B minus 4 days (B for Bonaire) Marie starts packing. C cards and log books are no where to be found! Major panic ensues. E-Mail Buddy Dive to explain the problem.
B minus 3 days…family project…we go out to the picnic table and make tye die t-shirts for the Bonaire Street cam.
B minus 2 days, call Buddy dive, we are still in panic mode over the missing C-Cards. Check E-Mail, have a nice note from Corrine, “don’t worry, we remember you”. Marie makes signs for the cam, “Hi Igor” and “Shepherdstown Roadrunners” (Caylin’s Elementary school mascot name).
B minus 2 days, ever the worry wart, call PADI and get temp authentication FAX’d, just to be certain
B minus two hours from departure, August 6…BWI, as we enter the airport, AJ representative asks, “are you on the 8:30 flight”? hearts sink…yes we are..”I’m sorry, that flight has been delayed (collective mental groans) “please come to the front of this line and we will get you on the 7:00 flight” Yipee! Security, no problem, however the sight of my clown size shoes gets me pulled aside for a little extra security, after recovering from the sight of my feet, the guard waves me through and I rejoin the family. Flight is fine, we arrive in Bonaire about 2:30, Buddy dive is there to pick us up. We get to our room and wha-hoo, there is a bottle of wine waiting for us, with a note “Welcome Back”. 4:30, we are in the water, snorkeling around and ramping down. First time out we see a scorpion fish and the normal shallow water fishies. Caylin points out some ‘Peekia Peekia’, little floating things, like fresh water Hydria’s, that she says can sting, we move further away from the shore and no more Peekia’s. Dinner is Pasa Bon Pizza, kind of our arrival dinner place. Is that Jake? I don’t know, I take note of the truck. Early to bed, 9:45 pm. 10:18, awake from sleep, it is still, very still, no AC, no lights…hmmm? Go outside, no lights (was Bonaire the actual source of the blackout for the North East of America? Maybe, after all it did happen later in the week). Outside, what is that bright star up by the almost full moon? (turns out it is Mars) 11:28, power back on, time to go back to sleep…
August 7, I get up around 5:30 and head out for a snorkel, avec dive light. I head north and when near the dock by Capt’n Don’s I encounter two Tarpon working a small bait ball. A little later I encounter a larger Tarpon, in fact I encounter him three times that morning. Marie and I do the orientation, while Caylin runs around the grounds of Buddie’s unti she finds her hammock and relaxes. After orientation we all go on a snorkel, heading north towards Capt’n Don’s. Caylin ‘discovers’ the pirate cannon and the Macarani (I know, that’s not the real name, but that’s we called it), it’s the small wreck by the dock at Don’s in about 35’ of water. Lunch is at the Lost Penguin…Marie and I get ice tea, out comes two full glasses AND a pitcher of ice tea, OMG! Then off to the Cultimera, we are now set for a bit. We drive past the Hospital (quickly) and we are on our way home. Snorkle south in the afternoon, to Bari Reef and the Sand Dollar, we see scorpion fish, five separate times and a group of seven reef squid, that blanche clear, with aqua blue eyes, when a foot is extended towards them…off to the web cam, tye died T-shirts on, it is almost 1500 hours, the time identified by Igor as the best for a pic. Sneaking looks at the watch we hang out, first the ‘Hi Igor’ sign pic, then the Road runner sign…that truck sure looks like the one we saw at Pasa Bon Pizza, guess it was Jake. Dinner, Mango’s, order ice tea, get two glasses, hey, where is our pitcher? Lol.
August 8, Caylin starts with Careen of Sea and Discover (yet another shameless plug for S&D)…Careen is great, the program is great and Caylin loves both Careen and the S&D program, as do we. We get wet and when we start our second dive, BOING!, Marie’s heel strap on her fin breaks loose from the grommet. Sandra from Buddies gives us a Zip Tie Strip and we are good to go again. We do our second dive on Buddy’s reef, on return I find I had left our room, car and room safe keys on the shower knob, they are still there…That afternoon, after lunch, we all snorkel down to the dock by Sand Dollar so Caylin can collect ‘sea glass’. After we get there I figure out I have left all our keys, AGAIN, on the shower knob, I snorkel back to Buddy’s, collect the keys and go back to Sand Dollar. When we return there is a short, intense rain storm, it effects the density of the first foot or so of the water, so that there is a layer (‘salinitycline’?) you can see a distortion is the water column as you scan the bottom. After dinner at the Rib Factory, we go to Lover’s for ice cream….ahhh, mango sherbert…
August 9, we go to Wind Sock to snorkel, last November we were all, ooo, a Red Lipped Bleenie, now we see them everywhere! We can see young coral starting up in ‘the bone yard’, brain coral and some ribbon fire corral that is about 8”, some elk horn (?) now about 20” across. Plans for Sunday are to snorkel to “DA HIIIILMER HOOOOOOOKER! (ignore this bad joke…never mind, I will not put it in…the punch line is ‘Da Hiiiiilmer Hooker’) We go to De Tuin for dinner. Caylin gets ribs, which she loves. Marie gets grilled Wahoo with champagne sauce (excellent!), I pick “Fish Tempura”, this is the best entrée we have on our trip, it is tuna, lightly wrapped in a tempura, quickly seared and in the most part, very rare, it was served with some wasabi (I love wasabi, in fact I ate the wasabi by itself, so that I could just enjoy the tuna tempura). I had to share with Marie and Caylin, it was so good, so rich, such a great mouth feel-just the best! In fact, in the six years we have been coming to Bonaire, this is the best--complete, for all of us--meal on any of the trips.
