Buddy Dive Resort

Great place, the appartements are well designed, we had an appartement for three, each room had its own bathroom. Kitchen is well stocked with pans and utensils. Bring your own tea and coffee. Dive centre is well organised and the house reef is fab. Restaurants are very good, good value and nice food. There are vegetarian and vegan options. Staff are pretty friendly and helpful. I would stay here again.

The location is great, and it is very handy to be able to just rent a truck at the resort, assuming you are diving. Our room had very low water pressure in all of the bathroom showers at all times. Reported to the front desk and nothing ever changed. Literally the water would go down to a trickle and even shut off all together for 10 seconds before resuming said trickle. Staff and service at the restaurant is atrocious and food is marginal. Cleanliness of the rooms is not great. When we arrived we found an open box of condoms in one of the nightstand drawers...ewww....and used kleenex under the bed. They did empty our trash, but never swept...and as careful as you are...the floor gets sandy. They would randomly make the beds...which we cared nothing about....and kept bringing us towels upon towels even though ours were hanging....and per their policy...if they were hung, that means you use them again....but they just kept bring us more and more that we didn't need. Our room was not ready when we arrived even though it was after 4 pm. Transportation from the airport was fine, however i would splurge for a cab on the way back to the airport as the transportation loaded up multiple flights at one time and then proceeded to unload all the luggage for the flight leaving a half hour later than ours first. We didn't need much from the dive shop as we brought all of our own gear and didn't do any boat dives. Check in there was fairly easy, then grab your weights and a gear locker key and you are good to go. The drive through tank pick up was really nice and we never had to wait for full tanks of air or nitrox, they were always available. I doubt we would stay here again.

This was our third visit to Buddy Dive and sadly our last. The location to dive sites both north and south is great and the tank drive through is convenient to shore dive. The room was great with a good view and was cleaned well daily. The bigger issue is with the majority of the staff here. The front desk and 2 of the restaurant servers were the only staff that were friendly and helpful. The bar staff was basically non existent and it was a chore to get any type of service. We didn’t do any boat dives but our limited experience with several dive shop staff was not friendly and even rude at times. It seemed since we were not with a big group or boat diving that we were an inconvenience to deal with. We don’t expect over the top service but basic friendliness and not avoiding eye contact to serve you should be a minimum.

Our group of three couples recently stayed in a three-bedroom apartment at the Buddy Dive Resort. While the resort itself is located on a beautiful expanse of ocean-front property, the customer service needs an entire overhaul. I think they have so many hospitality “interns” coming every six months, there’s absolutely no consistency in service. The resort prides itself on being “cashless” but the room charges/billing process is a complete disaster. Our group was on a meal plan with coupons for dinners, lunches and drinks. Not ONE server applied any of these meal/drink coupons properly over seven days. There were so many rules of what you could/couldn’t use them for – none of them communicated to us before hand or consistent from meal to meal. The managers don’t seem to communicate with the restaurant at all. The food is average at best. The pizza in particular left a lot to be desired. Little cheese. Burnt crust. Very few toppings of choice. Perhaps the biggest Buyer Beware: the Fish and Chips. Five people ordered it and all five dishes were undercooked, making all our lunches inedible. The guided dives were extremely overcrowded with guides doing just the minimal work required of them. The apartment was generally good but the living area, kitchen and downstairs bathroom were hot and humid throughout our stay because the AC units are only in the bedrooms. And speaking of the downstairs bathroom, the shower leaked extensively because the doors weren’t installed properly. The pools were filthy every day as were the chairs around the pool. Surprisingly, the rental trucks were actually in pretty good shape and proved to be life-savers in terms of getting around the island easily. There are numerous other dive resorts around Bonaire that offer better accommodations, food and beverage, and customer service. Don’t spend your money (or try to use your meal coupons) here.

I went to the resort to check it out. Friends with Scuba.com are going there in late May. I was very impressed and I will be returning there. I went to their Friday BBQ. The dinner was excellent and reasonably priced. I sat right on the sand and watched the sunset. Beautiful place.