I have been so busy since getting home, I haven't posted anything yet, shame on me! We had another fantastic trip May 23-31. It gets better every time! We stayed at Harbour Village again and it was very peaceful, quiet and relaxing. I guess all the Dutch holidays have passed as there were only a few children and all were well behaved the entire time. I heard that April was pretty busy/noisey.
The entire staff at HV was extremely friendly and would take the extra time/effort to help everyone. It seems like they "up'd" their game in regards to service to make sure all the guests have a great stay.
At the airport, we noticed the expansion of the parking lot, the relocation of the rental cars and the new apts/condos across the street.

We hit the Warehouse our first day to pick up food for breakfast and lunches (cereal, turkey, bread, tuna, cheese, beverages, etc). We found everything we needed in 1 stop, the only thing we could not find was bananas.

This year we found the diving and snorkeling better than last year at the same time. So many more schools of fish and much more sealife in general. Also the coral over by Klein Bonaire is just pristine. My wife only snorkels and she was amazed at all the coral she was able to see from the surface over at Klein Bonaire. I must admit, the photos she took snorkeling were pretty incredible- mass quantities of sealife, stuff only divers normally would see far below the surface. IMO, the visibility was excellent.

Restaurants- One of our favorites continues to be Richards- we never had a bad meal in 3 years, great views and reasonable prices. Service is always good too. Always fresh fish, fresh veggies and awesome mango margaritas.
We tried the new and improved It Rains Fishes and it was excellent- if we had more days on Bonaire, we would have returned. The refurbished restaurant is beautiful, the service was good and the food was excellent!

On the weekend we went to Bobbejan's. When we got there around 6PM, about 6 other people were already there to place take out orders. The food was delicious! Next year we will buy extra and have it for lunch for a few days, mmm mmm good!

One night we went to La Luna for dinner and it was very good. The entire meal was excellent from the crab bisque to the included salad to the fresh Dorado and vegetables. I would recommend La Luna.

Our last night we ate at La Balandra. The smoked marlin was very good as was the sesame crusted Ahi and mixed grill (chicken, shrimp and tenderloin). The service was good too. The price for dinner was much higher than anywhere else we ate though.

We tried Mona Lisa and while the main course was tasty, the fish soup was salty and the service was slow and we did not care for the atmosphere - there was way too much cigarette smoke inside. We would not return.

Highlights of some of my dives- I did some boat dives and some shore dives. The Great Adventures dive shop at Harbour Village worked out great for us- some days we did 3 dives other days 1 or 2 dives on the boat
Eighteen Palms- seahorse, tarpon, eel, angelfish
Bonaventure- huge lobster, turtle
Windsock- largest green moray I have ever seen, beautiful reef, swarming with sealife
Petries Pillar- Eagle Ray! 3 seahorses, frogfish
Bari Reef- octopus, frogfish, eels, squid, tarpon, Jacks, spotted trunkfish mating
Leonoras reef- 2 turtles, seahorses, porcupine fish,


There were a few more mosquitos this year but not too bad. The room at HV has "Nosquito" in the room, an electronic device with an UltraViolet bulb and a fan to lure in the skeeters, it worked well as the room stayed skeeter free.

Attached are some photos, I hope I resized them to be small enough.

Beautiful photos! Great report. Glad you had a great time...... but then again - it was Bonaire - so how could you not!

WOW! I read your report and was impressed...then scrolled down and WOW!!! BEAUTIFUL PICS!!!

AWESOME pictures!!! Thanks for sharing your report and photos with us!!! Love them..........

Great pictures :-) Your report and the pictures remind me just how much I love Bonaire !

Thanks for sharing Bob!

Thanks for the comments, here are a few more photos.

Nice report and pics! Thanks!

Bob, great report, and pics. how in the world did you get that black durgon to hold still to take that shot? they are one of my favorite fish, but i can never get them to hold still long enough to get the pic! wonderful eel shots as well.

Bob, thanks for the report. The pictures are wonderful.

Hi Boat Chick,

Thanks for the post. I just got lucky with that Black Durgon, he posed for me so I took the shot!

Those are beautiful pictures! What kind of camera do you use? Im going for the first time in December and Id like to have a good camera set up.

Hi Laura,

Thanks for the comment. I use a Canon SD 700IS in a Canon UW housing. I set the camera in underwater mode and get very close! No external flash, no special set up. It's not bad for a compact point and shoot digital camera with no manual mode. The key is to use a little photo correction like Photoshop Elements to clean up the color when you get home.