Planning for Christmas 2021 Trip

[Minnesota Cricket]

Thanks agd! Found one on Island Time rentals that might work.

Another question for the group. If we end up doing a resort, what are thoughts between Belmar and Sand Dollar? Found some older threads comparing the two, but if anyone else has more recent thoughts I would love to hear them!

 

[drrich2]

What part of the island (north or south of the capital) do you want to stay (and dive more)? Sand Dollar has a nice little sandy beach, and the house reef is Bari Reef, which is reputable. Between 2 Buns is a popular food place that's quite close. Zhung Kong Supermarket is right up a road a it. The city's a real short drive.

Haven't stayed at Belmar. When I was researching Bonaire, here are the notes I collected from forum review on it:

Belmar Bonaire Oceanfront Apartments – a small southern property using Buddy Dive for scuba services, and advertising valet boat diving – Trip Advisor review 93Scuba June 2019 said there’s no resident boat and only Buddy Dive’s smallest boat can pick up at Delmar – but he wrote well of it. Per DivineMissMaja (Jul 2017) there’s a small pool area and sea wall and dock but no beach. WAGB10 noted parking is a challenge most times, and Shandive in March said there were 17 parking spots for 24 rooms. Short drive to town. Has a house reef but I’ve seen reviews claiming Buddy’s Reef is better. DiverSteve (Post #10) said Belmar has ocean-facing patios, stops into the water off the dock, tanks are stored 20 feet from the main road and your condo. key allows 24/7 access, but there was no hotel in walking distances except Hotel Roomer. Close to town, but you’ll be driving.

A quick map check shows it's well south of the airport. If you dive with Buddy Dive, I imagine you can drop by Buddy Dive Resort and shore dive their house reef, which is a good one.

I was in the F1 unit at Sand Dollar and quite happy with it; spacious, nice, good value for money.

 

[Minnesota Cricket]

Thanks again for all the input. After plenty of searching we have come up with hopefully a really good solution. My family of 3 adults will be staying for our two weeks at a 2BR rental property called Sea Dreams. It is very spacious and has a large deck. It happens to be right next door to Belmar which is where the other family (6 adults) will be renting a 3BR apartment for the final week. We will likely spend our time not diving hanging out on our deck looking out over the ocean or enjoy or enjoying the pool at Belmar.

We all will be using the dive shop at Belmar for our dive packages. Both families will get a truck. Very excited to have this to look forward to after missing out this last year!

I also will be traveling to Cozumel with my dive shop for one week in March. Have not dove there since I was a newbie 17 years ago!

 

[drrich2]

Sounds good. Hope you'll post a trip report with photos later and describe the accommodations; for popular dive destinations, descriptions with photos of accommodations can be helpful to future trip planners weighing their options.

I hope you've been following the recent discussion on the CDC requirement for people flying into the U.S. from aboard to have a COVID-19 test negative prior to boarding. This is likely to be a 'thing' for your March Cozumel trip; hopefully it won't be in effect in December. With land-based trips it should be doable; just plan ahead where you'll get it done.

 

[Minnesota Cricket]

Following up - The trip to Cozumel went well and had decent weather all week. The dives were great but I would rate the dive shop/dive masters we had as just fair. After the dive shop owner/trip leader talked to them we ended up getting a discount one our last day dives, and we ended up getting a fantastic dive master who changed the whole perspective of how mediocre the previous ones had been.

As far as Covid protocol we really didn't have any issues. The hotel set up testing on location and outside of some issues getting results printed out (some of us only got the printed results a few hours before we left for the airport) everything went well. Staff and the vast majority of guests were wearing masks when inside. Pretty much no masks on the dive boat.

Based on everything I have been seeing it looks like Bonaire should be pretty well vaccinated by end of May, so back to normal by summer is likely. Hard to imagine a scenario where Covid will be a factor for our Christmas trip but one never does know.