Day 9 – Final Post

On the plane back home.  A great family time.  Amazingly, we woke up to torrential rain.  Really the first rain we have seen all week.  Very cloudy and overcast, indeed a bit bumpy taking off. 

A few more pictures to describe the island of Bonaire.  It is indeed a rather sleepy island.  As mentioned before, not a whole lot goes on here. Tourism is really their only “export”, (and salt).  Their busy season is December through April, when it is quite cold in northern Europe.  Otherwise, we were told it is up and down. 

Many of the service personal here are tri-lingual.  Dutch, English and Spanish.  Because Bonaire is so close to South America, many of the vacationers are from Argentina, Venezuela, etc.

There is a lot of building going on, and lots of buildings that are partially built, but looked abandoned.  Prices for vacation homes and condos seemed high - $400K to over a million.  But, nobody is looking.  Weekends seem busier downtown, but restaurants are never full, and the few curio shops we looked at yesterday were totally empty.

Diving, though, was excellent.  Although unique in that it is all shore diving, with a little of research and energy, there was plenty of opportunity and variety.  We ended up going on 17 dives.  A great variety of soft and hard corals, invertebrates, and fish.  Visibility ranged from 40-70 feet.  They have a “no touch” policy, indeed you can’t wear gloves to dive, to discourage you from touching any of the coral.

This was our setup, 4 or 8 air tanks and all our gear in the back of the mini 4-foot pickup.

We found some Indian hieroglyphics on a isolated part of the island.

All of the diving on Bonaire is on the leeward, western side of the island.  You can see why one doesn’t dive on the windward side!

This is downtown Kradeldijk, main town on Bonaire.

These are cute, each dive side is ID’ed by a yellow painted piece of coral on the road.

We finish with last night’s sunset at the harbor.  Thanks for your interest in McKelvey Travels. 

Our next adventure will be in October when Gloria and I travel to Cambodia for a week of service dentistry with the same multi-national group we went to China with a few years ago.  We will be working at numerous orphanages in the country.  We anticipate blogging again, hope you can follow us!

Day 8

Last day of diving.  Only one dive today; early in the morning.  Nice dive, 40-90 feet, lots of fish, Greg got some great photos.

This may be hard to visualize, but this is the “carpet” of fish we dove into today.  Millions of little anchovies!

Here is a close up.

Greg, real close to a trumpet fish swimming by.

This coral looked like it was lit up for Christmas.

Two small fish fry on coral.

Up close and personal with another trumpet fish.

Day 7

Long day; it’s after 10PM.    Three dives and a great Italian meal tonight, full and exhausted.  So….just some photos to share today.  Probably just one dive tomorrow morning, then we have to let our bodies “degas” all the nitrogen out before our flight for US leaves Saturday morning at 7AM.

 

Sea Anemone

Fairy Shrimp, probably and inch from pincer to pincer

An 8” crab

A “Dori” fish, (see the movie “Nemo”)

A Drum Fish, rather rare and difficult to photograph, they are about 2 inches long.  Greg nailed this one.

This is a monstrous Moray Eel that Alex found, he is probably over 6 feet long, a bit intimidating.

Day 6

Interesting day today.  Two dives, but one of them was  the most challenging we have had  as a family.  It started out like all the other dives this week, but we quickly found that we had a rather severe current to deal with.  About 2/3 into the dive we realized we weren’t really going that far, and we had to very carefully swim in the right direction to end up where we started.   Each dive site has a buoy to mark it about 50 yard off shore, Alex did get us to the buoy on our swim back toward shore, but it was almost impossible to hold on to it due to the current.

So we each powered in to shore swimming at almost at a right angle to the current so that it would take us to the starting point.  All went well, except I did run out of air!  Not real serious, since I was only 20 feet down and I could go to the surface, but rather disconcerting to be swimming that hard and realize you had no air to breath.  Nobody panicked, but we are a bit more careful of the currents now.

Still got some pictures though.  I have included a video of Alex, Greg and Gloria fighting the current.  Not real dramatic, but you can see what it is like scuba diving in Bonaire.

This is a picture taken at about 60 feet of an area probably 6 inches across, there are probably 20+ different species in the photo, amazing diversity!!

At the  north end of the island is their National Park.  A bit of vertical terrain, a few small lakes and flamingos!

The PM dive was fairly uneventful.  No current,  thankfully, but poor visibility; maybe only 30 feet.  I decided to do some macro photography of the coral.  These two pictures represent about an inch of coral at about 50 feet.

Gloria hasn’t told me the name of this fish yet.

Finally, a video of an iguana enjoying an apple core someone gave him.  He is about 3 feet long.  Prior to this scene, as we were finishing our first dive, Gloria was getting her wet suit off, when all of these lizards about a foot long came from all over to check her out.  She was swatting them away like flies!  Reminded us of Jurassic Park, with those little lizards that attacked people, except they were miniature dinosaurs walking on two feet, these weren’t as menacing, but just as pesky.

Day 5

OK, lets talk about Danish/Bonairian food.  In brief, not that good and never that cheap.  We keep looking for something that is produced, raised, made, manufactured, assembled, grown or exported here; all we can find is salt.  They don’t seem to grow or raise or make anything.  Indeed, even the salt comes from Italy, go figure!  So….all the food whether it is in the grocery or the restaurant is imported.  At the market they advertise its source, mostly US, then South American countries, finally Europe.  In restaurants they will note “Caribbean fish”, haven’t found a dock yet for the fishing boats, I think it is flown in from who knows where.

