OK... so for years I put off going to Bonaire... I went recently (January 31 - February 6th) because some friends were going (18 others,) so my wife and I signed up and went along. We needed a break from the daily grind.
We stayed at Buddy's Dive Resort. It was very unimpressive and quite frankly not such a great place. The rooms were adequate, but the AC didn't work in some and took days to fix. There was construction going on the entire week - so whenever around the resort we had to listen to jackhammers. The hamburgers at Buddy's outside bar made 5 of our group puke (food poison?) The stairs get extremely slippery both in the condos and outside... so much so that a group member fell and hurt their back very badly.
If that isn't bad enough - we had heard stories of vehicles being broken into around the island... but didn't expect this at a resort with security guards on duty. Three of our guests had dive equipment, jewelry, electronics and cash stolen from their locked rooms. We can only assume the perpetrators were staff or had keys from previous stays. We noticed as the week went on the security personnel was routinely asleep at the guard gate.
On the day we were suppose to have our boat dives (and be able to pick our dive spots,) the boat crew told us they didn't put gas in the boat... so we'd have to stay close by and could not do the sites we desired. This on top of the fact that upon arriving at the resort the first day... our welcome consisted of a 15 minute sales pitch from their Camera shop trying to rent us cameras and vido equipment.
The diving on Bonaire left even more to be desired. Can I say blah enough? Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah. Whether we went to the north side or south side or over to Klein Bonaire... all the sites were bleached with dyign coral. We literally saw dead scorpionfish, triple tails and a variety of eels lying on the reef dead or dying and gasping for air. ( I video'd much of this.) We were told by one of the DM's that the last hurricane did some damage and that some type of bacteria had killed off all the eels.
There were a couple of exceptions to the rancid reefs. Playa Franz, Small Wall and Old Blue all provided reasonably good diving.... but 3 sites out of 17 make this a destination to avoid for the forseeable future.
I'd think twice about a stay at Buddy's altogether... but I think the reef will likely bounce back in six months to a year.
Happy Diving...
We stayed at Buddy's Dive Resort. It was very unimpressive and quite frankly not such a great place. The rooms were adequate, but the AC didn't work in some and took days to fix. There was construction going on the entire week - so whenever around the resort we had to listen to jackhammers. The hamburgers at Buddy's outside bar made 5 of our group puke (food poison?) The stairs get extremely slippery both in the condos and outside... so much so that a group member fell and hurt their back very badly.
If that isn't bad enough - we had heard stories of vehicles being broken into around the island... but didn't expect this at a resort with security guards on duty. Three of our guests had dive equipment, jewelry, electronics and cash stolen from their locked rooms. We can only assume the perpetrators were staff or had keys from previous stays. We noticed as the week went on the security personnel was routinely asleep at the guard gate.
On the day we were suppose to have our boat dives (and be able to pick our dive spots,) the boat crew told us they didn't put gas in the boat... so we'd have to stay close by and could not do the sites we desired. This on top of the fact that upon arriving at the resort the first day... our welcome consisted of a 15 minute sales pitch from their Camera shop trying to rent us cameras and vido equipment.
The diving on Bonaire left even more to be desired. Can I say blah enough? Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah. Whether we went to the north side or south side or over to Klein Bonaire... all the sites were bleached with dyign coral. We literally saw dead scorpionfish, triple tails and a variety of eels lying on the reef dead or dying and gasping for air. ( I video'd much of this.) We were told by one of the DM's that the last hurricane did some damage and that some type of bacteria had killed off all the eels.
There were a couple of exceptions to the rancid reefs. Playa Franz, Small Wall and Old Blue all provided reasonably good diving.... but 3 sites out of 17 make this a destination to avoid for the forseeable future.
I'd think twice about a stay at Buddy's altogether... but I think the reef will likely bounce back in six months to a year.
Happy Diving...
