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Beachcomber Villas

I'm from Idaho, which is a 4 season state with very low relative humidity, so Bonaire is always hot to me in comparison. I've visited Bonaire in August and September when the trade winds were almost non-existent and found any place without A/C (other than the sea) to be unbearable. But when...

Disclaimer: My comments below are general observations after 22 years of enjoying Bonaire, and are not specific to Buddy Dive or Belmar. Bedroom airco is usually sized to cool the bedroom only, and is primarily intended to be used only while sleeping at night. Oversizing the wall-mount units...

Jim Brandon was a well-liked diver known for his avid love of Bonaire and underwater photography. He retired early from his career as a bank executive in Washington D.C. to move to Bonaire, where he worked as a dive instructor and photo pro at Sand Dollar Dive and Photo from 1990 to 2000. He...

Great trip report! Sorry I didn't make more of an effort to join a couple of your dives. (My feeble excuse is merely that I was getting lazy in our 3rd week and curbed my daily diving quite a bit in favor or lazy afternoons around our pool.) Just FYI that the birds you saw around Bamboo Bali...

Check out the footage starting at 2:27 in the YouTube video below. To my wee brain the formation does not appear spherical at all, as the vertical face appears, well... vertical... like a pillar, column, or cliff face etc. Here are a couple other respectable references that also refer to them...

@Mr. Manfrenjensenden, what you remember was Country Gardens. Due to the horde of divers with poor buoyancy that apparently fell off of a dive boat just before we got there, I didn't take the time to circle the pillars with you. So we only explored the seaward side, which probably explains why...

We enjoyed 85 minutes at Salt Pier yesterday, including the center pier section that was reported damaged. We didn't see any signs underwater of fresh debris or damage to the reef.

It was still closed yesterday.

Just following up on the previous discussion above... both of our Telerin trucks are in good shape, have sequential license plate numbers, and are registered to Poppy per the registration papers in the glove box.

Same here. 35+ weeks diving Bonaire over 20+ years and have only seen a STINAPA ranger talking to divers once... at Salt Pier parking lot on a busy day.

This update was published today on the Bonaire Reporter's Facebook page: "Just after 9 am today acting Marine Park Manager Leonel Martijn announced that the price increase for Marine Park Dive Tags and Nature Fee is postponed until March 1, 2019. Cruise ships will still be free. This does NOT...

We've used variations of these fairly inexpensive ($30 USD) IST bags for 30+ weeks of Bonaire shore diving and have never had one taken yet (knocking on wood.). But I do tend to feel a little nervous whenever I have to rotate a shiny new one into service. They serve several purposes for us: -...

EDIT: The fee will increase from $25 to $45, not $40 as I incorrectly posted originally. So an 80% increase. My original source was incorrect. Any moderators reading this are welcome to update my thread title and initial info in my original post. (It's now locked for me.)

Your 2018 tag should be good for your entire trip. They typically start selling next year's tags in mid-December and don't seem to start enforcing for new tags until mid-January. I asked DFB about this once and they were adamant that I didn't need to purchase tags for both years to cover...

DFB's house reef at Dive Inn is Chachacha beach (named after a local woman who used to live across the street.) It's easily one of the easiest shore entries on the island. Be aware that some, if not all, DFB locations close early on New Year's Eve and open late on New Year's Day (usually noon...

As several have already mentioned, the incremental fee increase dollar amount is a non-issue for most, including me. The greater issue is that TCB and the Bonaire Hotel and Tourism Association (BONHATA) are aggressively driving to grow non-diver tourism on the island. At the same time, STINAPA...

Yeah, they're getting tired of babysitting the local government too.

I think The Hague is growing financially weary of funding Bonaire since the change in government in 2010. From what I've read over the past couple of years I think they'd like it just fine if the island could generate enough revenue to cover its own costs.

I don't agree that divers utilize the resource the most. Or if so it's barely more than the cruisers. Without hard data it's a theoretical argument at best, but just for fun let's refer to these 2016 tourism statistics for reference. In 2016 136,000 total tourists visited Bonaire by air. 10%...