Bonaire Vacation Tips
Explore our Bonaire vacation tips on this page, and as well as all of our other pages about Bonaire snorkeling.
Restaurants
There are excellent restaurants in Bonaire in many surprising cultural varieties. There were also a lot of restaurants that had closed when we visited, maybe because of the poor economy, and some from storm damage. Unfortunately, the prices of the restaurants were a bit higher than we expected.
For your Bonaire vacation try the excellent lunch sandwiches and breakfasts at Eli's Deli. They have the best baguettes we have ever tasted.
And for a real treat for dinner make sure and go to Wil's at least once.
For a wonderful view and experience on your Bonaire vacation, and pretty good food, go after sunset to RumRunners and the Pizza Temple at Capt. Don's Habitat. You sit right on over the water and it is a beautiful and romantic experience. Look for the big Tarpon in the water under the lights. They make some excellent pizzas which are a more reasonable price than some of their other offerings.
You can read tons of Bonaire restaurant reviews here.
Don't forget to spray yourself down with bug spray before going out for dinner in the evening or you will get eaten alive.

Tipping
Tipping in Bonaire is similar to the states, but a bit lower. A tip of 10-15% is considered standard, 15% being for excellent service.
Service
The service in Bonaire is more laid back, less pushy and more European in style. Unlike in the states, folks seem to take longer dining in Bonaire. And generally your servers will not be as proactive as in the states. You will likely need to wave them over when you need something, and you almost always need to request the check. This is the standard, but you can still tell if you are getting good service or not.
Grocery Stores
The grocery stores on Bonaire are really very good. Nearly all the packaged products are labeled in Dutch, so don't expect to be able to read them (unless you read Dutch). But it is not a problem. It is all pretty obvious.
As would be expected from a Dutch influenced culture, the cheese is excellent. They also have excellent breads and sandwich meats, which makes for some tasty sandwiches when you want to spend less at restaurants.
We were surprised that there was not a lot of tropical fruits available. Mostly mangoes, bananas, oranges, and lots of Washington State apples, which we found comical (we grew up there).
You can get good yogurt, and there are lots of boxed juices available.
Interestingly the smaller grocery store in town has no bagged potato chips, but the bigger supermarket does (we like some chips with our sandwiches).

Convenience & Drug Stores
Most everything you could want is available (although we have no idea if they have your prescriptions). There are basically two types of shops in Bonaire. The $50 for a pair of flip flops tourist shops, and the $5 for a pair of flip flops local shops. When Nicole lost a flip flop to the sea, we choose the $5 version.

Ice Cream
There is an excellent ice cream shop in the Bonaire Harborside Shopping Mall that offers many flavors made in Curacao. The mango was a treat.
Have a great Bonaire vacation!
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