I apologise if the following article/air-land package for a vacation on Bonaire has been discussed elsewhere here. I haven't kept up with my BT reading lately, so sorry.

Anyway, I wonder if anyone has done business with Caradonna Caribbean Tours and/or the Yacht Club Apartments? Maybe you have some positive or negative comments regarding your experience. Here's the link: http://www.msnbc.com/news/835503.asp?0dm=T19PR

I was surprised to read, "The island has a reputation as an out-of-the-way resort for the rich..."

Caradonna Caribbean Tours are wonderful. I have used them in the past and Amy has arranged the entire trip for us...air, hotel, land, car rental, etc, etc. Their entire operation is first class....don't ever hestitate to contact Caradonna for anything. I have not stayed at the Yacht Club apartments, however, so I cannot comment on that establishment.

Thanks for posting the link to the article. Carole

Bill, We have also used Caradonna for both of our trips to Bonaire and were very pleased. Cammie is who booked our trip including airfare, which by the way was cheaper than anything I could find by myself. She stayed on top of things and we knew immediately when there was a flight change. I highly recommend them. By the way I tried to book Buddy Dive Resort on our second trip directly and they wanted me to go through Caradonna, the price is the same either way for the dive and drive package so I don't know what the deal is there. Anyway it worked out best for us since Caradonna could get us a cheaper flight. Good luck and happy diving. Debbie

Hi Bill,

I have had great experiences with Caradonna.
I have also directed friends to use them, they all reported having received great service.

I use a wonderful lady named Dawn at their offices.

Our group trip to Bonaire is always through Caradonna, and we loved it. They were extremely helpful, and with a group of 14-16 people, we didn't have any problems.

We use Kim at Caradonna all the time and we are very happy with the services and the prices!! I find that they find the really good deals that I have been unable to find on my own.

Kim At CARADONNA. She is exellant!

Wow! Thank you all very kindly.

When I book a trip with them I'm gonna tell 'em their placement of "shills" on the BT board is paying off. I mean, what are the chances of such a unanimity (that's easy for me to say, right?) of opinions, unless you were all secretly working for Cara&Donna? Of course, I'm kidding.

Thanks again. That business must be doing something right.

Bill - Unanimity makes for a lopsided universe, so I need to add balance. We have booked 4 trips thru Caradonna that I can remember. Three were to Bonaire and one to Coz, if I remember correctly. Two of the trips involved problems which were irksome, but not disasterous; one involved an oversite that probably should not have happened.

One of the Bonaire trips was messed up enough that Caradonna actually gave us a $150-200 credit (much to their credit). That was back in the days of KLM and partially resulted from Caradonna booking our return flight BON to CUR to MIA to PHL. The only problem was that the second leg (CUR to MIA) was actually CUR - (back to) BON - MIA. We had to leave BON in the early a.m and layover on CUR for and hour then fly BACK to BON before continuing on to MIA when, in actuality we could have booked on a 1 or 2 pm flight directly to MIA then on. Just plain sloppy on the part of the Caradonna reservationist. On another trip we booked arriving on a holiday weekend. This in and of itself wasn't a problem (we expected shops, food stores, etc to be closed for the most part and were prepared to deal with that. The problem here arose because (again, if I remember correctly) the Queen (Beatrix) was visiting on the day following the holiday and everything was closed then, too. It was 2 or 3 days before we were able to stock the pantry completely. Again, not a major problem, but something that a travel rep who is/was familiar and in close touch with client destinations should probably have been aware of.

All this was before we had home computers with internet access and started booking everything ourselves. (Now if there are problems, it's real easy to pin down the culprit...lol! And problems, do, by the way, occur.)

All in all Caradonna has been a good travel agency to deal with, but like most they don't walk on water. If I needed a travel agency to book Carribbean travel in the future, I would not be reluctant to use Caradonna. I would not, however, feel compelled to use them to the exclusion of all others.

DSAO

Tony Cooper