judypots
Registered
A few hours ago we got back from a week at Harbour Village on Bonaire. If you are up for some luxury, treat yourself to a beachfront suite. Excellent service, beautiful beach, food at the restaurant was good enough so that you might not want to go elsewhere to eat. However, we had excellent dinners at Le Bistro de Paris, a short walk from the hotel, and at Appetite, in the middle of town. It's Raining Fishes was just so-so.
The dive operation is well managed, although they normally only do 2 boat dives a day - we would have preferred 3. When it's more crowded, they will accomodate 2 dives in the morning and one in the afternoon if enough guests want that. Of course you have unlimited shore diving in any event. We were told that last week is the slowest week on the island in terms of the number of guests, and indeed, the hotel was practically empty, and there didn't seem to be many people elsewhere in town. There were never more than 3 other people diving with us on the boat, and sometime only 2 others.
Boy were we lucky with the weather. As some of the recent trip reports have mentioned, Bonaire has been getting more rain this season than at any time in the last 30 years. Prior to last week, they didn't see the sun for 3 weeks. We arrived on Sunday, Dec. 5, and it rained all day. Monday dawned sunny, and we had sun the entire week, with just a few clouds and very short showers. The weather gods were with us.
As for the diving, we had been to Bonaire 2 1/2 years ago and I remembered the spectacular healthy coral reefs. We were sad to see so much bleached and brown coral. I asked to go to Small Wall because I remembered it as being spectacularly beautiful. I was shocked and sad at the bleaching there now. One of the dive masters who has been in Bonaire for 14 years confirmed the sad state of much of the coral. Having said that, not all of the the areas were that bad, and there's still those massive schools of fish, many eels, and other interesting life. Just a Nice Dive was full of turtles. We did a spectacular night dive - can't remember which site at the moment. The wreck of the Hilma Hooker was also a great dive.
All in all, we would certainly go back to Bonaire and would definitely stay at the Harbour Village again.
Judy
The dive operation is well managed, although they normally only do 2 boat dives a day - we would have preferred 3. When it's more crowded, they will accomodate 2 dives in the morning and one in the afternoon if enough guests want that. Of course you have unlimited shore diving in any event. We were told that last week is the slowest week on the island in terms of the number of guests, and indeed, the hotel was practically empty, and there didn't seem to be many people elsewhere in town. There were never more than 3 other people diving with us on the boat, and sometime only 2 others.
Boy were we lucky with the weather. As some of the recent trip reports have mentioned, Bonaire has been getting more rain this season than at any time in the last 30 years. Prior to last week, they didn't see the sun for 3 weeks. We arrived on Sunday, Dec. 5, and it rained all day. Monday dawned sunny, and we had sun the entire week, with just a few clouds and very short showers. The weather gods were with us.
As for the diving, we had been to Bonaire 2 1/2 years ago and I remembered the spectacular healthy coral reefs. We were sad to see so much bleached and brown coral. I asked to go to Small Wall because I remembered it as being spectacularly beautiful. I was shocked and sad at the bleaching there now. One of the dive masters who has been in Bonaire for 14 years confirmed the sad state of much of the coral. Having said that, not all of the the areas were that bad, and there's still those massive schools of fish, many eels, and other interesting life. Just a Nice Dive was full of turtles. We did a spectacular night dive - can't remember which site at the moment. The wreck of the Hilma Hooker was also a great dive.
All in all, we would certainly go back to Bonaire and would definitely stay at the Harbour Village again.
Judy
