We returned for our seventh trip to Bonaire this month, and as always it somehow seems like coming home for us. We had nothing but wonderful, fantastic experiences above and below water, did 23 great dives in 7 days and hung out with interesting, kind people, locals and visitors alike. I'll probably divide this report up into several posts, with a few photos included.

TRAVEL:
As has become the norm for us, we travelled Air Jamaica from Boston. The flight down was relatively uneventful and timely, except for one major altitude drop while flying through a storm that had us all suspended out of our seats for a fraction of a second and caused a lot of screaming -- one woman screamed as if she knew that this was it and we were going down. The flight back was delayed for two and half hours in Montego Bay -- after we boarded but before we left the jetway, meaning lots of sweaty and anxious people. This meant arriving at Logan Airport in Boston well after midnight. Oh, yeah, I almost forgot: no Ting on any of the flights, but they did have a substandard substitute called "Bubba Grapefruit Soda." Hey, it just ain't the same.

OFFBEAT SEALIFE ENCOUNTERS (INCLUDING MOLLUSK CANNIBALISM):
We saw the oddest behavior I've seen in my 2 or 3 hundred caribbean dives: one octopus definitely eating and perhaps killing another octopus. At Oil Slick Leap we saw two octopus during the day with their tentacles touching, then watched one drop to the bottom and the other drop down on top of it, wrapping its tentacles around it. After a minute or two, as we approached closer, the second one dropped the first and scurried a few feet away. We poked at the first, and it was definitely dead and had a lot of bites taken out of it. Unfortunately, we did not have a camera! Two theories: the dead one was a female who had died after laying her eggs, or we were watching some sort of homicidal/cannabilistic territorial dispute. If anyone has any thoughts I'd love to hear 'em.

We also had the pleasure of having a pod of 6 or 8 dolphins riding the bow wave of the boat out to Klein Bonaire for 10 minutes or so. That was a blast! Other offbeat (for me, anyway) encounters were a HUGE 4-foot-plus sleeping loggerhead turtle during a nite dive at Sampler, a white and brown frogfish during the day at Sampler, and the cutest less-than-one-inch-long baby seahorse that was hanging around about ten feet off of Buddy Dive's dock all week. This I have a photo of:

looking good Scott!!! your report is wonderful keep the photos and text coming!!!!

OTHER DIVE INFO:
We did about an even mix of boat and drive 'n dive shore dives this year. Shore diving is great for its sense of freedom and discovery and independence, but boat diving can be convenient and social, as well as giving you the opportunity to get to Klein and to have others point out stuff that you might have missed. Other notable stuff seen underwater included another octopus that inked us three times, another baby octopus in 5 feet of water at Tori's Reef that we played with for a while, the always elusive and always cool juvenile smooth trunkfish (our underwater signal for this is a rolling-of-the-dice gesture), beautiful huge baitball schools of boga, tarpon, lots of turtles (almost everywhere but Karpata, surprising because in the past we've always found turtles at Karpata), seahorses, and several different color frogfish. Way too much of all the usual critters to mention.

Bogas and jacks


Juvenile French Angelfish

WEBCAM APPEARANCES:
We made several early morning webcam appearances at the Barcam and one afternoon underwater appearance at the reefcam. Many thanks to those BT-er's who posted our pictures -- it's a great way for friends and family to see these while you're still down there. The current at the reefcam was absolutely horrendous -- the worst I've ever seen in Bonaire. We had to angle upcurrent both going down and coming up to be able to do it. And for those of you who were asking: T-Bone is my 10 year old nephew's nickname. As a tip for you who are going to make appearances: get REAL close to the camera, a foot or two underwater and 3 or 4 feet at the barcam.

More to come later on Dining, Buddy Dive, People, etc.

Glad to hear you and Gayle had such a great time this trip but of course I knew you would! I sure do hope that those dolphins are still around come Oct 2nd. I still haven't seen any yet. The octopus story was very interesting. I hope someone knows the reason for the behavior.
The pictures are great. Keep em coming!

Nice report and photos, Scott. My wife and I are so looking forward to next Saturday when we do our first Bonaire trip, and we'll be looking forward to more of your posts.