Having said all of that, the food, depending on the restaurant is passable.  Tonight, we had a fish salad, ribs, and jambalaya between the four of us.  As we drive around the island to dive, we are always scoping out another restaurant.  We have our eye on pizza tomorrow night.  We have also noted a trailer similar to the burrito truck in front of Kragen in Sonora that looks inviting as well!

On to diving.  Three dives again today.  The first was a wreck dive.  This large ship. the Hilma Hooker,  sank in the 80’s.  Apparently it was full of dope, nobody claimed it, eventually it started to leak, the government (after the dope was removed) sank it for a reef.  It lay in about 100 feet of water, a nice dive.

 

This is a typically “pose” for the needle fish.  The like to hang out this way.

Lots of shrimp hiding out.  This guy’s body is only a couple of inches long, his tentacles over a foot.

Another great fish shot by Greg.

This is a great picture of a flounder, probably around 18 inches long sitting on a rock he mimicked almost perfectly.  As we watched him, his perimeter would flush to blue as he got nervous. In this picture he was nervous.

The third dive was a night dive to the pier where they load the salt onto huge container ships.  I didn’t go on this one, I am trying to return home less exhausted then when I arrived.  Gloria, Greg and Alex reported two large sting rays, and lots of current!  They went to bed, while I am writing this!

Day 4

Another 3-dive day!  Highlights would be one of the biggest lobsters we have ever seen, a small turtle swimming above us, a very nice sting ray to chase, and a large flounder that Greg found on a sandy bottom.

Most dive profiles, led by Alex, is to snorkel out to the reef, usually 100-200 feet from shore, then dive to around 80-90 feet, stay there for around 20 minutes, then spend the rest of the time between 60 and 30 feet depending on what we are looking for. By diving that profile, we only have a safety stop at 15 feet for 3 minutes instead of a decompression stop that could last 10 minutes or more.  Most dives last 50 to 60 minutes.  This is the best  way to dive without a professional guide.

Greg took pictures today, nice to see another perspective.   He did an excellent job, see below!

Greg has turned into the moray eel spotter.  He usually spots 2 or 3 each dive.

I am usually the one taking pictures, so you are one of the first to see me diving!

This is actually one of my favorite pictures.  These are little snails attached to a fan coral at around 40 feet.

Another excellent picture that Greg took of an angel fish.

Finally, a picture of the monster lobster; probably 2 feet long, he was mean too.  Usually they slink back into their caves when a diver comes by.  This guy just stood there daring us to catch him.  He won.

Finally, we also drove by the salt ponds on Bonaire.  Apparently the primary reason the Dutch annexed this island in the 1600’s was for a source of salt.  Their previous source was lost, so they started producing salt here and have done so for 400 years.  These “mountains” are huge, difficult to get a perspective.

The huge bulldozers are the specks on the far left, in the middle is the conveyer to make the mountains, the pond in front is one of the many evaporating ponds.  We think it is lavender due to an algae that may grow in the brine.

Tomorrow, we will discuss the Dutch cuisine here on Bonaire.  French Fries and mayonnaise anyone??

Day 3

More diving!!  Actually three.  AM, PM, and a night dive.  Alex is our guide, and has the computer he wears on all the dives, that way we can pace ourselves concerning nitrogen saturation in our blood.  We maxed out today.  A few pictures

 

Greg and Gloria at about 50 ft.

Puffer Fish

Corral Garden

These little guys on the coral pop in when they are touched

Alex and Greg behind a rather large jellyfish!

This is a 3 inch nudibranch

Day 1-2 Leaving the US of A

Boys got home this week.  Nice to have them home.  Leaving SMF at noon today.  Hannah, Alex’s girlfriend also flew out today back to Bozeman.  First time for her on an airplane.  Nervous but excited; took a Dramamine just in case.  We fly to Houston; a 5 hour layover, then a red-eye to Bonaire, getting there at 5 in the morning. Our vacation starts tomorrow.

Arrived in Bonaire  before dawn.  Our driver is waiting for us and we are off to the Caribbean Club.  Unfortunately, when we get there, we find they don’t open till 7AM!  So, more relaxing!  Once they open, we do get our room, so we can get a couple of hours of sleep before breakfast.

The hotel, and many of the businesses on the island are owned by the Dutch.  Back in the 1600’s they “liberated” this island along with others in the area and started  the slave trade.  All of the streets and towns are in Dutch and all of the signs are bilingual as well.

After a European breakfast, we are off to town for our check-out dive.  Typically for a “check-out dive” you go down with an instructor and he runs you through the paces to make sure you can clear a flooded mask and regulator and you can maintain neutral buoyancy.  However, in Bonaire they only want you to hop off the pier and do all this on your own!  Unique, appropriate and less intimidating.  So after we did the above, we went ahead and dove “Buddy’s Reef”.  30-70 foot deep reef dive with lots soft and hard corals and many, many fish.  Actually a very nice dive for our first one.

Also unique in Bonaire is “drive thru tank pick up”.  Since most of our diving is shore diving, (not going out on a boat), everyone here has rented a mini truck, and you pick up your tanks as you cruise the island.   So, think of it as In & Out Burger except instead of a double-double you drop off your 4 empty tanks and pickup 4 fresh ones!

After a PM dive we worked up a real appetite for dinner.  Went to the Casablanca Restaurant, and Argentina Steakhouse,  where Alex and Greg shared a  “”sampler”.  Whatever eats and moves on a ranch, they had parts of.  Easily enough for four people, they actually almost finished it off!