Bonaire — Labor Day 2018
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We decided to get out of town at the end of summer to celebrate Robert's start of high school and take a week to relax. Sarah connected us with Buddy Dive in Bonaire (thanks to Cammie at PADI travel). Buddy treated us well and Bonaire was great for diving! It was well worth getting up early on Saturday the 25th to get checked in, orientated and have a relaxing evening. We took our first shake out dive the next morning. The house reef at Buddy's is a fine way to get back into diving (it has been about a year for us). Even the snorkeling is great right there. (That's Pablo the parrotfish; we kept an eye on him all week.) |
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| To help divers get their buoyancy control back, Buddy has a buoyancy obstacle course. We just passed through, but it was interesting to run across on that first dive. Robert had some sinus issues so we stayed pretty shallow. |
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Clearly, we were pretty relaxed pretty quick :) Before dinner Sunday night, we took in the Coral Restoration presentation and learned how they are working to restore the reef. Robert was so jazzed he decided to take the Coral Restoration Diver course for a day and a half. The next day we completed our shake out dive (a little decongestant worked fine for Robert) at Buddy's house reef then jumped in the truck, provided as part of the "Drive & Dive" package, and headed south to Salt Pier. It could hardly be more cool that we ran into two sea turtles just off the beach barely after getting our fins on and submerging! |
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Cool, but in a slightly less friendly seeming way, we also saw a sea snake down deeper. Of course we spent a lot of time over the week perfecting our underwater dabs. Sarah and Robert (above) have it down. I, on the other hand (below left, with Robert), clearly do not. Sarah took that picture of Robert and me on our next dive of the day (you can drive through the air service to drop off empty — well, used — tanks and pick up fresh tanks): Weber's Joy. (Actually, Weber's Joy is just south of the pin in the map, that's 1000 steps — Robert counted 74 — we thought that was too many steps in scuba gear so we we opted for the next site south.) |
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Sarah and I rounded out the day with one more dive at Buddy's Reef in the evening. (They have air tanks right by the dock for dives on their house reef and for boat dives.) This time, we found the local wreck as well. |
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Monday night, after watching the sun set, we walked down the street for dinner at Eddy's — the goat, Kabritu Stoba, was Outstanding! The next day (Tuesday the 28th), we went back to Salt Pier in the morning. With Robert's class schedule we needed to get him back to Buddy Dive in time to start the course in the afternoon. So the morning dive (after a long detour) was a little rushed. But still fun; and we saw the sea snake again (or another one). |
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| While Robert was taking care of coral — they grow it on "trees", Sarah snorkeled around to spy on him. The trees are also at Buddy Dive, making the class and diving exercises very convenient for us. |
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| We arranged for Rob (a good name for a divemaster with a lot more experience than us) to take us on a night dive that evening. It's a little spooky jumping off the pier in the dark with just a flashlight. It was very cool dive and the house tarpons followed us for a while; they're really big. We covered up our lights at point to check out the glowing ostracods. |
| The next day (Wednesday), We sent Robert off to Coral Restoration school — which got us to breakfast in time to watch the first boat dive of the day load up — and Sarah and I headed to the Hilma Hooker another wreck dive. This time deeper than Robert is supposed to go for another year. |
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| After a reasonable surface interval, Sarah and I headed north to Karpata (while Robert remained in his class). |
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| When we got back, we decided to harass Robert and his classmates but just as we were ready to go down, they were coming back for the final paperwork on the Coral Restoration Diver certificate. Sarah and I decided to dive Buddy's Reef again anyway as we were all geared up by then. We checked out the reef restoration work this time; after it's grown a bit on the trees, they attach the coral to a frame (or natural rocks) to let it spread out. We also saw a couple more sea snakes and lots of fish swimming quickly in schools. We decided it was dinner time on the reef as some of the darting around looked a bit like hunting. |
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We went into downtown Karlendijk for dinner that night. Fortunately, most of the street signs are self-explanatory and there is generally not a lot of traffic. Thursday we headed back to Salt Pier. This time we had a much more relaxed drifting around dive by the southern piers. Robert spotted a darker sea snake with yellow spots this time. |
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Robert took advantage of his new found comfort in scuba gear and the leisurely pace to work on his underwater back-flips. We drove back and stopped at Bachelor's Beach. There was a great food truck there, King Kong Burger; they had the best burger we had on Bonaire. And that made for a perfect surface interval before getting back in the water right off the beach (one of the few sandy beaches we found). |
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| Friday was a busy day. We started at Oil Slick, which is cool because you can giant stride (jump, for non-divers) into the water rather than wading through the surf. And that is really fun! So we did it a lot! With and without scuba gear — it was another really nice snorkeling place. |
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| (If you look at the larger version of the photo above of Robert and me snorkeling, you can see the yellow bouy just beyond us; that's the marker for scuba divers in the reef — it was that close to shore.) Jump off the rocks, snorkel around, maybe swim down to check out fish. Then do it all over again. It really was a lot of fun. |
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| We finished off our diving back at Bachelor's Beach; it was lunch time and they have such great burgers... |
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We saw a cool school of blue fish swimming by (we'd seen them on other dives as well, one time packed closely enough together that I'm sure it was to look like a one big fisher rather than a school of smaller fish. And then we were followed by Johnny Fry (or Sammy Sardine or Andy Anchovy — we're really not sure). He joined our Williams-Zapolsky school for a good five minutes, following us until we got out. It turns out, Bachelor's Beach is also great for snorkeling. So we played around there some more, looking to see who we could see close to shore. |
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| But we decided (with a lot of input from Robert) that Oil Slick was the place to be. So we headed back there to finish our ocean time in Bonaire; it was too late for more diving. We wanted a nice long surface interval before getting on the plane Saturday afternoon. |
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| We walked back to Eddy's for our last island dinner (more of the great goat). And enjoyed our last sunset of the trip. |
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| I woke up early enough on Saturday to drive back down to Salt Pier and the slave huts with my regular camera. I stopped along the way at Bachelor's Beach, and thought to show off our ZXAuto GrandTiger pickup there. |
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The surf was not really as big as it looks in that photo below on the right; I was going for dramatic effect. The slave huts were for the early salt workers; their families lived on the northern side of the island and they were allowed to visit on the weekends — a seven hour walk.
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| The crazy kite-boarding guy is riding a foil-board. I just happened upon him on my drive back. When I got back, Sarah and Robert were relaxing on our porch, enjoying the final few minutes before we headed to the airport and back to Alexandria (on uneventful flights). Another fun adventure, and one we'd gladly repeat. |
Vacation notes:
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