I am planning a diving trip for my wife's 40th, in August 2008. Bonaire is our first choice. I have yet to make reservations for lodging and I feel a bit lost.

My first choice was Buddy Dive's. Quite a few reviews at TripAdvisor about the place's condition were a bit cautionary. So I decided against that place even though it seems to have quite the dive operation.

I looked at the Deep Blue View but they are booked solid for the days I am interested in -- there is a slim chance that they may have some availability on their other property, Villa Safir.

I am also looking at Den Laman's based on reviews I read at BT.

We are going to Bonaire for diving. But I also want to have some quality lodging in case we decide to stay out of the water for a day.

Thus I am looking for accommodations that offer:
- spacious room with sufficient a/c capacity;
- daily housekeeping;
- comfortable, real queen or king size beds (real as in: not two twin beds pushed together);
- nice view from the room;
- decent bathrooms (ie, roomy shower, good water pressure, enough counter-top space for two);
- quiet;
- relatively bug-free (yes, it's the Caribbean, I know!)
- proximity to other activities such as:
- local shopping;
- perhaps a spa;

I have spent hours on TripAdvisor reading complaints upon complaints about the disrepair of various places like Divi, Buddy, etc. I could use some help and feedback from you here at BT.

Also, any advise on flights will be highly appreciated. We'll be flying out of Chicago. A cursory search of flights gives me AA, through San Juan as the only option. Problem is: 6 hours layover in Puerto Rico, on our way out and back. Which gives us plenty of time to catch up with a few old friends there but prolongs the trip to a total of ~12 hrs, each way. Am I missing something in terms of flight options?

i think u have read wrong reports. i can only vouch for divi. have great dive shop on site, very good food, ocean front rooms spacious, close to restaurants and within walking distance to town.
es

Look at the Belmar for accomodations as a possibility.

Flights-we went out of Detroit and spent the night in Atlanta, then flew direct. Probably the easiest way from our neck of the woods.

Good luck!

Flights:
if you can get to atlanta, delta flies nonstop to bonaire----good luck

I believe Continental flies in from Houston, which is an easy hop from Chicago.

I can recommend Plaza Resort - having stayed there just last week. It meets all your needs with the possible exception of "proximity to other activities" only because it's not a quick walk to downtown, but it is only 2min by car.

See my recent post under Trip Reports for a bit more info on our experience at Plaza.

when planning a trip to bon u must leave on a Friday night. plug in airports and dates and you'll have no problems. remember chic to bon friday. go onto bookingbuddy.com and do a little home work. i sometimes use cfares. u can join to be a gold member for free and use there cite. cfare is under other at bottom of page. both con and delta have flts out of chicago
esculley

Leo, My wife and I enjoyed out first trip to Bonaire in March. We underwent the same search that you outlined and found our choice, Cap't Don's Habitat fulfilled all your requirements. My wife is a non-diver and spent her time reading and relaxing while we sent the afternoons together. For flights, the Continental from Houston leaving on Friday evening and returning through Newark on Sunday allowed us an extra day in Bonaire as well as being the most economical of the flights. The trip from San Diego is a bit of a thrash, but the payoff is eight days in Bonaire.

Welcome to BT Leo.

Contact Ann Phelan, she lives on Bonaire and knows all the ropes.

Her web site.

http://www.bonairecaribbean.com/

Leo,

Trip Advisor and other review sites, while giving some insight, are often written by disgruntled guests. For whatever reason the guest often lets one negative experience ruin their whole stay and thus the resort.

We have stayed at Capt. Don's Habitat for the past 7 years and highly recommend it. You didn't mention needing a kitchen so i think the Ocean View Junior Suites would be perfect for you. Yes for a spacious room with 2 Queen beds and AC with daily housekeeping; Yes for a nice dive operation; Yes for a spa on location; Yes for a great view. I don't think you'd be disappointed with Capt. Don's Habitat.

Here's a link to my 2002 Trip Report which explains how and why we chose Habitat. http://www.oldbonairetalk.com/newsgroup/messages/1022/31140.html?1021997999

I've been to Bonaire for the last eight years running. Stayed at Buddy's for seven of those years and haven't been disappointed. Good clean rooms, nice friendly staff and two great restaurants on site. Captain's Don is walking distance from Buddy's if you want some great pizza.

