Great job Buddy Dive. You are very professional, boats were never over-filled, dive masters were friendly, rental dive equipment was in great condition. Friendly and helpfull staff.
- Free Wifi
- Free parking
- Visit hotel website
Great job Buddy Dive. You are very professional, boats were never over-filled, dive masters were friendly, rental dive equipment was in great condition. Friendly and helpfull staff.
Buddy Dive is a nice resort (especially with Buddy Reef in its backyard), with the only entrance at the front of the property, where a security guard sits at watch during the night. Even with that, we had a BCD stolen off of our patio during the night. Unfortunately, the staff at Buddy Dive was very nonchalant about our loss and offered no assistance helping to recover our property. While we were there, another couple at the resort had their regs stolen from their patio. They ended up finding the regs stashed in a dumpster. So beware...be certain to lock up all of your equipment in your room. The resort also has a limited number of lockers for individual use, but you must bring your own padlock. Not sure how safe that is either since the lockers are fairly isolated.
I loved this place. Quiet and well located. The staff and dive's crew were 100%.Save your skin from mosquitos (not a resort's fault) and don't expect easy internet conexion (it really can be great).I just will come back!!
Arrival experience: Arrived early morning with a large group. Slow staff. Guests either need to get on “island time” or will go crazy.
Room (general): 3 bedroom condo that we shared with another couple and one solo diver. Good kitchen, small bathrooms. Beds OK, linens OK. One very old, small TV in living room.
Bathroom: small and shower did not drain well. Ran out of hot water quickly.
Bed: below average but sleepable.
Houskeeping: Leave a tip every day, and housekeep is excellent.
Restaurants: We ate breakfast on site every day, once at the pool bar, and once at the Lion’s Den. Breakfast buffet was great but don’t try to take anything with you out of the eating area. Lion’s Den was very good but expensive. I had a great steak.
Bar: Good bar but pricey.
Grounds: Diving is king here. Grounds were clean with excellent dive support facilities.
Pool: nice pool
Staff attitude/service: Overall nice and helpful, but on island time.
Parking: gravel lot was a bit tight. Cannot apply US standards as this is a foreign country.
Misc: If you speak some Spanish, use Spanish with the locals. Papiamentu is phonetically similar to Spanish, and Venezuelan influence is strong here. I used my limited Spanish with the locals, and they were thrilled at my attempt to communicate with them. The Dutch are complete jerks to the locals.
If you’re not a diver or snorkeler, don’t travel to Bonaire.
House Reef was a good dive site.
We only did our diving with Buddy's so I have no comments on the resort itself but as far as the diving operation, it was awsome!
PROS...............
Every employee we encountered at Buddy's were top notch.The dive crew was extremely friendly (Dive Master/Captain March was our favorite) and knowledgable. The drive thru for tanks is very convenient. Their pier is large so you never feel like you are being trampled over by other divers and it has multiple rinse tanks, a shower and a large room to hang and store gear and there are 2 entries to their house reef. Resident tarpon "Charley" is also a lot of fun to swim with.
The restaurant staff was also #1 (especially Bart and Guis) They not only provided excellent service but were also friendly, helpful and made us laugh. The view from the dinning area was spectacular at sunsets and we were also visited by iguannas and pigeons while dinning.
CONS..........
One problem we encountered was with the camera shop on site. Due to a problem we had with our camera we had to rent one while there. They recommended that we have them change batteries between each dive (no problem) but when they changed the batteries between dives 2 & 3 they did not get it sealed properly and when we entered the water (from a boat dive to Klein) the camera immediately started filling up with water. We aborted the dive and then spent the next hour suffering with anxiety about whether they were going to try to blame us for any damage done and worried that all our previous pics were ruined. To our relief, they took full responsibility and our pics were all okay. They gave us a 2nd camera and extended our rental time so we could use it on a night dive. Sad to say that the flash on the 2nd camera failed to work and the "new" camera card was full after only 27 pics. Although we rented their camera/strobe combo, I was also not happy with the settings on the 1st camera and was not able to change them. There did not seem to be a diffuser on the flash and most of our closeup pics are washed out and there is alot of backscatter for our distance shots. For a camera shop that claims to be experts and want to fix your camera settings so you can take the best underwater photos ever, they are not very good with their own camera settings. My inexpensive Intova camera/strobe takes much better photos than their expensive SeaLife camera.
For boat dives, I wish that they would preplan and list the dive site to be visited on the sign-up boards. You never knew where the boat was going until it pulled away from shore. The destination was determined by whichever guest was loudest on the boat. I would have liked to have done more northern sites (such as Rappel) but of the 5 boat dives we did, 4 of them went to Klein and on one of the Klein dives the current was so swift that we aborted that dive after only 25 minutes (it was way too much work and was starting to give me an O2 headache)
The dive store itself is small and before orientations is completely packed so trying to make a purchase during this time is out of the question. Just leave and return at a later time.
It would also be nice to have individual storage lockers that could be secured. We were never fully comfortable with leaving all our dive gear in a locale that everyone had access to.
The rum punch party was fun but I do not recommend the BBQ. Although we ate a couple of meals at Buddy's and the food was good, the BBQ food was only so/so and not worth the price.
All things considered.... I will definately be using Buddy's diving for future visits.
We booked a standard room that costs about $200 after taxes and all. We walked in and the room is so small, basically, you come in and hit the bed. The bathroom is extremely small and smelly. It looks like they don't have a septic system. Everytime we leave the room, we always shut the bathroom door. When we come back, the hotel room smells so terribly even though the bathroom door was closed. There's no tub and the hot water turns off after 15 minutes so you can't really shower more than 15 minutes because the water gets too cold after that. The A/C doesn't work at all, it functions as a fan. They have a tv in the room but it's always in the way so you can hit your head really hard if you don't watch out of the tv. After we checked out, we noticed on the bill that they charged us $7 and it said voluntarydonation. We were never asked for any donation, so watch out for those little charges. Also, internet in the room costs $8 for 2 hours of usage. They are nickel and dime at this place. We will never be back at this smelly resort.