Bonaire is called a diver’s paradise because there isn’t much else to do on the island but eat and dive. We exhausted all the touristy shops in its capital city, Kralendijk, in just over an hour. Though cruise ships dropped off hordes of tourists daily, there wasn’t much for them to do unless they were divers.
It was fun to sit and observe the three types of people on Bonaire. The locals were often poor and talked loudly in their bright native Papiamentu tongue, spattered with English and Dutch. The “boat people,” as we came to call the cruisers, were clean, well-fed and groomed, and decked in a strange assortment of swimwear and gaudy jewelry. The divers, however, were the largest group, who held a sunburned, grimy air and instantly recognized each other by their habit of constantly checking their watches (monitoring surface interval times).
Divers were always friendly with each other, and even upon chance meetings shared great finds with each other. We were given precise instructions to find an orange seahorse at one dive site by a wiry, leathery man at a restaurant who overheard me saying to my dive buddy David that I’d kill to see one.
Regrettably, we followed his instructions and spent an entire dive—almost a full hour—searching the surrounding reef for the tiny creature, to no avail. I’ll have to wait for my first seahorse encounter.
We were also told about a frogfish off the beach of our hotel. We again followed specific instructions and spent a whole dive searching for the elusive, well camouflaged frogfish, with no luck. But the frogfish was one of David’s ultimate goals to see, so we dove the site again.
After 15 minutes of searching, I spotted it—a well-hidden yellow frogfish had moved onto a bit of green coral and revealed itself. I did a happy dance underwater and was hailed as the frogfish-finding champion for the rest of the trip.
No comments:
Post a Comment