On March 6th – 12th, 2010, we went with our scuba instructor Marcos and our dive club Parrot Island Divers to Bonaire, a small island about 50 miles north of Venezuela. We stayed at Eden Beach hotel in a studio room with an ocean-view balcony. The hotel was a beachfront number with its own cabana and dive shop. It was perfect except for the wooden-hard beds. We rented gear from Wannadive Bonaire, an outfit with great prices, fun staff, and unlimited tank rentals (which for us was important as we averaged 4-5 dives per day).
It was paradise.
Our first dive was at the Invisibles dive site. We checked our buoyancy and found dive buddies, then went under. My brand-new mask kept flooding and pouring sunscreen-tinged salt water in my eyes. I fixed it after that dive and had no more gear malfunctions the rest of the trip.
Within two minutes, we saw a spotted eagle ray in the distance. She was searching the sandy shallows for snacks and blithely ignoring our presence. After snapping my first-ever marine photos (of a ray—how cool is that?), we dove to a depth of about 75 feet and enjoyed the view.
The reef waved gently as if in a summer breeze. Parrot fish and trumpetfish danced around us in a friendly sort of way, while large French angelfish hovered just out of reach.
The Invisibles being our first dive, we consumed much more air than we would later, and we ended the dive after a mere 36 minutes. We were to make two more dives that day.
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