Bonaire-Oct. 22-Nov. 5
We are 2 weeks down and one to go. So far it’s been a wonderful trip with a few twists. We left Raleigh/Durham on Friday morning, 10/22 headed to Atlanta on a Delta flight. Changed planes in Atlanta and headed to Miami. We were scheduled for a 3 hour layover and then were supposed to leave on an Insel flight to Curacao at 3:30pm. The flight was 1 ½ hours late leaving because there was no flight crew available. Apparently they were still flying in from another flight they were working. We got to Curacao and breezed through customs and immigration and waited again for the Insel flight to Bonaire. It was only 45 minutes late leaving. Finally, it was only a 15 minute flight to Bonaire. On Friday night, most of the passengers were locals returning from a day trip to Curacao. That was good luck for us since there were only about 10 “foreigners” to check through immigration. That also meant that there was very little baggage—our bags were waiting for us by the time we cleared immigration. We were unloaded, through immigration and had our bags in about 15 minutes total—that’s a record!!
We got to our Sand Dollar studio and unpacked and took a walk around, smelling the salt air and loving the feeling of being on island again. Early Saturday morning it was time for the ritual dive orientation. Because we were returning divers, we got the short version and were off to the grocery stores. That’s right—stores. One can never get everything they need with just one stop at one grocery store. We always tell our friends that Bonaire has everything you need, but not necessarily everything you want. Going to buy groceries is always part of the cultural experience here. A lot of your purchases fall into the “hopeful surprise” category since you have to buy by pictures on the carton/can/jar or else just hope it’s right. We have learned to eat some new and different things in our trips over the years!!
Finally, we get to unpack our diving gear and do what we came here for. A quick check-out dive at Bari reef and we’re remembering all the good things we have looked forward to. We have been diving 2, 3, or even 4 dives a day since we’ve been here. A lot of the dives are to old favorites, but we have also tried several new sites this trip. We have long wanted to go north and dive at Taylor Maid and Candyland. We found them and had wonderful dives there. There were more Black Durgons there than I‘ve seen at any other site. We also went to the end of the road and did Fishing Village. It is a beautiful site with a challenging entry/exit due to shallow coral and not having an obvious channel . We have seen several green morays for the first time since the kill-off last year-that’s a good sign. But the bad news is the coral bleaching. The water temperatures have consistently been 82-84 degrees and the corals are really suffering in lots of areas. Also, we have seen lionfish on almost every dive. Most of them have already been marked and the fish are small-3 to 5 inches. There are lots of volunteers working to capture them, but it really seems daunting to think they can stop this invasion.
I posted earlier on both Bonaire Talk and Scubaboard about the fantastic Manta Ray sighting we had at Front Porch. I won’t repeat that except to say that it was huge, breathtaking and the sighting of our dive careers so far. We talked with Jerry Ligon about it and he said that he had seen 2 Mantas in his 15 years on the island.
Another highlight for us was a sighting of a Queen Trigger fish. This was thrilling to see the beautiful colors and markings. We saw her on Bari Reef one afternoon about 5 pm. Laura was able to get a great picture . Speaking of pictures, here is a link to a Picasa web site with some of her favorite pictures so far
http://picasaweb.google.com/cboaternc/BonaireOctober2010#
you can click on any of the pictures to enlarge it and see it full screen.
As you may know, Hurricane Tomos threatened Bonaire early last week. We were lucky here. Sunday and Monday were the affected days. It rained a lot, there was some ocean turbulence and lots of clouds, thunder and lightning. We went over to the east side to watch-huge waves crashing into the rugged coast, sending water exploding 25' into the air. the waves looked to be 15-18 feet high and ugly. but amazingly beautiful in a way. We went diving both days off our pier-as we didn't want to get into the surf or shore entries. The west side(where we are and normally relatively calm) had waves about 3 feet high and all of the shallows were totally white-out, no visibility at all due to the waves crashing and stirring up the sand. Once we got out to the reef drop-off, it was pretty normal. visibility was slightly lower, but still very good. The fish seemed somewhat freaked out-some unusual types floating around. We had to surface early on the way back in order to see where we were. All of the dive shops took extraordinary measures starting Sunday-all of the boats were taken away to a safer harbor, all of the benches taken off the docks, all tanks and equipment removed from the docks and even some planking boards removed so the water could splash up through the floor joists without tearing up the floor. Some minor flooding occurred-everything around here is pretty flat.. We went out on the dock Monday night and watched incredible lightning that covered about half of the sky. It looked like daytime brilliance for several seconds at a time. Never seen lightning like that before.
Things now seem back to normal except there is still a lot of standing water and Wind Guru has forecast a stronger wind and reversal for the weekend. The waves are higher now and the shallows are really stirred up. We did a night dive tonight and it was a total whiteout over the sandy areas until we got out to the drop-off at the edge of the reef.
So, we are looking forward to another week of great dives and hopefully beautiful weather. We’ll try to fill in the last week later.
Vann Evans
Sand Dollar A4
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By Vann Evans (Experienced BonaireTalker - Post #127) on Friday, November 5, 2010 - 11:04 pm: 
