I'll be in Bonaire (1st trip) in March with my girlfriend for a week of diving, fun, diving, relaxing, diving, unwinding, diving, and of course eating. I realize that there are many different kinds of restaurants and varying price ranges for those restaurants. I'd like to know what ya'll feel the "average" daily budget for eating on Bonaire would be. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner of course.

Many thanks,
Ken

Ken,

I usually plan for $30/day per person...there is a wide range of costs for eating. Also, you can pick up snacks and such from the local supermarket...

Welcome to the board Ken.

Our breakfast is included so I have no idea what breakfast runs but I suspect in the $5-10 range. We usually stop by the local market and get a loaf of bread and eat PBJ's for most lunches. You can easily find good lunches in the $5-10 range. Supper is wide open depending on what you want. Our typical meal is in the $12-18 range. These are all without alcohol, like anywhere you can add a bunch to your meal cost when you add drinks. So I agree with greg, $30 USD is a good average. By the way, a lot of menus are in Guilders not USD (which is ROUGHLY 2to1)so be sure to ask if you are uncertain of which currency you are looking at. A 10 Guilder hamburger is $5.65 USD.

I had planned on about $40 a day, and eating well at lunch and dinner for that price. I was thinking about getting breakfast foods (cereals, muffins, milk, juice, etc.) at a local supermarket so we could enjoy ourselves more at dinner and lunch. Besides, I'm not much of a morning person. How well stocked is the local supermarket with ready to eat cereal, pastries, and baked goods?

Ken

Ken, the grocery stores are usually well stocked though sometimes they run out of certain items. Be sure to take along some large zip-lock bags to keep extras in as your cereal will soon get soggy. There is a bakery just inside the Cultimara where you can find freshly baked goods. Good fruit is available at More for Less, the stand at the waterfront and Cultimara.

Ken,

As Herman mentions, we also buy misc items (bread, butter, milk, lunch meat, soda etc) at the store for breakfast and lunch. We rarely cook our dinner meal. Several of the resorts have small kitchens (Divi, Sand Dollar, Buddy Dive) which makes it very convenient. Toast and Cereal is good in the morning before a dive...as well of course a cup of coffee. I usually stay at Divi which has a full kitchen.

Milk, now there is another story. Some (not sure if all) of the milk uses a special pasteurization (?) process where it does not have to be refrigerated but it takes some getting use to...it's kind of a brown color. Taste OK but looks strange. Can you get regular milk on island? The bakery at the Cultimara is great so baked goods are no problem.

Herman, yes, you can get regular milk on the island...Cultimara sells it and so does the Sand Dollar Grocery store

Get the milk while you can..it may not be there tomorrow, and then you have to wait untill the next boatload comes in...then even the Parmalot tastes good

Regular milk arrives in stores Thur/Fri w/chilled containers, about $4/half gallon (remember, it's shipped chilled from Miami). The brownish milk referred to is probably the Dutch "Koffie" milk, used like we'd use coffe mate-it's quite nice in coffee (not for drinking straight). Other milk here is "long life" boxed milk, which is not refrigerated until it's opened; it takes some getting used to. If you're offered milk in a pitcher/creamer at breakfast, it'll probably be long life milk-I doubt any restaurant will serve fresh, so if cereal/coffee tastes different, that's why.

My first six or so years here, "regular" American milk was n/a...I tried getting used to the boxed milk...never did, so just went without (well, there were no oreos or cheerios on the island either, so it wasn't that difficult).

Ruth
You would know better than I, but I think that I have occasionally seen organic fresh milk in Cultimara. If you grab that, the price will surprise you. I, personally have no problem with the boxed milk. Mickey

Lovers brand also has a fresh milk but it tastes funny like the boxed stuff to us.

Ruth, rush down to Sand Dollar Grocery they have Oreos !!!! I won't tell anybody until you get there.

Since milk seems to be a slight issue perhaps one can take a clue from the sitcom " Men Behaving Badly" a few years ago. The main characters were contemplating milk with their cereal. They asked "What is cereal?" Mostly grains oats barley and the like. Well isn't that what beer is primarily? SO they used beer in their cereal at breakfast. Of course by the end of that episode they decided they didn't need the cereal since the beer was probably a more concentrated form of the same.

Polar Beer -- It's not just for breakfast anymore!

OMG, Oreos, and I have a half gallon of fresh milk at home....and it's been raining most of the day...gotta go!

As to beer for breakfast, why not? Every day of the year, by 8 am, it's 80 degrees, (and usually sunny), besides, it's always 5 o'clock somewhere, isn't it?

Ruth,

You wait until 5 o'clock? I start at noon. It's always noon someplace, isn't it?

I used to work a midnight to eight shift at a restaurant, we'd often go out for drinks after work. People look at you funny when they see you with a scotch and soda at 8:15 AM.

Back to the original topic of dining prices, below is a list of dinner prices for the week of January 3 for two including drinks, taxes, tips in US$:

Lighthouse 75.00
It Rains Fishes 73.00
Richard's 73.10
Capriccio 67.00
Rendez Vous 61.00
Old Inn 68.00

Splurged at Lighthouse but it was worth it. Smoked Marlin appetizer and Molten chocolate dessert both were excellent.

We used to open the pizzeria at 10am (Cozzoli's, back in '91-'93 when we owned it) and there'd be a few guys hanging around waiting to buy a beer. I couldn't believe this. These were my first years living here...I didn't know any better, but served them with a smile & kept my thoughts to myself. My last trip up to NJ, I was outraged that I couldn't get a drink before NOON in a restaurant!

Casa Nobo, Gibi's, the Rose Inn in Rincon, and others will feed you a great dinner for much less than the above higher priced places. Casablanc has meals where one serving will fill up two people.

In New Orleans, the bars never close, though the drive through daiquiri shops do. Though I agree that its never really "too early" to start drinking, I've always adhered to the double-digit rule. This rule basically states that you shouldn't start drinking in the morning until the hour hand on your watch is at least in double digits. Which makes it the perfect time for a bloody mary.

Ok, to go as far off this topic as possible, and not involve cheese...NOLA people, I have a question for you: If I arrive in NO on 2/24, Fat Tuesday NIGHT about 8:30pm, (yes, that's when it appears that our airline connections will dump us, unless I get incredibly lucky and can beg us onto an earlier connection landing around 3pm), do I have any chance of getting to either the Hilton near the convention center or the Royal St. Charles Hotel? Our KFC convention starts the next day...;-) Well, thankfully, it's only the registration for the convention that starts the next day. Feel free to answer me privately, (sorry to the rest for the diversion!)

Ruth,

Many of the streets will be blocked off to vehicle traffic that night, but by then, the Mardi Gras parades will be over and most of the action will have moved into the French Quarter. You shouldn't have *too much* of a problem getting to the Royal St. Charles, but more of a problem getting to the Hilton. It'll be a pain and take a lot of time sitting in an idle taxi, but it can be done. For traffic reasons, you'd probably want to land at 8:30 instead of 3:00PM because the parades will still be going on and you'll have almost no chance of getting to the hotels then. The parade route runs down St. Charles Ave. Hope this helps.

Ken

Thank you, that does help a lot--I was thinking just the opposite.

we have been surprised by the milk in a box too, but my wife got used to it. i agree that it's definitely not a substitute for beer tho. i thought i've seen oreos at flamingo grocery also..and chips ahoy too...but both were very expensive. we were told that if we shopped and saw something we liked, we should buy in then because it would probably be gone when we went back...and that was often the truth.