I can't answer all your questions, but I'll give you my view on what I can. I can't tell you much about Bonaire - I was only there for a day trip over from Curacao. Looked pretty quiet. Too quiet for my taste, and I'm a boring old guy. Other than diving and the beach I didn't see anything to do. I'm sure there are Bonaire fans that would disagree - maybe someone will jump in here and give us a more in-depth assessment.

I've been to Curacao several times (going again next week), and gone diving a couple times. Curacao has plenty to keep a non-diver occupied. A good-sized town with museums, restaurants, shopping, etc. A large mall with both American and European stores, multiplex movie theater, food court, live entertainment, and so on.

There are large resort hotels with tour desks for day excursions - Island tours, Aquarium tour, ATV trail rides, hikes, and more.

For the diver there are plenty of dive operators with daily trips to the prime sites. They should be able to put you in with a group. The Hilton has a dive shop on-site with trips several days a week. Some of the trips used to be mixed dive/snorkel. If your wife just wants to paddle around on the surface you could see if they still do that.

Air fare to the island is high, but once there hotels and food are about the same as any of the other islands. Shopping in town was actually fairly inexpensive. Some very good prices on clothing and shoes. Last trip I got some Nikes for considerably less than at DSW.

I've never flown Insel Air MIA-CUR but I've always noticed when looking at the Arrival/Departure board at the airport most of the delayed flights are Insel. I'd like to fly JetBlue (I'm in BOS) but it's not daily and my schedule never matches theirs. I'm not a huge fan of AA but I've always ended up on them and so far never had a problem. Their 2x daily from MIA is convenient and if one of your travel days is a Saturday AA also has a CLT flight which is a lot easier than MIA. Also, AA includes the $39 Curacao Departure Fee in the ticket. Insel Air does not - you have to pony up at a desk in the airport. So there's 78 bucks toward your luggage fees.

If you decide to go to Bonaire but can't get good flights, you could fly to Aruba or Curacao and hop over. It's pretty easy. I think the Curacao Departure Fee to Bonaire is only $10.

Hopefully some more people will offer insight here to help you make your decision. Whatever you decide, hope you have a fun and safe trip.