I managed to make it there (good) and make it back (not so good) without much of an incident, so here is my not particularly anticipated trip report. I'll break it down into a bunch of random categories to ensure that everyone gets the minimum information possible.
Flights:
Came in on Saturday PHL->MIA->BON. Aside from having to leave the house at 3am, and discovering that US airways/Orbitz had managed to book my wife and myself into the same seat (on a fully booked flight no less, but they did figure it out) the first two flights were mostly uneventful. Next time, I suspect that I will be going for the PHL->ATL->BON since it gives me an extra 4.5 hours on Bonaire, rather than the Club America lounge (which does have free booze, so I guess its a trade-off). Whoever invented the checked baggage charge can go and fornicate themselves. With vigor.
Returned on a Thursday and went BON->CUR->MIA->PHL. Again, discovered that my wife and I were occupying the same seat, but they did figure it out. I would refer the software engineer who wrote the software that made it possible for 2 bookings to exist in the same seat to the comment I made some moments ago. With even more vigor. Very little excitement on any of the flights, although my suggestion that children under the age of five would be more than comfortable in pet carriers in the hold met with surprising resistance.
Accommodation:
We stayed at the Harbor Village. Airport transfers went smoothly, the room was very nice, the air conditioning worked (it was definitely warm while we were there, and the wind was virtually non existent, so AC was nice), good bed, good bathroom, good view, good cleaning service etc. As far as the hotel itself goes, yes it is on the expensive side for Bonaire, but if you like a quiet well maintained hotel with limited interaction with children (there were almost none while we were there, and frankly that's a plus in my view) then it's probably worth it. We did have a problem with the hair dryer, which was reported and resulted in us getting fresh ice twice a day (no - made no sense to us either - there may have been a slight language barrier on that one), but that was the worst of it. The razorwire topping the 10-foot fence designed to keep the rest of you oiks out of my view looked reassuringly sharp - a few menacing dogs would have been nice too, but I guess that they are hard to come by on the island. The free Internet was appalling for the first couple of days, but on the third day a nice man came with a new wireless access point (they were doing some upgrades evidently) for our building, and shortly thereafter I had the best hotel connection I have ever used for the remainder of the stay (I was downloading stuff from steam at a very solid 500kbytes/sec day and night) - whether it will stay that way during the busy season is anyone's guess, but for a Caribbean island you are unlikely to see anything better.
One good thing about HV is its proximity to Klein - it is one of the few places where you can easily Kayak over (takes about 10 minutes - try doing that from the Plaza) - we took snorkeling gear over several times, and the reef at the closest point is truly fantastic, and a hot spot for turtles a lot of the time (we had 7 sitings in an hour the last time we went over).
Island Travel:
We did end up renting a truck, but only for the last couple of days due to an ear infection I picked up which halted my diving 2 days early. If you are reasonably fit, you can walk from the hotel to the main town in 15 minutes or less, and there are enough shops and restaurants close to HV to get by if you need to grab food/booze/sundries/more booze. Next time, I'm planning on renting a truck for about half the time for greater access to remote sites, but the lack of a truck really wasn't holding us back. If you do drive in Bonaire, and you happen to have a good technique for avoiding the many, many lizards that are either extremely fond of the sun or just too sad to go on, do let me know.
Food:
We actually ate at the hotel restaurant way too often, but it was just too convenient ah well. Thoughts on where we did eat:
La Balandra (hotel restaurant - as far as we could tell closed to the general public) - consistently excellent. Big fan of the fish tacos for lunch, and the catch of the day Caribbean style never disappointed. The resident crew of Iguanas is entertaining, if a little pushy, and the resident tarpon turn up nightly to keep the population of little fish down to a manageable size. Cheap? Not so much.
Patagonia - good selection of booze, and they serve a mean slice of cow. Not sure what the selection is like if you are a vegetarian. Pretty sure I don't care.
