Buddy Dive Resort, Bonaire, 10/5/99 - 10/14/99
Author: Randal Podratz

Just took my second trip to Bonaire(Oct5-14th)and I wanted to share my experiences with everyone. This is my first attempt at a post so please bear with me. My group consisted of five people with varied experience levels, but three of us have at least seven past trips to draw upon for comparison. For convenience I'll break my report into three areas; Transportation, the Resort, and the Diving.

TRANSPORTATION:

From reading past posts I'm sure everyone is familiar with the horror stories regarding ALM. Unfortunately I can now add to them. Even though my first trip to Bonaire in Dec of 1996 occured without any difficulties the continuous flow of posts regarding ALM had our group nervous about the upcomming trip. Unfortunately Air Jamaica announced their availability from Miami shortly after we booked, and paid for, our tickets with ALM. We had even held off purchasing tickets because we had heard rumors that Air Jamaica was planning on doing just that, but as it was approaching crunch time we made the decision to go with ALM.

Upon boarding our connecting flight, in Miami, on ALM we learned that the flight would be making a lay over in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. While this was an inconvenience and not included in our itinerary it only cost us approximately an hour and 45 minutes either way.

The major problem we had was in making our return flight. We were scheduled for a 07:30 flight our final day. Upon arrival at the airport, well in advance of our departure time, we learned that since we had not reconfirmed our departure flight upon our arrival we were being placed on stand by flight status, and that the first two flights off the island were full. We were advised that they may have been able to get us onto an evening flight, which of course would have messed up all of our connections. This certainly caused more stress than I really needed in my life!!! After approximately 25 minutes we were advised that they found room for us on the flight from Bonaire to Curacao, but we could still be on stand by once we got there. Eventually we made it back to Miami on time to make our connecting flight, but I'll probably never get back the extra years of stress that 25 minutes caused!!! Perhaps reconfirming a flight as soon as you arrive is common practice, but we had heard nothing of this from our travel agent, the airlines, or the airport staff, had no experience with it in other locations, and did not have to do it the last time we flew with ALM. Their were also a number of other passengers who had the same problem...

It was ironic that during both the flight from Bonaire to Curacao and from Curacao to Port-au-Prince to Miami there were a number of empty seats. The only other problem was a piece of severely damaged luggage, which could happen on any airline I guess. Enough about ALM onto the resort.

RESORT:

The first time I was in Bonaire I stayed at the Sand Dollar. We decided to go with Buddy Dive this time because of a good package deal, and because of several good recommendations from people who we know who had been there. I don't wish to give the immpresion that I'm slamming Buddy Dive, I'm not, they have a lot going for them, but we had some problems with them.

As with most package deals tanks and weights were included. The first problem that occured was that the resort didn't have enough weight to supply every diver with the correct amount needed. Perhaps they normally don't have as many guests at one time as they had, but it didn't seem over crowded. The staff were as helpfull as possible, in some cases providing people with the weight from their personal gear. Unfortunately this resulted in a lot of pilfering of weight belts. It got to the point where it was safe to leave your computer in an unsecured gear room, but you had to take your weight belt back to your room and lock it up! I know of one person there that lost his weight belt twice before he wised up.

Buddy dive has nitrox at a cost of $8 per tank. I gladly paid $100 for unlimited use, which I was easily able to make pay for itself. Unfortunately on a number of occasions even though I paid for unlimited use of nitrox it wasn't available. In Buddy's defense it was my understanding that they had just installed their membrane system in June or July of this year and a shortage of O2 storage capacity, a shortage of nitrox tanks, and a lack of trained staff to fill tanks caused the unavailability at times. Their nitrox filling station appears to be in good condition and well maintained...and from what I understand they intend to increase their capacity for nitrox in the near future.

Unfortunately on a number of occasions they were also not capable of supplying air tanks...I did hear that they had sand dollar assist them in filling tanks because they were unable to keep up with use...this resulted in a short fill on occasion, but wasn't a real often occurance.

I can't say enough about having a vehicle included with the package...
it saved us alot of money compared to last time having to rent a vehicle. Also the drive up air station is a cool idea...no humping tanks across half of the resort to a vehicle...just pull right up and load as many tanks as needed(as long as you got there before all the full tanks were gone.)

For some reason all of their three bedroom condos are on the second floor...wasn't a real big deal. The condos weren't as large or as well equiped as Sand Dollar, but we prepared most of our own meals and the condo had everything we needed.(Including a t.v. to watch the Packer Game...go Packers!) One note...in the three bedroom condos each bedroom has an attatched private bath except the downstairs bedroom...that bath is unattatched and approx 1/3 the size as the others.

My package had six boat dives. During my stay I only saw two boats in use. Both somewhat older and serviceable. The slower of the two, the Gutu, seemed to be a little more convenient for diving. Boat trips rarely take more than a few minutes so speed is of no consequence, however I didn't observe any safety equipment on board. To my knowledge neither of the boats in use had o2 or any other kind of first aid gear.

The procedure for a boat dive consisted of signing for a time slot. We didn't know which boat or what dive site it was going to untill we were under way. At the time of our first boat dive they had two boats going out at the same time. It was mass confusion. No one had any idea what boat they were supposed to be on, and neither did the dive masters. The dive masters didn't have a master name list showing who signed up for the dive other than to do a head count, and there were a number of people switching boats at the last minute without anyone keeping track of them.

The dive masters were pretty cool especially Murphyn, and I'd certaninly recommend him, but they did double duty as the boat captain...I guess it's not a big deal, but I prefer to have someone stay with the boat. It was the rainy season and lightening was pretty common...guess I would have liked someone who could have given a recall to the boat if it was necessary...turned out not to be a problem though.

The day prior to our departure, during our preperations for check out, we received fairly large bills from the dive shop for extra dives that we didn't do. Three of our group had been charged for two extra boat dives. Their records had also shown that another had also done all six of her boat dives when she hadn't done any.(She had been sick the whole trip!) Only one person of our group had his boat dives recorded correctly. We eventually weren't charged for the two extra dives, but I think it was more that they were tired of arguing about it. They had lousey record keeping when it came to the boat dives and who was on them. I don't blame the guy for his attitude...he was going by the records that had been given him, and it was a case of believing his people or us although we could document the date and time of every single dive we did through our computers. To their credit, once the problem was straightened out, they gave a voucher for the missed boat dives to the girl who was sick...they didn't have to do that.

Our package also included transfers to and from the airport, although they refused to make the transfer back to the airport on our last day. Be aware that even if your package includes the return transfer if you need to be at the airport prior to 08:00 they won't do it.

DIVING:

Over all the diving was great. Buddy Dive's home reef, Buddys reef, wasn't too bad. The shallow area was in poor condition with a lot of dead coral. The real reef started at about 25-30ft and sloped down to a sandy bottom at approximately 135ft. Had a lot of good dives right at the resort. Although Bonaire is out of the Huricane belt this time of year is their rainy season. It never rained for very long, but it did rain fairly hard on a couple of occasions. Visibility averaged 70-80 feet...more than good enough, but I'm sure once the rainy season is over it'll go back to 100+ft.

One last note...When I was in Bonaire in Dec of '96 I didn't see a single insect. With the rainy season comes the arrival of a particularlly villainous form of mosquito.(no doubt a descendant of tyran-a-skeeter-saurus) Highly recommend that if you're there during that part of the year to bring a repellent.

That's all...gotta go and plan my next dive trip!!!

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