repeat visitors: it took us three years to come back, but then it is a long way to Bonaire from Austria.

accommodation: Eden Beach this time, very nice. Just bring your chairs to the beach (5 m from porch) every day to watch the sunset... or walk 15 steps (we counted) to your morning swim... very efficient & friendly cleaning service... large fridge for stocking Polar and other foodstuff... highly efficient air conditioning for those who like that...

rental car: came from Total - the staff was friendly & efficient and our pickup in perfect condition

dive shop: Wannadive again, everything perfect (especially our rental gear), funny, smiling, ready to accommodate special requests (taxi to Klein at 7 am - Bart did it without raising an eyebrow)

diving: from Red Slave to Karpata and Klein (Wannadive boat), it was just beautiful. Highlights were an enormous (at least 2 m) turtle sleeping at Sweet Dreams (where else), six stingrays at Red Slave (mostly awake), a feeding eagle ray at Tori´s Reef (in the shallows - we watched for 10 min, he did not bother in the least), an octopus at Salt PIer who had ventured rather far from his hiding place and was in a panic to get back quickly, an enormous barracuda (who was rather reluctant to move at all) at Red Slave... various turtles...

East coast: we went out with Larry´s boat three times because we liked it so much; everything perfectly organized, highly competent DMs (ask Gijs to find a shark and he will... find three; and if there are no sharks he will find a cave with six lobsters sitting in a row), incredible fish life (over 100 tarpons in the white hole, rays flying by in pairs), many turtles...

dining: my brother loves steak and had that everywhere he could get it. Richard´s has by far the best steaks (and the best table on the island on his pier - we got a reservation for our last night but then it rained...) with Patagonia as a runner up. Mona Lisa´s barracuda dish was excellent. A special highlight was our trip to Maiky´s Snack one evening (he opens at night if you make a reservation), he offers a delicious goat stew (and has a very charming family).

moskitos: as we did not use the air conditioning in our rooms we succeeded in feeding quite a few generations of moskitos. Eden Beach does provide moskito nets on request which helped. Aside from that, every restaurant we went to had bug spray. The lady who did our rooms sometimes sprayed a few of those monsters to death - but that seemed to attract still more of them.

internet: chat´n´browse is the place to go to. We had a laptop and used Michael´s wlan service which worked perfectly (and is very fast). (Eden Beach does offer wlan, too, but they charge a lot more...) I even managed to produce boarding passes for our return flight.

thanks: to all those who have provided valuable information on this wonderful board!

promise: we will be back again :-)

Nice report!

"The Hills Are Alive With The Sound of Bonaire." Great report my Austrian brothers and sisters.!

Hallo Irmgard !

Ein schöner Bericht. Ich nehme an Ihr seid über Amsterdam angereist. Mit KLM oder Arkefly ?

liebe Grüße aus Wien


OK, back to BT-mode (no secrets for other BTers)

A nice report. I presume you travelled via Amsterdam. By KLM or Arkefly ?

best greetings from Vienna

yes we flew via Amsterdam (KLM) - this time I booked online which worked very well. The only thing that made me mad was the stupidity of the KLM staff at Flamingo airport, they refused to check our luggage through to our final destination just for the fun of it (I know it is technically possible, even if you change airlines) so that we had to jog across AMS airport to get our bags on the way to Munich...

we had also considered Martinair to CUR, but wanted to avoid another layover and having to drag our bags across another airport :-), also online tickets for BonExel etc didn´t seem to be available.

Great trip report! I'm so sorry we didn't meet while on Island. We were at Eden Beach from Dec 26-Jan 4.

If it's any consolation, AE told us they checked our luggage all of the way through to our final destination, but when we got to San Juan, we found out they didn't.