| Spring Break in Bonaire April 2022 | |
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Sarah worked her magic again and arranged an excellent spring break trip for us. In these days of covid it is especially challenging to travel, much less travel internationally. However, Sarah set up a Buddy Dive week for us during Robert's spring break. We were there just as he was starting high school and really liked it. It is still a whole lot of fun in the sun. We flew down on Saturday and back the following Saturday. In a testament to a great vacation, it would have been fine if we'd been able to stretch it out to two weeks. After Sarah booked the week in Buddy's Resort, arranged the tickets, provided proof of vacinations and boosters, passports and diver cards, we were on the plane flying over the Caribbean to Bonaire. |
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| Four year ago, a bit less than half the divers were using nitrox blends. We were air divers but listening to the discussion about the benefits of enriched air (extra oxygen means less nitrogen build up, less chance of decompresssion issues, more time underwater and really a wider safety margin — as long as you don't go too deep). This time, we took the online course for nitrox and finsished up that course with Austin at Buddy's to be certified nitrox divers. Our first nitrox dive was around the house reef; it was great to get used to scuba gear again and see the reef right past the pier at Buddy's. |
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After a lovely dinner at Rum Runners just up the coast, we got up the next morning, fresh with our nitrox experience, and headed to what we have agreed is our favorite site: Oil Slick. But... Something felt off to me. Sarah said I set good example by aborting my dive just after we sank below the surface. I signaled to Robert and Sarah to go back up and said I just wasn't feeling it and I headed back to the shore while they contiued on and had a great time. I enjoyed my time watching the other divers and doing a bit of snorkling. After a good surface interval for Sarah and Robert, we headed down to Bachelor Beach, another favorite. There I felt much better and we all enjoyed the dive (but our favorite food truck, King Kong Burgers, was taking the week off). |
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| Bachelor Beach is the opposite of Oil Slick in terms of entry. It's the one real sand beach we've been to on Bonaire (compared to Oil Slick's rocky coast). As expected, the sunsets were lovely as dinner time called to us. |
| The next day, while Robert was doing a Reef Restoration dive (he took the class to be certified in that four years ago), Sarah and I drove north to Jeff Davis — the name seemed anacronistic to us in these days of removing the emphasis on southern civial war icons. But Jefferson C. Davis and his wife (or daughter) were early dive medicine pioneers. |
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| Aftet connecting back with Robert and getting in a good surface interval, we headed to another favorite: Salt Pier. Unfortunately, as we got far enough down the coast to see, there was a ship taking on salt at the pier. No diving Salt Pier when it's actually in use. So we headed a bit further south to Pink Beach; which turned out to be very nice. |
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| Robert was working again on the coral trees the next day. Sarah and I dove the reef around Buddy's to sneak a photo of him working and to check out the wreck of La Machaca, just a bit north of the resort. It really is astounding still to me to walk down to the pier, grab a tank and jump in to such a cool spot. We thought to catch up with Robert towards the end of our dive (knowing he'd have more air than us) but there are more coral trees than we were aware of and we missed him. |
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| After another stellar sunset, we did it all again the next day: Robert worked on coral, this time a boat dive to the coral trees on Klien Bonaire, and Sarah I returned to Oil Slick — I was missing that first chance to dive there. |
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| We caught up with Robert and headed back to Oil Slick; it really is our favorite. That jump entrace and the reef right off the coast is just great. And did I mention we like the jump and just snorkling and swimming around there? I love the shot below where Robert apears to just be walking across the ocean... |
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On this dive, we ran across this parrot anchored (well, weighted) to the bottom. Clearly not the more common parrotfish. As part of our surface interval, Robert and Sarah caught up with the Titan Ultimate Frisbee team's game against Episcopal — crazy to be able to watch the live stream from Bonaire (we're sorry the Titan's lost the game, but it was close). Robert and I arranged for a night dive with Ani that evening. It's really different since your focus is so much more concentrated only being able to see what the light ahead illuminates. The tarpon did not disappoint, at least one came by several times to see if there were any snacks in our lights. That was easily the biggest fish we saw over the week. |
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In addition to the tarpon, Ani pointed out several eels and lobsters doing their nighttime things. You can almost see the lobster tail in the flashlight beam to the right. The next day, our last dive day, we headed to Salt Pier in the morning. We were correctly confident that the salt ship would have been filled and sailed by then. I managed to see this sea turtle on our snorkle out to the pier (Robert and Sarah were a bit behind me and missed it, unfortunately). Salt Pier lived up to its reputation in just having huge numbers of fish to check out. |
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One of the many other divers at Salt Pier took this photo of us after the dive; thank you anonymous diver. After a surface interval looking for King Kong burger at Bachelor Beach again, we decieded to head back to Oil Slick because... |
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I took this video of one of Robert's Oil Slick jumps and then accidently took another one (you have to stick with it... sort of an interesting oops). All that diving takes it out of you, even when you have a great book to read. That was our final dive on this trip; the next day we had the morning to gather our gear and say goodbye. It really was a great break. With any luck, the next time we visit, we won't need negative covid tests to come back home (we were all negative, thankfully). |
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Vacation notes:
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