Buddy's is an older resort but well maintained.

I prefer shore diving over boat diving ( I like to keep my own schedule as opposed to somebody else’s ) and Bonaire has the best shore accessible dive sites. We get the vehicle package so we can drive wherever/whenever we want. The resort has the neatest drive-thru operation for tank pickup and drop-off. Nitrox is available at the dock and the drive-thru.

There is a common wet locker room at the dock for your wet suites but I don't recommend it as your gear never dries off in there, better to rinse your gear and let air dry over your patio chairs. Your stuff will be safe, I've never heard of anybody's gear getting stolen. The resort has night security and an old dawg to keep the donkeys out.

Thanks all for the replies so far.

Richard, my issue with Buddy Dive is this: not all apartments are fully air conditioned. It seems that most available apartments have an a/c unit in the bedroom only. I know it's the Caribbean and I understand it's supposed to be warm especially in August. But it's also a resort and it should be about comfort, and comfort I seek!

Having said that, if Buddy Dive could guarantee me a fully air conditioned apartment, I'd send my deposit right away. Unfortunately they cannot provide such guarantees. It would seem that quite a few of the rental units are actual time shares. If such a unit is available, Buddy will do their best to accommodate us but if not then we'll be stuck in a poorly air conditioned apartment.

I'd rather avoid anything that could spoil an important trip.

Barton: Captain Don has uniformly alarming reviews on Trip Advisor. These are not just disgruntled customers who are going ballistic because their omelet arrived 2 minutes late. They complain, consistently about dirt, poor service, etc. That troubles me but I am pleased to hear positive experiences such as yours and Linda's above.

It's disheartening really. By all accounts Bonaire is a diving heaven. Given the demand for lodging etc, you'd expect at least a couple high-end lodging options. How come they are not there? At the end I's settle with a spacious, clean, cool room but where do I get it?

BTW, Belmar has an a/c in the living room and the bedroom.

Leo,

On my last trip to Bonaire one of my roommates ( I stayed in a three bedroom unit where only the bedrooms had AC ) wanted to close off the common living area because of the mosquitoes.

So we close the balcony doors, turned the ceiling fans on high and opened up the bedroom doors.

After a few minutes the living room area was comfortably cool.


No doubt you and your wife would get one of the single bedroom units but you could still apply the same technique.


Two years ago I had a unit on the old Lion’s Den side of Buddy’s which had AC in the bed and living rooms.

They are duplex style units with one side having two single beds and the other a single queen size.


Last year I also noticed that the unit I was in had been refurbished with fresh paint, new furniture and updated bathrooms.


But no matter where you end up staying, you will be impressed with the quality of the divining on Bonaire ( in my humble opinion ).

But be sure to take sun block and plenty of mosquito repellant.

Many of the restaurants have open air dining and if you don’t have bug spray on you’ll be eaten alive.

Leo, I've stayed at Buddy's plenty of times and will return. We leave the bedroom doors open while we are there and the main area cools down very nicely. I've never been disappointed with anything there. The staff is great. Just remember that there are no real five star accommodations in Bonaire. Also, it's easier to write a bad review than a good one for some, so Trip Advisor may just be an avenue for people to vent. I would stay at any of the afore mentioned places in the past posts. You'll love it!

The biggest challenge to the use of Trip Advisor is that you don't know anything about the person writing the review. And I don't mean are they disgruntled guests or do they work for the hotel or the hotel's competitor.

There's a couple points to consider:


1.) People generally fall into two distinct groups: Easy to Please, and Impossible to Please. If you don't know which group an individual is in, you don't really know how to look at their review.

2.) People with strong opinions - either positive or negative - are most motivated to post. So you only get "extreme" opinions, perhaps missing the opinions of the 80% of people who thought The El Vacationer Grande resort was "perfectly fine" but you will for sure hear from the 10% who thought it was worse than Gitmo and the 10% who thought it rivaled Versailles in terms of luxury.

3.) You don't know what people's frame of reference is. I'm happy that the Royal Vagabond Resort is "the most fabulous place" you've ever stayed, but if the second-best place you ever stayed was "the White Star Motel out by the old drive-in theater on highway 6" I'm not so sure your review means much to me.

