My wife and I will be on a cruise in February (Celebrity). The cruise line is not offering a snorkel excursion, probably because our ship will arrive at about 1:30, and will leave at about 7:00. Can you recommend a way for us to spend a couple hours snorkeling in Bonaire? Should I contact a tour company or call a taxi and have them drive us someplace?

The Plaza Resort has a nice house reef with a couple easy sandy beach entries (or a stair entry at the Plaza's Tipsy Seagull pier). The sandy beach stretches for a 900 feet or so with the Coconut Crash beach bar serving cold beverages and $5.00 sandwiches all day. Great variety of fish can be seen at this location, although anywhere you go will yield great results. Taxi to the Plaza is a 6 minute ride (or so).

You could walk to Divi Flamingo...walk off the ship and take a right as you are facing town. I like that reef:

http://www.diviflamingo.com/DiviFlamingo/

Look here for operators:

http://www.infobonaire.com/snorkeling.html

Have fun!!!

Just North of the cruise ship pier one can just enter the water anywhere. Not a lot of reef, but tons of fish..

As posted previously, the Plaza house reef - get in near the Tipsy seagull - is nice. Last I checked they charge $15-20pp to use their facilities on cruise ship days. Calabas Reef off of the Divi Resort is good too. Work your way South (left) and enjoy!

You can go to this site and try to reserve a 2pm Water Taxi trip to Klein Bonaire. Ask them to drop you off at Ebo's reef and drift with the current to No-Name beach where they pick up at 4:30. http://www.bonairenauticomarina.com/

And John, another recommendation: please support the Bonaire Marine Park by buying a snorkel tag - only $10 to help save the reefs (partly from the damage done by cruise ships) and you get a nice souvenir (the tag0 as a bonus!

Tag makes a great key chain!

my personal favorite is the Woodwind, a trimaran within walking distance from the cruise pier. The owners/operators are Dee and Ulf. They have a 4 to 5 hour snorkel trip that gets you back to the pier in plenty of time. I have snorkeled with them twice and had a ball each time. Their website is:
woodwindbonaire.com