Eli Deli - Just down the road, does a nice omelette for breakfast/lunch. The resident lizards are rather partial to the boiled eggs.
Bistro de Paris - phenomenal. Their lamb shank special was so good I got it twice. Their vegetable ratatouille was, according to my lovely wife, also very good, but that is unlikely to affect me at any point in the foreseeable future, at least until sheep go extinct. As a side note, not sure what their house wine is, but 2 glasses of it had me on my proverbial donkey. I blame the altitude.
Honorable mentions to Sunset grill and Pasa Bon Pizza. Really we didnt have a bad meal while we were there.
Diving:
The visibility was pretty mediocre when we arrived (down to 30 feet or so at its worst) - no-one seemed to be sure why and I'm hoping it improves before we head back there. Things were improving towards the end of our stay (up to maybe 60 feet or so in my estimation). Not great, but maybe the extra nutrients will be good for the coral, and at least we can look forward to better visibility next time we come. The water temperature was somewhere between 82 and 86 degrees (depending upon whose computer you looked at) at all depths and at all times - I was in a 3mil and anything more would have been overkill.
I spent a disproportionate amount of my time diving on the HV house reef/something special (which really are extremely close together - not much of a swim at all). As has been noted, the "reef" outside HV is a mix of sand and coral rubble with a wreck at about 55 feet. Not spectacular at first glance, but it seemed to get more interesting the more I dived it - I personally saw seahorses, octopus, several squid, turtles, an eagle ray, several large resident tarpon, jawfish, garden eels, mantis shrimp etc, as well as the usual collection of fish, and when I was tired of looking for macro subjects I wandered over to something special for a more complete reef experience and was rarely disappointed. I did a whole lot of (pretty shallow) solo dives with my camera and found myself ignoring opportunities to go to several sites further afield because I seemed to have a better chance of seeing something interesting right where I was (and also because its fun to have a whole reef to yourself). I did do boat dives to Klein, as well a couple of sites towards the southern end of the island, but more often than not I was gravitating towards more dives on the familiar reef - I guess I'm just boring like that.
Mark and Muriel, who run great adventures (the resident dive op) deserve special mention for being genuinely nice people (unlike me), and Mark managed to take my "I'm never going to try to learn to dive again, not after the Egypt experience" wife from "maybe I'll try discover scuba" to "well scuba diver doesn't sound too bad" to "how many skills from open water?" to full certification in less than a week without pressuring her at all. Just as well really - not sure how plan B (hold her and the scuba equipment under the water until something good happened) would have gone down.
The inevitable bad thing that happens wherever I go:
I believe I mentioned the Fiji coup, the war that started while I was in the middle east etc. I'm not saying that this particular curse had anything to do with the 200,000 gallon naptha candle that we enjoyed while we were there, but bad things seem to happen whenever I go diving.
Photogramaphy:
I did do one of the planned 2 days of photography course with Fish-Eye photo (the other one was sadly lost to my ear infection - there's always next time though), and that was fantastic. To be honest as I did the first day of the course it became increasingly clear that my knowledge of my camera was more than a little limited, and the reason I sucked was primarily that I had little to no idea of how to use the tools at hand. After the first day, I had a better understanding of both photography in general, and my new camera (a Canon G11, which Tim had little trouble showing me how to use, despite it not being one of his). Now when I take pictures and they suck, I know that it has more to do with my lack of artistic ability, and less to do with the fact that I had set up my camera like an addled five year old.
The two best pictures taken with my camera are below. Once of them was taken by me, over the course of about 35 minutes of trial and error, readjustment, bitter recriminations and the probably near-blinding of the subject (sorry nature - at least I didn't fin any coral when I was there). The other one was taken by Tim, who borrowed my camera for *one shot* and then gave it back. Bastard. I shall leave it up to you to guess/decide which is which (frankly, its not that hard)...
Anyway - that's all I can be bothered to write, and I have my doubts that any of you have made it this far, so that's about all. I intend to return to Bonaire in the near future, so I hope that they finishing installing the new lightning rods at the oil depot before my flight touches down.
