My wife & I will be first timers to Bonaire & Buddy's. We are traveling with our dive shop from Colorado. Looking for advise on dining, best dive sites, the must do's & sees on the island.....

When are you going to be there?

Oh, and welcome to the forum.

To find all your answers and more... read thru a bunch of the topics already about your questions.

We will be there Sept 1 - Sept 8

We are heading back for our ninth trip to Buddy's at the end of October/beginning of November. They are a top notch dive operation, and I think you will be very pleased with your choice. Check out various past threads here on BT for dining, diving and other suggestions. This board is a great resource; just poke around a little and I am sure that you will find lots of helpful hints. If you have specific questions for the people at Buddy Dive, you can email diveshop@buddydive.com, frontdesk@buddydive.com or reservations@buddydive.com. Augusto runs the dive shop and is always ready to answer your questions or help you out. He's a great guy.

Hey Jamey,
my wife and I just got back from our first trip to Bonaire, but I've yet to post our "Trip Report".. In a nut shell, we would go back to Bonaire for just the food, or just the diving! It was all good.
Food wise:
Patagonia; great Paella... Best I've had.. Every bite was full of meat. very nice atmosphere.
Cactus Blue; Excellent Margaritas, great food.
Capriccio's; Great food and atmosphere.
Pasa Bon Pizza; Great pizza and a retro atmosphere.
It Rains Fishes; Great food.
City Cafe; great for lunch.
Richards; good food, great atmosphere on their exclusive single water front table (Your out on a small doc, which is covered, all by yourself).

Diving: You can do no wrong..
-My favorite dive was the "Salt Pier", during the day. The sun light comes through the piers during the late part of the day, and it looks very pretty. (You have to hire a DM for this dive, and it is $25 for each diver).
-Second favorite was Petrie's Pillar. Turtles, Frog fish, etc.. If you can do this as a drift dive it is even better.
-Night dive at the "Town Pier" was very nice. You also have to hire a DM for this.
-Karpata, 1000 steps, 18 palms, Andrea II, were all very nice.
-Sampler was also very nice off Klein.
Our first dive on 18 Palms was jaw dropping for me.. 100ft vis, Tarpon, Barracuda, reef fish everywhere, and warm water.. If you were diving next to me you could probably here me mumbling something like, "duhhh, duhhh, duhhhhhhhh".. I guess you could say I enjoyed the diving..

If you want to see Washington park make sure you go early, otherwise they will not let you drive through. We showed up at 3:00pm to go through the part, but they would not let us pass because of the time it takes to go through the park. That side of the Island is completely different.. You'll see what I mean.

When you go out to dinner or lunch make sure you disengage your, "I'm in a hurry" mentality".. Things are on Island time, but this is a good thing!

Buddy looks like a nice place to stay and should be great for your diving expectations.

Look for my trip report, which I will post soon. I got lots of pictures...

Cheers
Derek...

Hi Jamey et alia,
I'm doing some BT housekeeping -- and we're trying to keep trip reports under the trip reports heading, and Everything Else Bonaire, here.
ModMare