Bonaire - October 2008
I recently returned from yet another great trip to Bonaire. There is just something about Bonaire that keeps me returning year after year. I love the diversity of activities that appeal to my interests ranging from scuba diving to exploring the uninhabited parts of the island. Photographic opportunities abound including lighthouses, flamingos, sunsets, and of course the underwater world. There are not as many large subjects as other destinations but it is a macro paradise with an occasional eagle ray or turtle thrown in for good measure.
The people of Bonaire continue to be friendly. You won't find anyone begging as you walk through town. Most people speak english along with dutch, spanish, and papiamento.
I decided to stay at the Carib Inn and was very impressed with their operation. They are a small dive resort with 10 or so rooms. The rooms and grounds were well kept and the staff was very friendly and competent. They are located on the water less than a mile south of town. They have a message board for late arrivals and communication via email prior to my arrival was smooth.
I arrived from Aruba on a friday night and paid my Marine Park fee and had my dive orientation saturday morning. My first dive was off the Carib Inn pier and it felt good to be back in the water after 2 years. I have too many hobbies and diving took a backseat when I became interested in exploring some of the national parks in Utah and Arizona.
I did several more dives saturday and sunday adding the camera into the equation saturday night. I decided to use my old nikon 995 with the ikelite housing and ikelite substrobe 200 rather than spend $3000+ to house my new Nikon D300. The 995 is brutally slow now that I'm used to the D300 but I'm pretty pleased with the results. Of course I forgot how to use the camera and managed to forget to put up the internal flash the second time out. A little known fact about sea turtles is that they can sense when a diver's camera is not working. This of course led to a turtle to swim alongside me for the first 15 minutes of that dive. I'm pretty sure he looked into my housing and noticed the flash was down before he decided to taunt me by hanging around. After 6 or 7 minutes of being pissed at myself I remembered that this camera has a video mode and managed to get a few minutes of turtle video before he realized what was going on.
I had dinner sunday night with a group of people from the bonairetalk.com website and setup a dive on the Hilma Hooker with the "Tennessee Gang" of Kristi, Kenny, and Cindy for the following day. We had a great dive monday on the shipwreck and I think I managed to video Kristi during her wreck class as she followed the line through the Hilma Hooker. It's probably a good thing that I didn't tell her my track record when using somebody else's video camera underwater. Rumor has it I dropped somebody's camera a few years ago and didn't even notice that I had done so. Good thing that person saw it falling to the bottom of the sea (and that the bottom was only 100ft or so!)
Late monday night it started to rain. Showers are normal during the fall but this rain continued for the next three days. Bonaire is outside of what is considered to be the "Hurricane Belt". Somebody forgot to tell that to a storm named Omar. Omar formed almost 200 miles to the north of Bonaire and was stationary for a few days bringing near constant 40mph winds and rain along with waves crashing on the normally calm west side of the island. These waves caused damage to many docks and some seaside properties along with some damage to the shallow reefs.
I woke up tuesday morning ready to take a snorkel trip on the Woodwind with Darlene (another bonaire talk celebrity) but found that all the boats had headed into the marina for safe haven from the storm. Darlene and I spent the day driving around the island looking at the storm damage. She also insisted that we drive to the remote, east side of the island to check out the Spelonk Lighthouse (ok...maybe that was my idea). The normally dry, bumpy, dirt road was now mostly muddy and bumpy. It's a good thing I rented a full sized jeep and not one of those tiny suzuki wannabes. I was also amazed to see totally flat seas on the east side since the surf is normally crashing there. We made it back to civilization in time for a late lunch. We are still trying to decide what kind of meat our hamburgers were actually made with. Maybe it's better we don't know. (meeeoooow)
I met up with the Tennessee Gang again on wednesday to discuss an east side dive we wanted to do later in the week. After hearing about my trip the previous day Cindy insisted that we go see the Spelonk lighthouse (ok...again, maybe it was my idea), so off we went. The constant rains had now changed the normally dry, bumpy, dirt road (which was muddy and bumpy the day before) into a muddy river. We got about 1/2 way (2 or so miles) into the river before hitting an even deeper mud-hole that took a few minutes to carefully rock my way out of (hmmm... did I take the insurance option on this rental?) The 'road' had enough water flowing that I think there were currents in it. We probably could have had a good drift dive in the road. We decided that maybe this wasn't such a hot idea that Cindy (or maybe it was me?) had and turned around. While going through town one of the roads was blocked with a sign that said 'Omlehding' or something like that. I ASSumed that meant detour and informed Cindy that we were now Omlehdinging as we were going through all these dirt side streets. Of course there were no further signs and we wandered through quite a few dirt roads and alleys before finding our way back to a paved road. I later put 'detour' into Google translator and now I'm not sure what the heck we were doing since 'detour' in dutch does not translate to anything close to 'Omlehding'.
