Dodging snowstorms and those pesky spring break college kids, we flew from Boston on a Sunday on Air Jamaica. The strategy worked perfectly on the way down (yes, more on this later) despite the O-God-thirty wakeup call, landing us in Mo-Bay on schedule, additionally scoring a coveted emergency aisle row, which is clutch for my somewhat longer frame. The flight to Bonaire included an unscheduled stop in Curacao, which when coupled with a typical Flamingo Airport giggle - a half hour wait for the baggage cart to pull up, the belt starting, four bags appearing, belt stopping, cart pulling away, only to be repeated ten minutes later with 12 bags this time. Most of us laughed - hey, we’re here on the appropriate day, no need to get greedy. Our reward for not being impatient Americans came when the full cart appeared forthwith and our bags were not only all there but among the first off, which got us to the AB counter first, where we assumed custody and control of an early nineties vintage HiLux complete with duct tape, tattered seats, a front bench which took us a few days to figure out how to stop sliding forward whenever we braked hard, holes in the bed, a permanent shimmy in the front end at anything over 40 km and an emergency brake light which had a disconcerting habit of lighting up when the spirit moved it. It was perfect, we loved it and immediately christened it Decrepit. Once again we were rewarded for not being humor challenged by making it to the Sand Dollar Grocery five minutes before closing, for the requisite Amstel and ice, before continuing on to the Black Durgon where we scored our favorite room. Wow. This is good. Wonder when the yan will kick in to even the score (sort of like Caminology in a New England puritan guilt kind of way).

Well, I’ll tell you, it wasn’t in the diving. This was our sixth trip to Bonaire in eight years, and we have never had such a diversity of critters, good visibility, uncrowded sites (with a couple of exceptions) and lack of serious misadventures as this year. Once again we did all shore dives sticking pretty much to our old faves, Small Wall, Andrea, Billion Steps, O’l Blue, and Karpata, at least twice and some repeatedly specifically Small Wall and Andrea, searching for the alleged black tips (no luck) and an enormous green moray which seemed to be camera shy as we saw him free swimming the first day (sans camera) and then not again until our second to last dive when we were decompressing, looking for the mythical seahorses and Sandy saw his tail sticking out of a big coral pile. He refused to stick his head up for a clear photo and I refused to stick my hand in his foyer -I’m kinda fond of all ten digits- but I did get a couple of shots of the typical moray grin and it was pretty wide. A side note on this dive- I at first thought the viz was kinda crummy, maybe 60 feet or so but then realized the particulate wasn’t sediment but teeny tiny fish, newly hatched somethings, which were the catch of the day for the 1-3" guys, who were stuffing their faces with them and in turn being the mixed grill for the jacks and margates. It was, as you might expect, a neat dive.

The highlights were a couple of southern sites, Invisibles, where we had an extraordinary encounter with a spotted eagle ray feeding in the sand (fully captured on digital) and a cathartic experience on the Hilma Hooker. We had dived the Hooker on our first trip and got a little freaked out about being under the ship -although I occasionally do some silly things commercial diving, they are generally much shallower, usually allow for an emergency ascent and never involve the love of my life. We were the only ones on the wreck at the time and my bride was not as experienced as she is now. We somehow communicated “hey, this stinks, lets go look at the reef”, swam away and haven’t been back since. On this trip a couple of dive instructor friends, one of whom has more time at depth than I have in the shower, volunteered to banish our unease and took us around, through and all over the wreck. Once again, we were the only ones and the ginormous and multiple tarpon and barracuda were so impressive, we went back and did it again by ourselves. Nothing like slaying a dragon to make that post dive Amstel taste all that much sweeter. Sadly, it was a little deep and dark for the camera without a strobe (that’s my excuse anyway and I’m sticking to it). Maybe when and if I get around to figuring out how to post photos someone can give me some tips.

Part II immediately follows