Bonaire is now one of the safest places to travel to! At this moment, everyone from all over the world is welcome on Bonaire again if you fly via The Netherlands, Curacao or Canada and with a negative PCR test result! Bon bini bek!
Corona on Bonaire
What started as a virus in China, far away from all of us, ended in a situation that we never could imagine. The whole world in lockdown, WHAT!?
I remember March 14, 2020. We were at the airport, waiting for our guests on the flight from Amsterdam. The Covid-19 virus had already spread widely, but not on Bonaire. Standing at the airport, we received the news that Curacao had completely closed its air space! Would Bonaire do the same? Yes, a few hours later, Governor Reina told us that Bonaire would close the airspace too. All tourists that were still on island were called to go back to their home country a.s.a.p.
Partly open again!
3 Months later, in June, people from Curacao and Aruba were able to travel to Bonaire again and in July also people from a few low-risk countries in Europe. YES! We were up and running again (slowly, only 1000 tourists per week were allowed on Bonaire). During the months of lockdown, we and our homeowners used the time to update some of our accommodations, restyled our office, we designed a new logo and website and thought of many creative and fun things for our guests to make your stay on Bonaire unforgettable! So happy to see that our guests enjoyed it all in July and August. We went sailing with our guests, organized a few Happy Hours on Friday and when you read the latest reviews on Tripadvisor, they all had a blast!
Back to square one, new lockdown
But unfortunately, the inevitable happened in September; the corona virus arrived on Bonaire and spread locally. A new lockdown followed and even Code Orange was given to Bonaire. In Europe this basically means: Do not travel to Bonaire!! We were back to square one and all reservations were cancelled again. Restaurants, bars, shops..they all had to close their doors for a while. Bonaire is suffering. Yes, we do get financial support from The Netherlands, but since Bonaire depends on tourism so heavily, many people already lost their job or must sit out this period at home with less income. Businesses are heaving trouble keeping their head above water.
The people on Bonaire are very eager to fight this virus and to get it under control on the island. We wear masks and practice social distancing. It worked and resulted in the fact that the number of infected persons didn’t explode.
Bonaire is open again!
GREAT NEWS! At the moment of writing this, Bonaire is down to almost zero active cases of COVID and is going back to code Yellow on November 4th!! For Europeans this means they can easily travel via Amsterdam to Bonaire. We have our fingers crossed that our North American friends can visit Bonaire this year with direct flights from the USA and Canada as well. The good news for North Americans is that they can already visit Bonaire if you are flying via Curacao. For ALL incoming travelers, a negative PCR test 72 before arrival on Bonaire is required. The latest information about travel to Bonaire and the COVID situation here can be found on www.bonairecrisis.com