I've been looking into flights to Bonaire, and they've gone up over $100 in the past 2 days. Any idea why this might be? Do you think they'll go higher, stay the same, or come back down? Could it have something to do with people buying trips as Valentine's gifts?

No, I believe everyone is looking to rip people off these days however they can. I'm sorry for the negative spin-but I believe it's true.

Yes, I think the flights you're looking at will go higher, stay the same and go down (if you're looking far enough ahead all three will likely happen!)

Keep checking and put email alerts out for lower fares.
From past research I've heard that Tuesday is often the day for lowest prices.
Look at the fare trends on Kayak to determine if flights *might* go up or down.

I checked out the Kayak trends. It was trending down, but then shot up. If you look closely, it looks like the fare almost always closely lags the search volume, which leads me to believe that when a lot of people are searching a destination, the airlines jack up the price. I hit lots and lots of websites trying to find the best deal, so for such a small destination I probably significantly increased the search traffic. So I probably caused the increased fare that I'm now cursing. That stinks.

The high season for traveling is now until the first of May. If you are looking to travel within that time span, you will pay higher costs in air, hotel, and everything else. I looked for 2 years for decent air fare to Curacao and finally went last May. I ended up going through Aruba on Continental and then changing to Insel Air to get to Curacao. American Airlines was charging almost twice the fare with an overnight in Miami. You might try looking that way. I believe Insel Air and DAE fly to Bonaire also from Aruba.

I've been looking for months for a decent rate to Jamaica for July and never found it. We ended up canceling Jamaica (for more than one reason) and using air miles on Continenatl for a domestic flight to Key West, FL. I'm just glad we are going somewhere and it's not costing me an arm and a leg. Good luck with your search. I know it can be very fustrating.

Thanks KVR. I've looked at doing the Aruba-Bonaire jump on 3 caribbean airlines, but the total was always more than the single-carrier option. In general I don't mind paying higher fares to travel at a desirable time (getting out of NH in March is pretty nice). It just stinks that there was such a precipitous spike in fares over a 2 day period, especially if I caused it. A little advice would be to go easy on the number of searches you do, especially to low-volume destinations. Almost all the searches returned the same results as Orbitz anyway.