Bonaire

We are in Bonaire this week. It’s part of the Dutch Caribbean Islands. We left home at 11 Am on Sunday and drove to Denver where we caught a flight to Phoenix, where we caught a flight to Miami, where we caught a flight to Bonaire. We arrived at 3 PM on Monday. The trip back is a bit quicker since we only have a stop in Miami for that return trip. Monday night we walked to a little market and bought some beer, then relaxed a bit. We’re staying at a little place called the Caribbean Chillout Apartments. It’s nice, quiet, and chill. :D We appear to be the only folks staying here, there’s a nice pool to cool off in. The owner are pleasant, there’s lots of places to sit outside in the shade and the breeze too. There’s even an outdoor bed to chill out on.

Airports? Denver is as usual. Pretty efficient and we were there early so we could get a drink if we wanted. I got the delight of sitting behind someone on all 3 flights that just loved to lay their chairs back. :D The Phoenix airport was insanely busy. And at 10 PM to midnight none the less. Weird. Miami was good. We got a snack and waited 4.5 hours there. We caught a shuttle to our hotel when we arrived in Bonaire. That guy drove FAST.

So that was Sunday and Monday. Tuesday morning AB Dive picked us up in our rental truck for the week. Then we went to the rental/dive center. That’s where we did the rental paperwork and got checked in for our diving week. We’d reserved a LionFish hunt expedition and our guide for that, Rory, let us know that we really needed more dive experience before doing that. Also the LionFish are pretty much fished out around Bonaire, so we’d probably have had little luck anyway. After chatting we all decided together to change that dive to 2 guided dives and set up for those and an additional experience dive on Thursday night. Rory was great, and we really needed the refresher and everything worked out great. He took us on dives we’d probably not have attempted by ourselves including one La Dania’s Leap. You do a giant stride off a cliff at about 10 to 12’. That was a real weenie shrinker! The diving was great. We saw turtles, barracudas, parrot fish and a delightful healthy reef. I think the deepest we went was 55’ so we got almost an hour dive in on both dives. Both were also drift dives, which means you enter at one spot and swim with the current to another spot. I’m proud of us, we both did it and our diving and air use is getting better. These were dives 10 and 11. Rory was great, friendly, fun, professional and cute to boot. :D

After diving we explored town a bit, and a celebratory drink or two and went to our room, had a dip in the pool and a good nights sleep.

Today, Wednesday, is our Ostracod dive. It’s a night dive with bioluminescent critters. Supposed to be beautiful. A veritable Disneyland of diving! We’re sleeping in today, had coffee at the room and we’ll play and shop while we go get our air setup for tonight and get directions on where to meet the dive crew from AB Dive. Should be a fun day!