Bonaire: Old Blue

Old Blue was a peaceful dive site, one of our favorites. We parked our trucks, geared up, and entered the water down a sandy, coral rubble beach. The reef was just a few feet from the entry, and a few rocks might have been problematic if there had been much surf. However, it was peaceful and lovely on both of our dives there. We dove there on day 1 (75 feet for 36 minutes) and again on day 3 (97 feet for 40 minutes – you can tell we learned to conserve air while there).

We saw our first of many puffer fish at Old Blue. He was huge!

We then got our second sighting of macro life. A large barracuda loomed suddenly on the reef before us and watched us warily. He didn’t seem keen on allowing us near a particular section of reef. We stayed politely away. I have a special love for barracudas, because one of the first times I went snorkeling, I saw one and tried to get near it – in other words, chased it. It was bigger than I was.

We were excited to see a pack of yellowtail tuna moving along against the current. Something about their grim faces and determined pace made me think of a small platoon of marching soldiers.

Lastly, we were excited to spot a lizard fish. They are very well camouflaged and sit very still, so we were lucky to see them. This photo makes it look very obvious, but it blended right in among the rest of the rubble.

Bonaire: Frogfish- and Seahorse-Hunting

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.

Bonaire: Oil Slick

We dove the inaptly named Oil Slick dive site in Bonaire twice: once on day 1 and again on day 2. I’m not sure why it’s called Oil Slick, because it’s a beautiful dive site with turquoise water and skittering crabs welcoming you to the site. You park, gear up, and giant stride off the cliff into the water, where it's a very short surface swim to the buoy marking the beginning of the reef.

Oil Slick ended up being one of my favorite dives in Bonaire, even though I don’t have much to say about it. The spot was peaceful and the reef was beautiful, though I’m told it was torn up a bit from a recent hurricane.

We saw the first of hundreds of spotted eels.

In all, Oil Slick was a great, relaxing dive site. My two dives there were 41 minutes at 84 feet, and 34 minutes at 90 feet.

Bonaire: Invisibles

On March 6^th – 12^th, 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.