Thanks for the details and great photos, Scott. You really did have a wonderful time....except for the little dip in altitude! That'll wake you up, for sure! Scary stuff...been there, done that and don't want to do it again. Carole

Scott, since we'll be traveling the same route maybe you can tell me how JA is on baggage restriction.

Air Jam allows two checked bags up to 70 lbs, and one carry on up to 40 lbs/50 inches total dimensions. Checked bags ARE weighed in both Boston and Bonaire. Restrictions for what you can put in carry on are governed by TSA in Boston (all the usual restrictions) and by Bonaire's security on the way home. Last year they confiscated Gale's tweezers in Bonaire -- absurd since they sell tweezers in the stores inside security. This year we had nothing opened up and examined, but a few people did have their carry on's inspected in Montego Bay.

If you do get stuck in Montego Bay due to a missed flight (this happened to us once several years ago), save ALL your boarding passes. We wrote a letter of complaint to Air Jam customer service in Kingston, and once we provided our boarding passes they gave us free roundtrip airfare for both of us that we used on our next trip.

A few tips:
"Lock" your checked bags with cable ties; this way they can cut the ties if they want to inspect, and will usually put another one on after checking.

In both Montego Bay and Bonaire, be sure to be near the gate close to boarding time as boarding announcements are often just shouted out at the gate as opposed to being announced over the PA.

When returning, you can go to the airport (Flamingo Airport in Bonaire, that is) at 10am, check your bags and get ticketed(you can leave your carry on back at the place you are staying), go back to your resort (or villa, or apartment or whatever) and chill by the pool, snorkel, have lunch, etc. Since you are already checked in you can wait until 2pm to go back to the airport and go straight to security into the airconditioned waiting area where there are a few shops and a bar/snack bar. If you don't do this, you'll need to get to the airport by 1pm and run the risk of waiting on a long, slow line for check in at that time.

You're undoubtedly in for a great trip.

2 bags @ 70lbs!! That's great. We did the the Mexican cenotes last Spring and the limit was one bag @ 60lbs making for some really creative packing. I can deal with this. Thanks for the info, especially the return trip tip. That is definitely a good plan. 10 more days

Wonderful report and I really like your photos. Thank-you for sharing!

Funny story about the cable ties on luggage: Coming back into BWI from Bonaire this summer, we filled out the std questionaire forms. One question was something like "have you been on any farms...?". Since we visited the donkey sanctuary (and let's face it--Bonaire is pretty much one big goat and donkey ranch) we checked yes. Well the customs guys batted this around abit and decided that we needed our shoes deconned. Since I was honest and said "hey the ones I was wearing are in my bag," the real fun started. I had indeed put cable ties on our luggage to facilitate inspections. Much to our suprise the customs guys had no easy way to cut the ties! No one had a knife of scissors. Believe it or not, the officer even asked me if I had a knife he could use! So finally they pulled out the 6-foot long bolt cutters. After seemingly much effort, skill, and muffled cursing those blasted ties finally surrendered to the 6-foot long bolt cutters and the team of customs officers. And my shoes got spayed with the lysol. Ahhh, national security...

Seb and I use plain ordinary twist ties on our luggage.

Our bags must have been checked/opened/inspected on the way down to Bonaire this year (I figure it might have been a result of our kitties laying on the bags for a week and some sharp doggie at the airport smelled something and "pointed" to the bags...). Anyway, they did remove our tie tags and inserted their inspection flyer advising they had been in there and also advising us they had "re-locked/re-secured/sealed" our bags....WRONG!!! Nope, the bags were open to anyone who wanted to access them between Newark and Bonaire. I was not a happy camper. We did not realize this until we arrived at Michael Gaynor's place to deliver his bagels. I had gone into the shop to borrow Michael's scissors to open the bags and then realized there were no tie tags to cut open! Bagels and other goodies were delivered unharmed and intact.

I still have to send off an email to the TSA advising them of what they neglected to do....resecure our luggage.

We had a great trip, anyway, tho! Nothing was missing...except for the replacement tie tags. Carole