The storm finally moved away late wednesday and the sun was back on thursday! I wondered about the dive conditions and was told "zero vis" for the next day or two. I pondered that until after lunch and grabbed my mask and snorkel to see for myself. Ok...maybe they were right. I couldn't see my feet standing in waist deep water. I swam out to where I thought the reef might be and dove down. Once I got 8 or 10 feet under I could see for about 30ft. Hell... that's excellent vis in my neck of the woods. Dave (another bonaire talk member and fellow Carib Inn resident) was gearing up on shore so I gave him the OK sign. He later confirmed the 30ft visibility.
I met up with Kristi, Kenny, Cindy, and Bas (a local guide) early friday for an east coast dive at Lac Cai. We had a great 77 minute dive once we got out of the murky water at the start of the dive. We saw 5 turtles and over 30 eagle rays. Visibility was around 50ft. We left Bas and drove to the south point lighthouse and did another 60+ minute dive. It's rare to be able to dive in this area because of the surf and currents but our entry was easy and currents were minimal. Watch out for the urchins during entry and exit! Since this was the last day of diving for the Tennessee Gang we grabbed more tanks on our way north and did another two dives at Ol' Blue and Karpata. Lots of sand over everything from the shallows to as deep as you could see from the storm. Kristi spotted the largest lobster I've ever seen.
We drove to see the whale skeleton on saturday morning but the park wasn't open that early. Who's idea was it to get my ass up at 5:30am??????? I showed them some of the Indian Inscriptions outside of Rincon and we headed back to their hotel so they could gather up their luggage. Once they returned their rental truck and checked in for their flight we all piled into my muddy jeep and drove to the Donkey Sanctuary. The soft top windows were so muddy we ended up unzipping them so everyone could see during the donkey safari. This allowed good visibility but also allowed the donkeys to stick their snouts into the jeep in search of goodies.
I went all the way to Bonaire and what new language did I learn? Spanish?... No. Dutch?... No! I learned some 'southern' such as 'fixin' and 'dagumitt' :) Later that afternoon I dropped my new friends off at the airport and headed back to the Carib Inn for a much needed nap!
I was back on the house reef on sunday and then met with more Bonaire Talk members at dinner sunday night. Dinner companions were Ron and Diane, Barbara and Michelle, Sandy, and myself. This led to some new friends to plan a few dives with for the following week.
Sandy and I dove with Bas one day. We could not get permission to dive the salt pier so we did a drift dive to Karpata followed by lunch at a local place in Rincon (The Rose Inn) and then a dive at Alice in Wonderland. I tried the goat stew but it's not going to become one of my favorites. Bas found a seahorse on the second dive.
I highly recommend Bas Noij as a local guide. Whether you want to dive the east side or maybe gain some extra insight to the island, he is your guy.
Barbara and Michelle stopped by the Carib Inn one night for a 10pm dive to try and spot some coral spawning. We saw a nice free swimming green moray. I didn't see any coral spawning but I think Barbara did.
The rest of the week was a relaxing combination of diving and hanging out at the Carib Inn pool. I must have 'Big Kid' tattooed on my forehead. All the kids in the pool wanted to play games with me. I didn't mind but it sure seemed that any new 'Monkey in the Middle' rules were to my disadvantage!
I had a great trip, met some old friends, and made some new friends. I look forward to seeing all of you the next trip!
