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@herman: Yes, there's something to be said for granting greater weight to the words of a SB poster who has a great deal of experience planning/executing Bonaire dive trips...but to ignore "newbie" trip reports to the island is short-sighted. I think you will agree that the incidence of crime (and type of crime) probably varies over time. I would think a prospective dive tourist would be interested in what has been happening on Bonaire over the last few weeks/months as opposed to how things were 15 years ago. This may or may not be something that a seasoned Bonaire veteran who makes an annual Bonaire trip has a handle on. For instance, three years ago I did not hear of any reports of gas-siphoning from rental trucks. The fact that the car rental companies are currently warning their customers about this is telling.
I fully agree that there is a "response bias" on trip reports posted to Internet forums. This should be considered when figuring out how much weight to give a Bonaire horror story on SB. It is entirely understandable that people would feel more compelled to post a trip report if they had a very negative or a very positive experience on the island. Chances are the experiences of the prospective traveler (should h/she go to Bonaire) would fall somewhere in the middle.
I am with you 100% on placing high value on incidents that poster has seen/experienced first-hand and distinguishing that info from second- and third-hand accounts. I would also like to add that it's nice to discern whether the OP has any financial interest at all in pushing more dive tourism to Bonaire. This can be as indirect as a poster getting a comp'ed spot on a dive trip because he/she is serving as trip leader for a Bonaire trip sponsored by an LDS. That's why I really appreciated the entire last paragraph of your post.
One more point that I'd like to make is that when one is planning a trip for a large number of people, often the size of the party dictates where the group will ultimately stay. For instance, from a trip planner perspective, things are just much easier if the group stays at a place like Buddy Dive, where truck rentals, accommodations, and diving is managed through one entity. If you stayed at Buddy Dive on a majority of your Bonaire trips, then I would think that the probability of your truck getting vandalized in the middle of the night is rather low. AFAIK, the trucks are all parked in a gated parking lot where a nearby 24-hr watchman is posted. Smaller groups may end up staying at other places on the island where no such security force (however minimal) exists. Just my thoughts on the issue...
From Post #11 in this thread...
@Papa Bear: Please refer to the quoted post above. I think it's pretty clear that the "tank cap had a lock" and the cap was somehow removed by the thieves. The thieves did not cut the gas line -- that was stated clearly in Post #1 of this thread. I suspect that you'll be switching out the car rental's locking cap for your own locking cap -- maybe yours will have some kind of extra special, heavy-duty lock on it which affords more protection, I don't know.
@gypsyjim: I'm glad that you haven't had any problems with theft there. Where did you stay? I rented off-resort on two separate occasions, once in December of 2006 and again in December 2007. I stayed in the Belnem area south of Kralendijk. On both occasions, I didn't experience any incidents of theft or vandalism, but the condo manager informed us that a night watchman would be walking the grounds in the middle of the night (and I can verify that this was the case). On our first trip, we spoke with a very nice Canadian couple while we were on a boat dive to Klein Bonaire. They had noticed that I had a drysuit hose hanging off my first stage, so they wanted to know where I was from. After sharing some dive stories, I jokingly asked them where their drysuit hoses were.
That's when they told me that their expensive regs, BCDs, and wetsuits had been stolen two nights before from the patio right outside their room (Golden Reef Inn). The items had been stolen while they were taking showers and eating dinner inside their room. They had planned to lock up the gear inside the room before they turned in for the night. I felt bad for them and took a mental note to never leave dive gear unattended on Bonaire. (Yes, this is a secondhand account of a criminal act.) As far as I could tell, the Canadian couple had no ulterior motive in making up such a story. A few months later when we were planning our second trip to Bonaire, I read several accounts that the police had busted up an organized crime ring that was flying stolen goods to Curacao. We felt justified in making plans to return to the island on account of the police stepping up their efforts.You make a good point. It is entirely possible that people double/triple/quadruple post here and elsewhere about whatever was stolen from them. It is also possible that among the ScubaBoard audience, the notion of criminal activity on Bonaire is disproportionately high relative to the actual number of incidents that occur there. Is this unfair to the people who make a living on the dive tourist trade in Bonaire? Perhaps. It would be nice if the Bonaire police would publish accurate crime statistics. Unfortunately, they do not. It would be comforting to see posts from proprietors on the island who could keep us informed about any measures that the police or local residents were taking in order to minimize crime on the island. It's a small island. I think some people would notice if an enterprising individual started selling used truck tires out of his backyard. I would hope that SB threads like this would move local businesses to apply pressure to the police to do something about crimes perpetrated against tourists.
@herman: Yes, there's something to be said for granting greater weight to the words of a SB poster who has a great deal of experience planning/executing Bonaire dive trips...but to ignore "newbie" trip reports to the island is short-sighted. I think you will agree that the incidence of crime (and type of crime) probably varies over time. I would think a prospective dive tourist would be interested in what has been happening on Bonaire over the last few weeks/months as opposed to how things were 15 years ago. This may or may not be something that a seasoned Bonaire veteran who makes an annual Bonaire trip has a handle on. For instance, three years ago I did not hear of any reports of gas-siphoning from rental trucks. The fact that the car rental companies are currently warning their customers about this is telling.
I fully agree that there is a "response bias" on trip reports posted to Internet forums. This should be considered when figuring out how much weight to give a Bonaire horror story on SB. It is entirely understandable that people would feel more compelled to post a trip report if they had a very negative or a very positive experience on the island. Chances are the experiences of the prospective traveler (should h/she go to Bonaire) would fall somewhere in the middle.
I am with you 100% on placing high value on incidents that poster has seen/experienced first-hand and distinguishing that info from second- and third-hand accounts. I would also like to add that it's nice to discern whether the OP has any financial interest at all in pushing more dive tourism to Bonaire. This can be as indirect as a poster getting a comp'ed spot on a dive trip because he/she is serving as trip leader for a Bonaire trip sponsored by an LDS. That's why I really appreciated the entire last paragraph of your post.
One more point that I'd like to make is that when one is planning a trip for a large number of people, often the size of the party dictates where the group will ultimately stay. For instance, from a trip planner perspective, things are just much easier if the group stays at a place like Buddy Dive, where truck rentals, accommodations, and diving is managed through one entity. If you stayed at Buddy Dive on a majority of your Bonaire trips, then I would think that the probability of your truck getting vandalized in the middle of the night is rather low. AFAIK, the trucks are all parked in a gated parking lot where a nearby 24-hr watchman is posted. Smaller groups may end up staying at other places on the island where no such security force (however minimal) exists. Just my thoughts on the issue...
(joking with you - just so there is no mistake) Something that has some bearing on the whole issue on the volume of crime- specifically car break ins came to mind while diving Andra II yesterday. There are often reports of glass indicating a breakin but what is never discussed is when that breakin occured. My buddy and I started looking over the site and found what looks like 4 incidences of a broken window but as we talked we recalled having seem them in years past and then something occured to me. Glass does not go away and pretty much remains in the same spot unless moved. Unlike trash or other material the glass is there pretty much there forever so those 4 appearant breakins could have been last week, all in one day 10 years ago or spread out over many years. Without police reports or at least 4 first hand- my window got broken reports, there is simply no way to know when or for that matter how it occured. My back yard still has glass from a broken truck window...lawnmowers can really zing a rock. I suspect a carelessly swung scuba tank would do wonders on a window. The point being, "there is a lot of glass on the ground" pretty much means nothing other than at some time in the last 10 years or so 4 windows got broken here. ) or the problem is not that bad if you use common sence- the reader can choose for themselves which it is.
