Bonaire - security?

[miketsp]

Some friends just got back from Bonaire. I already knew about the problems with unattended rented cars while people were diving but they really surprised me that their hotel rooms were burgled while they were sleeping during the night. Woke up to find rooms ransacked & missing money, better quality dive lamps & charger (thief was very selective), digital cameras, 1G memory sticks, notebook etc.
They registered the robbery with the police who managed to recover the notebook. This was returned on the 20th April, eve of their return, but they were very surprised to see that the police had used it all week (14th to 20th) before returning it!!!! (proved by various log files etc). They even had the cheek to register the owner of the laptop in MSN as a friend. :11:

Hotel was SUN OCEANFRONT. They complained that few of the room safes were functional to store valuables.

Total final loss was about US$3.300 between them.

 

[erikharwell]

I was there may 8-15 we had 15+ people in our group and to my knowledge nothing was taken. I think 1 guy may of had some cigars taken out of the truck, but he may of just misplaced them. nothing was taken from our rooms. we were at buddy dive and did plenty of shore dives. I guess they just had some bad luck

 

[jepuskar]

Unfortunately, no matter where you go, security is always an issue. Several people have been to Bonaire several times with no problems at all, I have been 3 times with no issues at all. The majority of the people are nice and would not take a thing, but remember that a few small percentage of people give the rest of the island a bad name when it comes to this kind of stuff.
Happens every where in the world, not just Bonaire. If security is a big issue then look into hotels that have security features like lock boxes, security guards, etc etc..

Jason

 

[dedhed]

I agree with the rest of the folks. I've been there twice and have had no problems with rental truck or rooms. My last visit, in february, i stayed at Bonaire Village Villas and felt very secure. The front door and porch were dead bolted and the porch itself was barred and padlocked when we turned down for the night. It seemed like a bit of overkill, but iI guess not. Better to be safe than sorry. It doesn't suprise me that island police would do such stuff as it is alleged. Cops are dodgy anywhere you go as a travelor. Hopefully, they help you if in danger, but to efficiently track down a local thief instead of letting insurance companies deal with it. I think not. I wouldn't let this occurance keep you from going to Bonaire. It is a amazingly easy place to get lots of diving done. All at you own pace on an island that catering to divers, not to drunk sun worshipers and all that they bring with them.

 

[Diver Kat]

Just got back on 5/15 - had no troubles what-so-ever with anything in our truck (towels, shirts, shoes) and stayed at Deep Blue View - a small B&B up on a hill, so luckily no real chance of anything happening to stuff in our room. They have huge gear lockers (approx 7' by 3') so we felt all our gear was safe as well.

It's really sick that the police used the notebook all week, makes you wonder if they were aware of where the rest of the items ended up .........

 

[vjongene]

Some friends just got back from Bonaire. I already knew about the problems with unattended rented cars while people were diving but they really surprised me that their hotel rooms were burgled while they were sleeping during the night. Woke up to find rooms ransacked & missing money, better quality dive lamps & charger (thief was very selective), digital cameras, 1G memory sticks, notebook etc.
They registered the robbery with the police who managed to recover the notebook. This was returned on the 20th April, eve of their return, but they were very surprised to see that the police had used it all week (14th to 20th) before returning it!!!! (proved by various log files etc). They even had the cheek to register the owner of the laptop in MSN as a friend.

I was in Bonaire over the Xmas holidays. We experienced TWO robberies in the same day. First, we had the bad judgement to go diving straight back from a trip into the National Park, without emptying the car first. Returned from the dive to find two windows smashed, and all of our stuff gone (some cash, binoculars, credit cards, etc). The police found all of the non-valuables, including the credit cards and my driver's licence, and returned them to us. The next morning, my reg was missing from our 2nd floor balcony. We found some clothes line tied into a loop right below. The locals had obviously gone fishing... We reported this to the hotel (Captain Don's), where they showed no surprise and did not feel that this concerned them in any way.

Theft on Bonaire is obviously a serious problem. Physical violence is not - I have never heard of anyone getting mugged there. The police know who the perps are. They get caught occasionally and spend a few days in prison. Then they go back to thieving, which is lot more lucrative than just about any job they can hope for on the island. In the "old days" petty criminals were treated to a one-way ticket to Venezuela by their families. This is sadly no longer the case...

 

[AggieDiver]

I always love these threads, because there is always somebody who says "this kind of thing happens everywhere", in a somewhat lame attempt to excuse the Bonaire Police for the abject failure to even marginally attempt to stop the well known theft problems there. This kind of thing DOES NOT happen everywhere. You might go to Coz and 1 person in 10,000 might get something stolen out of their hotel. Or one car in 20,000 might get broken into or vandalized in the Cayman Islands. On Bonaire, it is probably alot closer to 1 in 10 or 1 in 20. For every ten people here saying they had no problem, I can show you 10 posts from people who just got back and had something stolen. The fact is that there are almost never threads on any of the major scuba boards detailing thefts as a pattern for any location other than Bonaire. The police there don't care, and as evidenced by the use of the laptop for a week, they are most likely a major part of the problem. Anywhere else, everybody realizes that crime is a major deterrent to tourism, but on Bonaire, it is accepted as status quo and nobody cares. So please...feel free to post your own personal experiences, pro or con about Bonaire, but don't patronize us by claiming it is rare or common anywhere in the caribbean, because it isn't. Jamaica and some places in the major port cities of the Bahamas may have similar problems, but even there, the crooks haven't developed such a clear pattern of targeting divers, and the population is much larger, making identification of the criminals harder. The locals and the police on Bonaire know damn well who the thieves are, and they know who and where they sell their booty. They just don't care to make any effort to fix it.

 

[rjchandler]

I was in Tobermory Ontario over the weekend and heard that only the week before an instructor had thousands of dollars of gear stolen from his pickup truck! Acouple years ago - the same thing happened to another instructor.

Do you think it is safe to go back to Canada?

 

[VTernovski]

funny.. I was leaving dollar bills on purpose to see if they get taken form the truck while I did the diving.. no chance... maybe be better luck next time.

 

[miketsp]

I was in Tobermory Ontario over the weekend and heard that only the week before an instructor had thousands of dollars of gear stolen from his pickup truck! Acouple years ago - the same thing happened to another instructor.

Do you think it is safe to go back to Canada?

Nobody is saying "Don't go to Bonaire".
I simply gave an alert that people need to take precautions as if they were at home.
On holiday on a small island we tend to forget.
And if the room safe doesn't work then demand one that does.

After looking at the Canadian crime statistics I would probably think twice before going there.

Canadian Crime statistics 2002
http://www.statcan.ca/english/Pgdb/legal04a.htm