4.) Everyone has cultural, ethnic, and economic prejudices - no matter what. Some people might not understand that what is considered "friendly" in one country is considered "aggressive" in another. For others "rude and indifferent people" often means "their skin was darker than mine and they talked funny." One person's idea of a "charming, simple island" is another person's "poor, dirty little country." My idea of an "ideal laid back" vacation may be a hammock between two palm trees while yours is a mink covered chaise lounge at the Ritz.

5.) You don't know what the reviewer had in mind when THEY picked the spot. Maybe THEY screwed up! The fact that a couple on their honeymoon "hated" Buckaroo Banzai's Blizzard Beach Family Adventure Toon Town Resort and SkateBoard Park doesn't mean that you and your family of six kids ages 10-16 should dismiss it as an option.

6.) Many people are just plain stupid. "Our trip to this idyllic tiny island in the middle of the ocean was ruined by the food - all they had was fish!" or "When we checked in we were dismayed to find that the Cliff Top suite we had specifically requested was a 5 minute walk along a steep path down to the beach." Or my favorite "The brochure said this was the best resort in all of Mud Flats Arkansas but after staying there for 14 nights I can tell you it's no Four Seasons!"

Lots of fun to read Trip Advisor, but take any review with a GIGANTIC grain of salt!

Hey, Ray, you got it! Enjoyed your "points" and totally agree.

I'm probably hard to please in the cleanliness catagory....just because of my occupation. We've always had a very clean cottage at Capt. Don's. We do tip the housekeeper upon arrival and again when we leave. This tends to assure good service, but we do it because we adore our housekeeper, Mechi.

Ray, I am with you. I am very cautious with Trip Advisor reviews. I begin to worry, however, if there are repeated reviews pointing to the same problem. Singular complaints usually don't bother me unless they are substantially documented and well written up. You can tell if someone is writing something in a hurry because they are venting steam!

Case in point: there is one bad review about Den Lamar on Trip Advisor. Something about the quality -- or lack there off -- of their dive shop.

I did not take it seriously for three reasons:

1) the rest of the reviews on Trip Advisor were very positive.
2) the comments about Den Lamar here on BT were equally good.
3) I wrote to the resort directly, asked a few questions and got answers that led me to believe that their dive shop is pretty decent.

The good thing too, is that they seem to have available space for us for the dates I am looking.

So, at the end it will be between Den Lamar and Captain Don's.

Trip Advisor IMO is where disgruntled people post. The happy customers rarely feel the need.

I think you will be happy with Den Laman. Good location, quiet, house reef is good. I'm partial to Eden Beach, which is close by. Full a/c in the rooms is nice, a beach bar 10yds away, good food as well.

On a different note, you might want to consider flying AA or Delta to Curacao, then taking Divi over to Bonaire. No huge layovers and possibly cheaper, too.

Leo, I agree with others in regard to trip advisor. Either people love or loath a place, there's no inbetween. I've stayed at places that folks "hated" on trip advisor and loved them (not on bonaire, but on other trips elsewhere). I think some people are the half glass empty, disgruntled, unhappy type, and find fault in everthing, and obviously let it ruin their trips...sad really...and they feel the need to tell everyone about how much they hated it.

I'd hate to live with that kind of person!

That being said, you cannot go wrong with Den Laman.

Go, dive, eat, sleep, and enjoy! Be sure to give us a report when you return.

they say that a satisfied customer will tell 2 or 3 people...a dissatisfied customer will tell 10 or 11. that would explain the larger amounts of negative posts.

we just got back from our three month trip about 10 hours ago. i'll see what i remember and post a trip report in the next few days.

Pat, you got that right!

Can't wait to hear about the trip Did you wave at Mary?

Leo-
There might not be any accommodations on Bonaire that fulfill all of your requirements. Lots of places to stay on Bonaire are decent and comfortable, but not plush. If you are looking for more "upscale" (and thus more expensive) accommodations, you may wish to consider:
Bellafonte
http://www.bellafontebonaire.com/

Harbour Village
http://www.harbourvillage.com/html04/accommodations.html

Hope you have a great trip. You are going to a lot of trouble for your wife's 40th - she is a lucky woman!

Leo has good suggestions but the reports I've heard re Belmar have all been excellent. I've been to Den Laman and that was lovely also.