After spending the last few months reading posts on BT, we finally visited the great island of Bonaire. First and foremost, thanks to all BTers for the comments, suggestions, thoughts, opinions and advice contained in all the posts I read over the past months. each one made the trip that much nicer and easier. Well, here goes on my first trip report. As I'm still not in the digital age, I don't know how to post my pics from my MX-10. Sorry, it's all words, no show.

Flight: Air Jamaica from Chicago to Bonaire via Mo Bay. Good news, we made it in one day and all of our luggage came too. Bad news, delayed 5 hours in Mo Bay on the return and the flight the day before was totally cancelled. I never understood the posts about the seats....now I do. It's like sitting on a toilet seat. I can't describe how strange it is to see people dismantling the plane at 30,000 feet to find a seat cushion in an empty seat that doesn't hurt them. Oh well, not again on AJ.

Accommodations: Buddy Dive. Very nice two bedroom condo, clean at the start and cleaned daily. Everything in working order. Good view of the ocean. Steps to the dive shop. All nice folks working there who addressed our concerns right away, even though we had almost none. Grounds were in good condition. Not fancy but very acceptable. Would stay again though, as explained later, we might want a smaller resort/condo site.

Dining: Repeated nights at Pasa Pizza(with the stoplight in front and Cactus Blue. Pasa had a great dinner salad and wonderful spicy sausage pizza. Second night the fish special pizza was also wonderful.
Cactus Blue had amazingly great soup. the Fish soup and White Chicken chili (soup more than chili) were excellent. Blackened Grouper was great as was the Rainbow Runner. also, conversations with Corina were great on dive sites (she used to manage Buddy's shop) and all thngs Bonaire and other parts of the world. Our first night was Halloween and all staff were made-up. Lots of fun and good food.

Diving: How great is shore diving in Bonaire!! So much better than anywhere we've ever been. Buddy's drive through tank service is just plain easy. OlBlue, Oil slick Leap, Angel City, Invisibles were just awesome. Boat diving on Klein Bonaire was nice. Sampler was my favorite.
Did Larry's wildside. What a hoot! He's a fun character and Eddie was a great guide. Bad visibility but who cares. Southern sting ray (3), lots of big green moreys, turtles and millions of big tarpon. Night dives off Buddy's were quite nice with lots of octopus, big tarpon and cuddlefish.
Visibility overall was 40-60 feet at all sites but a few on Klein were over 60. Though I missed seeing clearly into the big blue, I saw everything I wanted to see and more. Coral was overall in such good shape.
Only issue was the number of people gearing up for night dives at Buddy's. Felt like you needed a reservation for the down ladder. From sunset to about 2 hours afterwards, just reallycrowded and the ocean was a bit too bright from lights.

Home and still weaving a bit as though I was still under water, I can't thank BT enough for your help in providing us with the advice and information needed to make it a great trip. Hope you all have a great winter cause I know Chicago will remind me everyday that I'm not in Bonaire anymore.

Rob

Great trip report and glad that you had a good time. The only way to stop PBD is to book another trip!

Rob - really glad that you enjoyed your first trip to Bonaire. I'm sure you'll book another one.