Lavalamp
Registered
My wife and I were in Bonaire during the week of May 28th - June 4th. Stayed at Divi Flamingo Resort. At the time of booking, we also considered Buddy, Bellafonte, and Village Harbour but the Divi package was too good to pass up.
$891/person for the entire week (7 nights), which included:
- free upgrade to deluxe ocean-view room w/ private balcony
- free 2-tank boat dive every morning
- free breakfast every morning
- free 24-hour unlimited shore dive (self service)
- free airport transfers
The only things for which we had to pay extra: unlimited Nitrox ($125/person), Bonaire marine park fees ($25/person)
The Resort: Freshly renovated in 2015. Lawns are neat and clean. Pool area is clean w/ classy cabanas.
The dive pier with lockers and rinse tanks is the best on the island and a key differentiator. It is super convenient to be able to rinse and store all of your dive gear right on the pier. There are a number of loyal Divi guests who keep coming back to this resort year and year and it's because they like this pier (and the house reef of course).
In our opinion Divi house reef ('Calabas Reef') is the best house reef of any resort in Bonaire. Some people dive it everyday for the entire week.
The Service: Unfortunately service is where Divi falls short.
Airport Transfer - disorganized w/ excessive wait time. When we landed in Bonaire, they made us wait in the sun-heated dirty van with no A/C for over an hour. The hotel was only a 5-minute drive from the airport, but still they didn't have the common sense wherewithal to drop us off first and come back for the other guests an hour later.
Housekeeping - below par. Balcony furniture pieces were always covered with dust. We couldn't hang dry anything on the balcony rails, chairs, or tables. Even the floor in the room was dusty everyday. We couldn't walk in our room barefooted.
Food & Beverage - below par. Salads and vegetables were never fresh. We even got upset stomach from the hotel food. We started going to Buddy Resort & Sand Dollar for lunch and the food quality at those places were way better.
Connectivity - poor. In-room wifi nonexistent despite the hotel's explicit confirmation at the time of booking that they do have in-room wifi. Well it turned out to be false advertisement. If you want in-room wifi, this hotel is not for you.
The Dive Shop: Typical cattle boat operations.
We did boat dives on 4 out of our 6 dive days. The divers-to-guide ratio was always 16:1, which proved to be way too high. The guide was not able to police the group and curb bad behaviors. So many novice divers were finning the crap out of fragile reefs trying to take pictures. Others were chasing and harassing fish. After four days of this, we decided we were done with Divi cattle boats. We only did shore dives on our own after that.
Some male dive guides had attitude/ego issues. They barked orders at guests as opposed to giving courteous and professional pre-dive briefs. They were impatient with some of the guests who asked questions. If you dive with Divi, we recommend going with female guides - generally friendlier and more helpful.
Self-service station for shore diving was great. Our best dives of the week were the shore dives where we went on our own with our truck - just the two of us.
Our Dives: Bonaire is truly divers' paradise. On this trip we hit up:
$891/person for the entire week (7 nights), which included:
- free upgrade to deluxe ocean-view room w/ private balcony
- free 2-tank boat dive every morning
- free breakfast every morning
- free 24-hour unlimited shore dive (self service)
- free airport transfers
The only things for which we had to pay extra: unlimited Nitrox ($125/person), Bonaire marine park fees ($25/person)
The Resort: Freshly renovated in 2015. Lawns are neat and clean. Pool area is clean w/ classy cabanas.
The dive pier with lockers and rinse tanks is the best on the island and a key differentiator. It is super convenient to be able to rinse and store all of your dive gear right on the pier. There are a number of loyal Divi guests who keep coming back to this resort year and year and it's because they like this pier (and the house reef of course).
In our opinion Divi house reef ('Calabas Reef') is the best house reef of any resort in Bonaire. Some people dive it everyday for the entire week.
The Service: Unfortunately service is where Divi falls short.
Airport Transfer - disorganized w/ excessive wait time. When we landed in Bonaire, they made us wait in the sun-heated dirty van with no A/C for over an hour. The hotel was only a 5-minute drive from the airport, but still they didn't have the common sense wherewithal to drop us off first and come back for the other guests an hour later.
Housekeeping - below par. Balcony furniture pieces were always covered with dust. We couldn't hang dry anything on the balcony rails, chairs, or tables. Even the floor in the room was dusty everyday. We couldn't walk in our room barefooted.
Food & Beverage - below par. Salads and vegetables were never fresh. We even got upset stomach from the hotel food. We started going to Buddy Resort & Sand Dollar for lunch and the food quality at those places were way better.
Connectivity - poor. In-room wifi nonexistent despite the hotel's explicit confirmation at the time of booking that they do have in-room wifi. Well it turned out to be false advertisement. If you want in-room wifi, this hotel is not for you.
The Dive Shop: Typical cattle boat operations.
We did boat dives on 4 out of our 6 dive days. The divers-to-guide ratio was always 16:1, which proved to be way too high. The guide was not able to police the group and curb bad behaviors. So many novice divers were finning the crap out of fragile reefs trying to take pictures. Others were chasing and harassing fish. After four days of this, we decided we were done with Divi cattle boats. We only did shore dives on our own after that.
Some male dive guides had attitude/ego issues. They barked orders at guests as opposed to giving courteous and professional pre-dive briefs. They were impatient with some of the guests who asked questions. If you dive with Divi, we recommend going with female guides - generally friendlier and more helpful.
Self-service station for shore diving was great. Our best dives of the week were the shore dives where we went on our own with our truck - just the two of us.
Our Dives: Bonaire is truly divers' paradise. On this trip we hit up:
- Klein Bonaire - Sharon's Serenity
- Calabas Reef x 3
- 18th Palm
- Small Wall
- Karpata
- Angel City
- Klein Bonaire - Ebo's Special
- Klein Bonaire - Sampler
- Aquarius
- Salt Pier x 2
- Tolo / Ol' Blue
- Klein Bonaire - Keepsake
- Hilma Hooker Wreck
- Barcadera
- Tori's Reef
- Bari Reef & Front Porch
- 1000 Steps