Bonaire Day 4

Tuesday, June 2, 2009. I slept in a little longer today as my back bothered me all night long and was still bothering me this morning. We decided to do our first dive of the day off the pier out in front of the hotel to see if I was going to do okay with my back. As soon as I got in the water and dove down my back felt much better (probably because all the pressure was taken off the muscles under water). Shortly after we went under water I realized I had forgotten to put on my dive computer, but not to worry as we each have an extra pony valve pressure gauge and Eric can read the pressure in my tank with his computer also. We continued on with our dive, but did not see anything that we had not seen before. We did get to have the experience of being under water when a boat went overhead. That was a totally new sound and experience for me. You hear a noise that continues to get louder and louder, but you cannot pinpoint it in the water because of the way sound travels underwater, until it goes right over the top. We dove around and checked things out for a while and then headed back in. Upon getting back to the pier we were unable to locate Dick. Upon surfacing we noticed him on the surface way out in the water where the reef wall dropped off underneath him. He was swimming back and forth without his BCD on and we could not figure out what he was doing. I jokingly told Eric he probably lost our camera (our newest camera that we had let him use on the dive). Eric decided to paddle out and see what he was doing. Sure enough, he got out to Dick and he was busy trying to find the camera somewhere down below him. The camera housing has a couple of weights on it to weigh it down so it does not try to float to the surface when you are diving, but if you happen to remove the strap from around your neck, it will drop to the bottom like a rock. Luckily the neck strap is bright yellow and Eric was able to spot it. We then managed to all get out of the water with all of the equipment we went in with and in one piece. After we got dried off and were getting ready to head downtown for lunch and shopping, I happened to look outside down at the Pier and saw a very big iguana. So of course we had to throw him some crackers and Dick got some good video and Eric got some good pictures. Then we headed downtown to hit the dive shop. Eric wanted to get some new booties with a heavier sole on them as it has been very difficult to walk on the rocky coral shores here with the lightweight booties we have (especially having to haul two peoples tanks). Of course, you can't go in a dive shop without spending more money than you originally intended. Eric and Dick dropped some money at the dive shop and Lou and I looked around one of the other shops downtime that had some neat stuff. Then we ate lunch at a place downtown where we ate a few days ago and the food had been very good. We then headed back to the hotel and Eric and I decided to do another dive a little later on. We did not want to have to go too far so we went to a dive site called Windsock, which is just a short distance down to the road. The entry for this dive was the easiest so far and after we got out under water it was fabulous. It was like swimming around in a fish tank. There were all different kinds of fish and some we had never seen before. We saw at least three sea cucumbers, the biggest lobster either of us had ever seen, the largest spotted drum we had ever seen, a baby green eel, some arrow crabs and a bunch of really big fish. Of course, half way through the dive again our battery died, so we did not get pictures of some of this stuff, but we intend to go back to this dive site tomorrow morning. We had decided the day before that we were going to go to dinner at The Lion's Den restaurant which was at the Buddy Dive Resort. They boasted having Bonaire's best Key Lime pie. We headed there for dinner and had a wonderful dinner overlooking the water, but when it came time to order dessert we had a big let-down as we were informed they had no Key Lime pie. Oh well, dinner was still very good and the setting was very nice and the weather was perfect—what more can you ask for. Oh yeah, they also had a cute little kitty cat that we had to share some scraps with. Tomorrow morning we plan to head back to Windsock, so hopefully will get some more good pictures.