at Subways. Groceries we obtained mostly at Cultimara in Kralendijk (Again for the dutch: Cultimara seemed to be from the the dutch Albert Heijn. It sells everything from albert heijn coffee and cheese to albert heijn rice and conimex and even has the allerhandes at the entrance!). When we didn’t prepare food ourselves, we mostly had dinner at RumRunners. We found the restaurant very good and the people there very friendly. With a nice view over the water – what more could you want! Especially the barbecue buffet and the caribbean buffet can be recommended. We also had dinner at the Green Parrot, which was also really good. Others at our hotel shopped around for food a little bit more and were really enthousiastic about de Tuin. A pity they were closed on our last night (we were going to go there with a group).
Diving/Snorkeling – We are both snorkelers. And loved it! The reef at the Habitat is very, very nice. You just jump in from the small hotel beach or pier and enjoy yourself. And of course, it’s always different. We saw morays, turtles, a seahorse (but that was diving and I’ll get to that later) just name it and it was there. We also went to 1000 steps, Windsock, play funchi and on Klein Bonaire to Lenora’s Reef and Sharon’s Serenity. Our favorites were the sites on Klein Bonaire. To get there, we just went with the diving boats. The rates for snorklers were fine, for divers I think the operation at Captain Don’s was very expensive. A lot of people of our hotel went to the Dive Inn, which is closer to Kralendijk. Even with taxi fares they were still a lot cheaper. Not only that, but they were also chased away by some unfriendly personnel at Captain Don’s dive operation. They were all very positive about the people and the atmosphere at the Dive Inn. Let me be more explicit: the manager of the dive operation at Captain Don’s is a great guy, the dive instructors are very friendly, too (but there were too few of them so some people had to be disappointed because not all promised courses were given). Just some of the other personnel, the dive masters, were very much in need of a course in customer handling (we only saw them smiling when they were at the managers rum punch party) and made a mess of the administrative work. We did a resort course, which means we got some theory and then went diving three times with an instructor to 40 feet. After following that course with good results you can go on the dive boats and dive under supervision of the divemaster. Doing the resort course itself was already a lot of fun. Diving with an instructor or a divemaster is really great, they see a lot more than you (for instance we would not have found that seahorse – no way!).
General – All in all the people on the island are very friendly. Of course, there’s always a few rotten apples but you’ll find them everywhere. We always felt very safe, (except for when the iguanes decided they liked my cheesecrackers very much!!!) have not seen or heard of any crime or theft when we were there. We just used common sense, and experienced no problems at all. And who says children need disney world to have a good vacation? There were quite a bit of kids at Captain Don’s and although there’s no specific child areas or activities there, we did not get the impression that they got bored. Children don’t need that much to enjoy themselves. We were bothered more by some of the other hotel guests than by an occasional (very rarely) crying child!
We had a great time in Bonaire. Mixed some snorkling with some diving with trips to the southern (pity that the windsurfshops are closed in september) and the northern part of the island with some great food, fabulous sunsets, some relaxation and had a terrific honeymoon! |
By Caroline Moermond on Thursday, September 23, 1999 - 11:28 am: 