Dave
Flights:
Came in on Saturday PHL->MIA->BON. Aside from having to leave the house at 3am, and discovering that US airways/Orbitz had managed to book my wife and myself into the same seat (on a fully booked flight no less, but they did figure it out) the first two flights were mostly uneventful. Next time, I suspect that I will be going for the PHL->ATL->BON since it gives me an extra 4.5 hours on Bonaire, rather than the Club America lounge (which does have free booze, so I guess its a trade-off). Whoever invented the checked baggage charge can go and fornicate themselves. With vigor.
Returned on a Thursday and went BON->CUR->MIA->PHL. Again, discovered that my wife and I were occupying the same seat, but they did figure it out. I would refer the software engineer who wrote the software that made it possible for 2 bookings to exist in the same seat to the comment I made some moments ago. With even more vigor. Very little excitement on any of the flights, although my suggestion that children under the age of five would be more than comfortable in pet carriers in the hold met with surprising resistance.
Accommodation:
We stayed at the Harbor Village. Airport transfers went smoothly, the room was very nice, the air conditioning worked (it was definitely warm while we were there, and the wind was virtually non existent, so AC was nice), good bed, good bathroom, good view, good cleaning service etc. As far as the hotel itself goes, yes it is on the expensive side for Bonaire, but if you like a quiet well maintained hotel with limited interaction with children (there were almost none while we were there, and frankly that's a plus in my view) then it's probably worth it. We did have a problem with the hair dryer, which was reported and resulted in us getting fresh ice twice a day (no - made no sense to us either - there may have been a slight language barrier on that one), but that was the worst of it. The razorwire topping the 10-foot fence designed to keep the rest of you oiks out of my view looked reassuringly sharp - a few menacing dogs would have been nice too, but I guess that they are hard to come by on the island. The free Internet was appalling for the first couple of days, but on the third day a nice man came with a new wireless access point (they were doing some upgrades evidently) for our building, and shortly thereafter I had the best hotel connection I have ever used for the remainder of the stay (I was downloading stuff from steam at a very solid 500kbytes/sec day and night) - whether it will stay that way during the busy season is anyone's guess, but for a Caribbean island you are unlikely to see anything better.
One good thing about HV is its proximity to Klein - it is one of the few places where you can easily Kayak over (takes about 10 minutes - try doing that from the Plaza) - we took snorkeling gear over several times, and the reef at the closest point is truly fantastic, and a hot spot for turtles a lot of the time (we had 7 sitings in an hour the last time we went over).
Island Travel:
We did end up renting a truck, but only for the last couple of days due to an ear infection I picked up which halted my diving 2 days early. If you are reasonably fit, you can walk from the hotel to the main town in 15 minutes or less, and there are enough shops and restaurants close to HV to get by if you need to grab food/booze/sundries/more booze. Next time, I'm planning on renting a truck for about half the time for greater access to remote sites, but the lack of a truck really wasn't holding us back. If you do drive in Bonaire, and you happen to have a good technique for avoiding the many, many lizards that are either extremely fond of the sun or just too sad to go on, do let me know.
Food:
We actually ate at the hotel restaurant way too often, but it was just too convenient ah well. Thoughts on where we did eat:
La Balandra (hotel restaurant - as far as we could tell closed to the general public) - consistently excellent. Big fan of the fish tacos for lunch, and the catch of the day Caribbean style never disappointed. The resident crew of Iguanas is entertaining, if a little pushy, and the resident tarpon turn up nightly to keep the population of little fish down to a manageable size. Cheap? Not so much.
Patagonia - good selection of booze, and they serve a mean slice of cow. Not sure what the selection is like if you are a vegetarian. Pretty sure I don't care.
Eli Deli - Just down the road, does a nice omelette for breakfast/lunch. The resident lizards are rather partial to the boiled eggs.
