After our red-eye flight, we made it to Bonaire around 5 a.m. Bonaire time (which would be 2 a.m. Phoenix time). We picked up our two bags (which thankfully both made it) and headed over to pick up our rental car. We got a teeny-tiny little Chevy Spark. Eric says he believes the wheels on his Vespa were bigger than the wheels on this car. It is a cute little car that is an orange-copper color. We can just fit four tanks and all our dive gear in it with the back seat folded down.
We drove down the road a ways to our hotel and after we got all our stuff up to the room we ended up crashing on the bed and sleeping for 4-5 hours. Since we needed some food to have for breakfast every morning we headed down to the Warehouse (one of the two main grocery stores on the island). Unfortunately, it seems everyone on the island goes to the grocery store on Saturday also. After making our way through the packed store, we checked out and made it back to our hotel.
Next we headed down to the dive shop to do our check-out dive and then came right back to the hotel to do our first dive off the pier (since we were all wet already). This dive gave us a good chance to both check out our cameras, Eric with his new digital SLR and me with our “old” digital camera. We got a few good pictures but it was mostly a learning experience for both of us. We actually did spot two different octopuses, but of course they were hiding pretty well. I think I have discovered I am better off just taking video for the most part.
After our dive we got cleaned up and headed out to find our first real meal since Houston the previous day. We ended up at one of the beach bars at Buddy Dive resort. We then headed back to our hotel very exhausted from a full day.
Day 2, Sunday, October 4, 2009.
We woke up fairly early. Eric looked out the window first thing and saw a “cruise ship” pulling in. We later found it was not a cruise ship but a ship belonging to Tom Cruise. Eric had some breakfast and went down to the pier to see if he could get some bird photos and also figure out our plan for the day, while I lounged in bed a bit longer. He was not gone long. It seems there were no birds to be found on or around the pier. Anyway, he had time to contemplate where he wanted to go, so we made plans to head to the north to two different dive sites, one called Oil Slick Leap and the other called Bari Reef.
We packed up the car with four fresh tanks and all our gear and headed north. We first went to Oil
Slick Leap. It used to be that the entry was via a giant stride into the water, but I guess the last hurricane that came through rearranged the landscape and made that type of entry much more difficult. Now most people use the very nice stairs to enter the water. As soon as you hit the water there is stuff to see. We did not see anything too out of the ordinary, but got some photos of a spotted drum and some blennies (the photos of the blennies are for the cats).
Then we got out of the water and decided to head to Bari Reef which is right next to the Sand Dollar. Again, nothing out of the ordinary as far as “wildlife” here, but we did see a large school of jacks. This was another nice dive, though. After our dive here we headed down to “Mandy's Place” as we call it. The actual name of the restaurant is El Mundo. I am convinced they have the best food on the island. I had a chicken salad sandwich, which I swear is the best chicken salad I have ever had anywhere, and Eric had the chicken sate.
After a fabulous lunch we headed back to our hotel to change out the batteries, etc. in our cameras and head out for yet another dive. We decided to make it easy on ourselves and just dive off the pier again. It was about 4 p.m. by the time we got in the water and I have never seen so many fish. There were school after school of different types of fish such as blue tangs and french grunts. We did a really long dive, about an hour and a half, and then headed back in.
After we rinsed all our gear off and got cleaned up we headed back down to Buddy Dive to the Lion's Den restaurant. We had eaten there last time we were here and the food was really good. It is a little expensive but most of the dishes make two to three meals. So now we have another two meals we can have in our hotel room (we have a fridge and a microwave, etc.). Tomorrow we have a dive planned on the east side, which from what we have heard offers the best chance to see large palagics such as rays, turtles, and possibly even sharks.
Day 3, Monday, October 5, 2009.
We woke up early this morning so we could eat breakfast and get our gear ready to head over to the east side for our scheduled boat dive with Bonaire East Coast Divers. Luckily the winds were relatively calm for Bonaire and thus the surf was relatively nonexistent. Yet, we were still diving out in the open water, so it was a tad choppy but nothing compared to usual. Our first dive was a bit disappointing. We were all geared up to see some large pelagics and only ended up seeing a hog fish. I think it was mainly because the seas were fairly calm that there was not much to see. Our next dive was a bit more interesting. We dove a place called The Hole. We saw some rays, at least 3-4 turtles, lots of tarpon, a huge green eel, several large schools of fish, and a lobster.
After our two boat dives we decided to eat at the Beach Hut next to Jibe City. The food was excellent and you can't beat the view. We sat and had lunch with our boat captains/dive masters and had a nice visit with them. We ended up being the only two people booked for the day, so our dives were like a private tour.
After lunch we headed back toward our hotel. Part way back I spotted a couple hawks that were diving into a shallow body of water to catch fish, so I pulled the car over and got some good video of them doing their dives. Further on down the road a ways we saw some wild goats and got a good picture of them. It was like we were on safari just heading back to our hotel.
Once we got back to our hotel we changed out batteries, etc., in the cameras. Then we headed down to the pier for another dive to check things out in advance of the night dive we were planning on doing later. We mostly stayed fairly shallow and found lots of good stuff to photograph. We found several eels, several types of shrimp, and several turtles.
After our dive we headed back to our room and had some of our leftovers from the Lion's Den restaurant. Then we geared up again and headed down to the dock and waited for it to get dark. After it had gotten sufficiently dark, we climbed into the water. Once we got in and got started on our dive our lights were overwhelmed by small critters, worms, fish, etc. We did not end up staying out very long as they were becoming very annoying bouncing off your hand/body and getting in your face. However, Eric did manage to get a couple good pictures while we were out. One picture was of a banded shrimp and another of a brittle star. Then the tarpon showed up to get an easy meal by having us point out fish with our dive lights. Eric decided he did not want to play God with the fish, so we headed back
Day 4, Tuesday, October 6, 2009.
Well today was a lazy day. We slept in and when we finally crawled out of bed we decided to drive into town to see if we could find a place to eat breakfast. We ended up doing a lot of driving around as the place we wanted to go to had no parking because the parking lot had been blocked off for celebrations going on this week in town and everyone had parked on the street. We drove through town and then came back and stopped at the Last Bite Bakery and got a couple cinnamon rolls. As we needed to go to the dive shop downtown we ended up parking by Cultimara grocery store and walking back into town.
As we were right by “Mandy's Place” we decided to have breakfast there and save our cinnamon rolls for tomorrow morning. Eric tried the Dutch pancakes and I had the American Style pancakes. After our breakfast we headed across the street to the dive shop to buy a new compass as the one we had with us broke. Then we headed back to our hotel.
We decided to have some more of our leftovers from the Lion's Den restaurant for lunch and then headed out to the hotel pier for a dive. We found lots of small critters such as several types of shrimp, a small eel, and an arrow crab on our dive.
We were planning on coming back to the room and having a snack after our dive and then head out for another dive, but we got lazy and just decided to rest and pick out pictures to post on the blog site. We are planning on heading down to have dinner at Cactus Blue tonight. Tomorrow we have another boat dive planned—this time to Klein Bonaire.
No comments:
Post a Comment