Dive Review of Harbour Village Beach Club in
Bonaire

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Harbour Village Beach Club, Nov, 2011, by James D Thomas, OH, US ( 2 reports with 1 Helpful vote). Report 6357 has 1 Helpful vote.
No photos available at this time
Ratings and Overall Comments 1 (worst) - 5 (best):
Accommodations		Food
Service and Attitude		Environmental Sensitivity
Dive Operation		Shore Diving
Snorkeling
Overall Rating
Value for $$
Beginners
Advanced
Comments	We have just returned from a week at Harbour Village Resort and had a wonderful time there. The resort grounds are beautiful and well-kept and sport one of the few real beaches on the island. Our one-bedroom suite was on the ground floor and opened up directly onto the beach (a feature we liked was that our key worked on both the front and back doors, so we could come and go from the beach without worry). Our room featured a spacious sitting area and a nice-sized bedroom with a very comfortable bed. The bathroom was spacious with dual sinks and a separate tub and very large shower. Though they advertise this as a kitchenette, it contained only a coffee machine, an old microwave, and a very small fridge, but that was all we needed. Those expecting to cook in the room should assure that their unit has more complete facilities. We were there for the diving, and Great Expectations does a great job for both boat and shore dives. We had the dive package which gave us a boat dive each day (2 divers for the price of one), and this was seamless, about a 30 second walk from our room, aboard a roomy Newton 42. Though Bonaire is known for its shore dives, the boat lets you take in a number of otherwise inaccessible great dives on Klein Bonaire. In the afternoon, we usually did a shore dive, either at the facility (follow a guide cable across the harbor channel at 40 feet under to a beautiful reef (Something Special) on the other side) or driving our rental truck around the island. Great Expectations offers unlimited (except for nitrogen narcosis) shore dives and makes it very easy, posting tanks by the parking lot to load in the truck. The boat operation went very smoothly, generally with the operation manager Mark guiding the boat and Nick providing dive master services. Nick was low key but effective, providing good dive briefings and giving support to my wife who is relatively new to diving. Boat dives on Klein Bonaire included Knife, Monte’s Divi, and our favorite dive of the week, the aptly named Just a Nice Dive. This was our only drift dive of the week and featured 5 or 6 turtles swimming around us and a big moray eel coming a long way out of his lair. Our boat dives on the main island included Alice in Wonderland, 1000 Steps, and the Hilma Hooker, a wreck dive on an old drug running freighter scuttled in about 100 feet of water. We also did a night dive (my wife’s first!) at Small Wall and were treated to about a dozen giant tarpons dive bombing us in search of the little stuff our flashlights were illuminating. For shore dives on our own, we chose the relatively easy access Andrea I and Oil Slick. In general the reef was quite healthy and teeming with a wide variety of tropical fish, including big schools of creole wrasse, yellowtail snappers, and blue tangs. Found one frogfish and several scorpionfish, two sharptail eels, many morays, and a carpet of garden eels in the sand of the harbor crossing. We saw no sharks or rays, although eagle rays are commonly sighted. Overall, wonderful diving, though without some of the excitement that the pelagics give. A fun feature was Muriel compiling photos and videos the group had shot during the week into a great video slide show that we watched on the last evening, with copies available for all. One somewhat negative at Harbour Village would be the food. We had a breakfast included each morning, which was generally OK but not stellar. Muffins were not toasted for their eggs Benedict and after sitting in the warming tray for a couple of hours were poached to solidity. On the plus side, though, they were more than happy to prepare one (or an omelet) fresh to order, so really no complaints there. Lunch was reasonable quality but quite expensive: easy to spend $50 for two. Better to grab a sub at Elle’s Deli, which is an easy walk. Dinner similarly seemed to have about a 50% premium over the very good restaurants on the island without a very enticing menu. We ate out every night, with our favorites being Wil’s Tropical Grill, At Sea, Bistro de Paris, Capriccio’s, Bobbejan’s, and Pasa Bon Pizza. Overall a wonderful week. This isn’t the opulence of a Ritz or Four Seasons, but that wasn’t what we were looking for. It’s a lovely resort with extremely friendly staff and a great dive operation. A final oddity was the clock in our room, which clearly had been designed for 60 Hz electricity, not the 50 Hz on Bonaire and so lost 12 minutes/hour, giving a whole new meaning to “island time”!
Websites	Harbour Village Beach Club
Reporter and Travel
Dive Experience	101-250 dives
Where else diving	Cozumel, Belize, GBR, Fiji, Maldives, Red Sea, Turks and Caicos, Hawaii
Closest Airport		Getting There
Dive Conditions
Weather	sunny, rainy, cloudy	Seas	calm
Water Temp	83-°F / 28-°C	Wetsuit Thickness	3
Water Visibility	50-80 Ft/ 15-24 M
Dive Policy
Dive own profile	yes
Enforced diving restrictions	Mostly kept with the divemaster but this wasn't enforced. Generally didn't go below 100 feet. Of course, for shore dives, we were entirely on our own.
Liveaboard?	no	Nitrox Available?	yes
What I Saw
Sharks	None	Mantas	None
Dolphins	None	Whale Sharks	None
Turtles	> 2	Whales	None
Ratings 1(worst) - 5 (best):
Corals		Tropical Fish
Small Critters		Large Fish
Large Pelagics
Underwater Photography 1 (worst) - 5 (best):
Subject Matter		Boat Facilities
Overall rating for UWP's		Shore Facilities
UW Photo Comments	Camera rinse buckets on the boat and at the dive center.

Report currently has 1 Helpful vote

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Dive Review of Harbour Village Beach Club in Bonaire

Harbour Village Beach Club, Nov, 2011,

Ratings and Overall Comments 1 (worst) - 5 (best):

Overall Rating

Reporter and Travel

Dive Conditions

Dive Policy

What I Saw

Ratings 1(worst) - 5 (best):

Underwater Photography 1 (worst) - 5 (best):

Dive Review of Harbour Village Beach Club in
Bonaire