Bistro de Paris - phenomenal. Their lamb shank special was so good I got it twice. Their vegetable ratatouille was, according to my lovely wife, also very good, but that is unlikely to affect me at any point in the foreseeable future, at least until sheep go extinct. As a side note, not sure what their house wine is, but 2 glasses of it had me on my proverbial donkey. I blame the altitude.
Honorable mentions to Sunset grill and Pasa Bon Pizza. Really we didnt have a bad meal while we were there.
Diving:
The visibility was pretty mediocre when we arrived (down to 30 feet or so at its worst) - no-one seemed to be sure why and I'm hoping it improves before we head back there. Things were improving towards the end of our stay (up to maybe 60 feet or so in my estimation). Not great, but maybe the extra nutrients will be good for the coral, and at least we can look forward to better visibility next time we come. The water temperature was somewhere between 82 and 86 degrees (depending upon whose computer you looked at) at all depths and at all times - I was in a 3mil and anything more would have been overkill.
I spent a disproportionate amount of my time diving on the HV house reef/something special (which really are extremely close together - not much of a swim at all). As has been noted, the "reef" outside HV is a mix of sand and coral rubble with a wreck at about 55 feet. Not spectacular at first glance, but it seemed to get more interesting the more I dived it - I personally saw seahorses, octopus, several squid, turtles, an eagle ray, several large resident tarpon, jawfish, garden eels, mantis shrimp etc, as well as the usual collection of fish, and when I was tired of looking for macro subjects I wandered over to something special for a more complete reef experience and was rarely disappointed. I did a whole lot of (pretty shallow) solo dives with my camera and found myself ignoring opportunities to go to several sites further afield because I seemed to have a better chance of seeing something interesting right where I was (and also because its fun to have a whole reef to yourself). I did do boat dives to Klein, as well a couple of sites towards the southern end of the island, but more often than not I was gravitating towards more dives on the familiar reef - I guess I'm just boring like that.
Mark and Muriel, who run great adventures (the resident dive op) deserve special mention for being genuinely nice people (unlike me), and Mark managed to take my "I'm never going to try to learn to dive again, not after the Egypt experience" wife from "maybe I'll try discover scuba" to "well scuba diver doesn't sound too bad" to "how many skills from open water?" to full certification in less than a week without pressuring her at all. Just as well really - not sure how plan B (hold her and the scuba equipment under the water until something good happened) would have gone down.
The inevitable bad thing that happens wherever I go:
I believe I mentioned the Fiji coup, the war that started while I was in the middle east etc. I'm not saying that this particular curse had anything to do with the 200,000 gallon naptha candle that we enjoyed while we were there, but bad things seem to happen whenever I go diving.
Photogramaphy:
I did do one of the planned 2 days of photography course with Fish-Eye photo (the other one was sadly lost to my ear infection - there's always next time though), and that was fantastic. To be honest as I did the first day of the course it became increasingly clear that my knowledge of my camera was more than a little limited, and the reason I sucked was primarily that I had little to no idea of how to use the tools at hand. After the first day, I had a better understanding of both photography in general, and my new camera (a Canon G11, which Tim had little trouble showing me how to use, despite it not being one of his). Now when I take pictures and they suck, I know that it has more to do with my lack of artistic ability, and less to do with the fact that I had set up my camera like an addled five year old.
The two best pictures taken with my camera are below. Once of them was taken by me, over the course of about 35 minutes of trial and error, readjustment, bitter recriminations and the probably near-blinding of the subject (sorry nature - at least I didn't fin any coral when I was there). The other one was taken by Tim, who borrowed my camera for *one shot* and then gave it back. Bastard. I shall leave it up to you to guess/decide which is which (frankly, its not that hard)...
Anyway - that's all I can be bothered to write, and I have my doubts that any of you have made it this far, so that's about all. I intend to return to Bonaire in the near future, so I hope that they finishing installing the new lightning rods at the oil depot before my flight touches down.
Dave
