This was our second trip to Bonaire and it was as fabulous as our first trip last year. After reading BT periodically over the last year, I’m hopeful my report doesn’t contain anything that might incite any barbed comments as is sometimes wont to happen on this message board. :-) My boyfriend and I tried the Continental red eye through Houston this year and everything went smoothly. The other Continental flight that arrived in Bonaire before us was already processed and gone when we landed so we didn’t have any huge lines.

We picked up our rental truck at Total and were on our way to the B&B. We stayed at the Deep Blue View B&B again this time. We absolutely love the DBV…Esther & Menno do a great job running the place and it’s like a home away from home. We wouldn’t stay anywhere else on the island. Our room was ready when we arrived so we got settled in and took a short nap before heading to pick up supplies at the market. We managed to get in two dives our first day before dinner.

Dining:
We had breakfast every morning at our B&B and bought food for lunches at the market so with the exception of one day we only ate out for dinner. This year we went to:
Bobbejan’s BBQ – so many people rave about this place so we decided to try it. It wasn’t my favorite. Coming from Kansas City we of course have vastly different bbq but I did like the sauce on their ribs.
City Cafe – we enjoyed a nice dinner here and there was a beautiful sunset to watch from our seats.
Pasa Bon Pizza – we absolutely love this place and couldn’t wait to go there. At home we always lament the fact that we can’t go out for Pasa Bon Pizza. It was as good as we remembered it and well worth the year wait! We ended up going there twice and enjoyed the leftovers for lunch the next day.
Wil’s Tropical Grill – we went to Wil’s during our visit last year and enjoyed it so we went back. It was as delicious as we remembered it. We had good service, good food and the coconut martini on special was scary good.
Bistro de Paris – this was our first time here and we enjoyed it. I took my boyfriend there for his birthday dinner. We had excellent service because we were the only customers there for quite a while. It slowly filled up with tourists and locals alike. We both thoroughly enjoyed our meals and the al fresco dining.
Eli Deli – we ate our one lunch out at Eli. Our sandwiches were good but I thought a tad pricey at around US$10-12 a sandwich, though that probably wouldn’t stop us from going back again.
Out of all the restaurants we visited, Bobbejan’s was our least favorite. I think the meal we had at the BBQ night at the B&B was one of the best meals we had on the island. Esther goes all out for the meal and it was delicious.

Diving:
We did all shore diving this trip (with the exception of one night dive) and managed to do 15 dives during our week. We didn’t see any lionfish but did see a couple of markers that looked like they’d been there for a while. The sites we visited: Invisibles, Bachelors Beach, The Lake, Hilma Hooker, Oil Slick (twice), Karpata, Ol Blue/Tolo, Tori’s Reef, 1000 Steps, Alice in Wonderland, Windsock, Margate Bay, Andrea I and Bonadventure on Klein. Also did a drift snorkel from La Dania’s to Karpata on our last full day - saw a turtle and several small squid during the snorkel.
Oil Slick – on our first dive at this spot we found an octopus in about 20 ft of water almost straight down from the ladder. It was in a hole in the side of a rock and of course I didn’t have my camera. We went back a few days later to the same spot around 5:30pm and it was there again so I managed to snap a few pics. Also saw a chain eel which we never saw last year.
Andrea I – on our return back to our entry point we spotted a 3-flipper turtle in about 20 ft of water. It took me a few minutes to figure out what looked strange about the turtle until I figured out it was missing a flipper.
Invisibles – saw two spotted eagle rays gliding by gracefully between the double reefs and an enormous green moray.
Bachelors Beach – found a good size black seahorse but of course didn’t have my camera with me.
Klein dive – my first night dive and my brand new, never been used Scubapro light flooded…luckily my backup light worked just fine. It was kinda cool to see the brittle sea stars opened up at night.

A few random musings:
Last year we didn’t believe anyone who told us we’d see lots of strolling donkeys on the island…I think we were there four days before we finally saw one and we only ended up seeing three the entire trip. This year was a different story. We turned it into a game of count the donkey and were up to a count of almost 100 by the end of our trip…they were literally everywhere this time. Not sure why the increase in sightings this year. Conversely, we saw a lot of flamingoes last year and hardly any this year.

No issues whatsoever with theft from our truck but then we didn’t leave anything in it.

On our sunset rum punch cruise with our B&B hosts, we discovered the birds flying alongside our boat were really good at catching cheese puffs thrown into the air.

Having each and every carry-on bag searched right before you get on the plane at the Bonaire airport is a pain in the rear. It’s already gone through the x-ray machine so what sort of contraband are you going to be able to sneak into it after going through security?!! Makes no sense to me.

We had a great time on Bonaire and can’t wait to go back…which won’t be soon enough!

We also noticed an abundance of donkeys during our trip in May- much more than on previous trips. A resident told us that the donkeys were roving into the more populated areas dues to a drought.

Thanks, Jewels. Love your profile pic...rosy cheeks...