How the tiny island of Bonaire changes lives for the better
By Eileen Ogintz
Elizabeth Godsey was miserable. She was on her way back to a job she hated in a city that was too crowded from a scuba diving trip to Bonaire.
But unlike most who wish their vacation had lasted longer, Godsey, 32, who lived in Washington, DC working in a corporate job, decided to do something about it.
She found a diving club and told the instructors she wanted to quit her corporate job, move to the Caribbean and teach diving. To their credit, they didn’t laugh.
Six months later, she had done just that and six years later, she is here on the island of Bonaire captaining the dive boat this afternoon at Harbour Village. “No regrets,” she said smiling.
Bonaire has long been known for divers as it has one of the earliest National Marine Parks—the Bonaire National Marine Park was established in 1979 and rings the entire coast. The island has more than 80 official dive sites, including many that are just off shore and others around the nearby island of Klein Bonaire. It’s also a popular destination for kite surfers and wind surfers.
While the island is part of Holland, the family-run 40-room Harbour Village where we are staying attracts mostly Americans, said Jessica Gonzalez, whose husband’s family built the resort. The mom of three grown sons, Gonzalez said she met her husband Frank when she was working here in the early 1990s on an internship from the Cornell University Nolan School of Hotel Administration.
The resort, she said, attracts everyone from multigenerational families (there are two 4- and 5-bedroom beach houses) to single women attracted to Bonaire because the island is so safe—very little unemployment or crime. Women especially (including me!) love the resort spa where I enjoyed a tropical healing massage (A bargain at a resort for $195 for 90 minutes) as well as a facial. (Thanks Gemma for a great massage!)
Rooms here start at $350 in summer, $450 in winter, but many guests opt for dive packages that start at just over $6000 in winter for a week including lodging, breakfast and six dives (which would cost about $150-200 each). Harbour Village was built by Gonzalez’ father-in-law in the 1990s. “Bonaire is like the old Caribbean,” she said…totally different than other islands. An old Bonaire marketing campaign said the island “unhurried, unspoiled and unforgettable.” And that still is true today.
Guests, many who have been here before, are looking for what many vacationers seek these days—something different. “They don’t want to come to the Caribbean and find Miami Beach,” Gonzalez joked.
A real plus for divers: “You don’t have to go in a boat for an hour… the dives are all close,” said Craig Zetley, who has been coming to Bonaire for three decades from Milwaukee. All three of his kids, now grown, learned to dive here, he said. “The whole family could go shore diving,” he said, explaining there was no need to pay for a boat, just a tank of oxygen for each person, making it far more affordable.
“The best part was teaching the kids about nature,” he said, adding that Bonaire was always a safe place and that Great Adventures, located at Harbour Village resort, is an excellent place to learn and to dive.
Godsey added that she sees many families diving together and kids learning—they can become certified at age 10. Scuba diving is a popular sport for parents and teens. IN fact, the Hiles family came from Britain with two young teens. “I asked our diving instructor where to go,” said the Julian Hiles. “She said Bonaire and I’d never heard of it…here we are and it’s great.”
“There are few sports you can share as a family,” Hiles said.
For teens, a stay here and diving gets them in touch with nature and away from electronic devices, without a fight” said Godsey, noting that everyone tends to focus on something different.
“I really like it,” agreed Corrin, 16. “My sister gets excited about everything we see and then we talk about it… and she is a lot more sporty than me so it’s nice to have something we can do together.”
Some people love looking at the variety of fish, Godsey said. Some simply like the quiet of being underwater. There is even one man on board the dive boat with us who has made it his mission to track down and kill Lionfish, an invasive species. “
Gonzalez added that it’s not difficult either to get younger kids away from devices. “As soon as they get here, they are running around looking for iguanas, lizards, turtles and wanting to snorkel,” she said. The resort, because it is small, goes out of its way to customize guests’ stay, whether they want a private family boat excursion, fishing, sailing, spa, or getting certified after taking an E-PADI course before leaving home. Yoga classes are starting as well with a resort wellness instructor.
There are three dives a day here from the resort and snorkelers can join as well. Most of the dozen on board have dived here before. “Diving together creates special memories,” Godsey said.
Harbour Village, with just 40 rooms including suites with small kitchenettes and beach houses with full kitchens. is ideal for a family. It’s only a 1.5-mile walk into the town of Kralendijk—most people on this island of just 27,000 live around the town. Harbour Village Beach Club has its own private beach—the only resort with one on the island—a full marina, spa and excellent over water restaurant La Balandra which offers a special “catch of the day” each lunch and evening as well as pastas, steaks, burgers and more.
This is also a place divers can come solo as people readily make friends on the dive bot and “divers are a friendly group,” said Zetley who has come on this trip solo. His three grown kids, he said, still love to dive but with work schedules, it is hard to get everyone together at the same time.
As for Elizabeth Godsey, she has no regrets six years later. She lives with her boyfriend, also a dive professional, and thanks to Bonaire being part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, she enjoys free health care, unemployment insurance, a 40-hour work week and more benefits. The food, she added, is very good for such a small island, though she does pine for Thai.
People come all year round to dive, kite and wind surf, especially as Bonaire is out of the hurricane belt. Increasingly, she added, Bonaire is attracting other nature lovers- birders, mountain bikers among them. The pace is slower.
She gestures toward the clear blue water around us as we wait for the divers to return to the boat. “This is my office,” she says with a big smile.” “This is my backyard…why leave?”