I will be on Bonaire for seven weeks (mid-January through first week of March) and the cost of a rental vehicle for that period of time is quite prohibitive. I'm staying in the Belnem area and am thinking about only renting a vehicle for half of the time and getting by with taxis the rest. Is this a dumb idea?

It seems that I could buy a car and sell it at the end for less of a loss than it costs to rent something but I don't know what is involved with buying and owning a car on Bonaire.

I've also thought about buying/renting long term a bike/moped. Any suggestions or ideas would be very helpful. Thanks.

Mary

hi mary, welcome to bt. while i don't think it's a dumb idea i think it could be restrictive and might cost you more than a rental. a round trip taxi ride to town could cost you $20. what if you want to make more than one trip a day? we used to rent a truck or toaster van for 8-12 weeks and sometimes got a discount for a long term rental.

as far as buying a car and selling it when you leave, you'd have to understand that you'd be dealing with the following: first, finding a decent car to begin with (you don't want to spend your vacation getting the thing fixed every week or so). second, you'd have to buy six months worth of insurance (maybe you can get a shorter policy, i'm not sure). you have to have insurance to get the car registered...not a bad idea, wish they'd enforce that more here in the states. third, you'd have to register the car for six months...i think that would cost about Nafl 175.00, give or take. finally, you'd have to find someone to buy it when you left.

if you aren't planning on doing a lot of diving, or if you have someone to drive you to dive sites, a bike or moped might work for you. keep in mind that you'll be riding in hot, windy weather. i do my riding first thing in the morning before it's too hot and before the wind picks up a lot. i do know someone (no names mentioned) who lives in belnem and rides during the day and in the evening but she's crazy. also, riding from town to belnem on EEG blvd after dinner wouldn't be the safest thing to try (IMHO)...it's a pretty dark road and the cars don't usually observe the speed limit.

EEG at 0700 hours on a week day is like the Indiannapolis 500!

You know, if I were in your shoes I'd call around to some of the rental agencies there. I think you could probably talk at least one of them into giving you some sort of long term rental deal. I once had to get in a hotel room for 3 months doing some flight training with the military. The only hotel close to the base only had the honeymoon suite with a jacuzzi in the room available and it was well above the maximum rate for government lodging. But after looking around, I went back to that hotel and told the manager what my max rate was and that I'd be in the room for 3 months. It didn't take him long to realize that renting it to me at a lower rate was going to net him a lot more than someone spending one night every other weekend in it. Still have great memories of my time spent in that jacuzzi after a long day of class and 18 holes on the golf course.

Eric,

I've tried contacting the rental agencies, and they're just not offering much of a discount. It's probably because it's high season, and they'll have the car rented anyway, so they don't need to.