August 10 Up at 5:30 and out snorkeling, no sign of Charlie or any other Tarpons. Later in the morning we all head out and snorkel to Da Hiiiiilmer Hooker, some rock boring urchins at the entry but not too bad, nice swim out and then, like Mike Nelson ‘suddenly we saw it’. We arrived amid ships and swam north to the stern, from above we could see the propeller and some tube sponges pretty darn clearly. We could also see about 7 divers all around the wreck. We turned and went the bow, the chop was coming up a bit and it made for a longer swim in than it was going out. We headed to Angel City but there it was a bit too choppy so we headed towards Pink Beach. As we passed the Salt Pier we could see big ‘kites’ in the air further south. When we got to Pink Beach, we found out that the ‘kites’ were actually Para-sails attached to people, surfing on what looked like snowboards. After awhile there were 11 of them zipping about, turning 180 degrees in no time at all, jumping 10-20 feet in the air and then floating down and zipping away again. My cheeks hurt from smiling, it is sooo cool! We watch for about 45 minutes before they all turn north and head for Klien. The whole scene somehow reminds me of the Martian ‘sail boats’ from Bradbury’s “Martian Chronicles”. They were gone and we were in the water, we went out from the beach, but it was not too good a snorkel, when we returned we went along the shore in about 3 feet of water, and things got interesting. We saw our biggest Peacock flounder ever, maybe almost 2 feet long, several Scorpion fish, nudibraches, Lettuce slugs, lots of action. After lunch we snorkled Front Porch, which was a big disappointment, so we headed back to Sand Dollar and Bari. We have dinner and then Caylin and I did a night snorkel at Buddy. When Charlie showed up my snorkel partner turned into a remora and was firmly attached at my elbow.
August 11 Caylin is picked up by Careen, we get in two dives at Buddy reef. On the first dive I recover a knife at about 40 feet, I had to be extra careful reaching in to make sure I did not disturb the sponges and coral. Between the first and second dive we make arrangements for Caylin to be in the ‘Bubble Maker program on the 13th…cool, it is not just a pool experience, but she will be out and about in the blue sea! Second dive, more good stuff, a moray at about 40 feet, with a body about 6” in diameter, mouth open to the extreme. After lunch, up to Oil Slick for the afternoon snorkel, very nice, quite different from our southern snorkels. Caylin does the leap and is quite proud of herself. A lot of diver traffic and maybe that is why we do not see as many fish as we hoped. Dinner and we all go on a night snorkel, Charlie and his bride (?) show up, my partners go to the dock. I attempt some pictures. I get a feel for how they feel when Charlie rises up from the bottom towards me, big fish…I am getting ready to push him away with my dive light when he shifts direction.
August 12 Two more dives at Buddy’s, more morays, one big midnight parrot fish cruising, nice relaxing dives. After lunch back to Pink Beach. More scorpion fish, trigger and file fish and two octopus. Marie spots a ‘gold’ coin in the sand, after I dive down and get it, we are one guilder (1990) richer! Back to the pool at Buddy’s-Caylin swims the length underwater, neat-o!
August 13 (26th wedding anniversary) Two more dives at Buddy. Current was running north to south, kind of a good breeze underwater for Bonaire. We see a large Tarpon cruising at about 65 feet, the usual stuff and a sharp tailed eel that we follow for a bit. Second dive we swim north to Capt’n Don’s reef. We amuse ourselves as we drift back to Buddy at about 35 feet, acting like mimes walking against the wind. After lunch, Caylin is getting the basics of ‘Bubble Making’ so we go out quickly to look for a Frog fish that is rumored to be under the boat to the left, we spend 20 minutes looking (they don’t exist) and get back to the dock as Caylin, another young girl and Rob (the instructor, he was so good with both of them) go down the steps. Both girls do great and get about 35 minutes of bottom time! It is so cool to see Caylin pointing to fish and swimming underwater and you can tell she is almost as excited as we are.
August 14 We do three dives and, how about that, Frog fish DO exist! We are under the south boat again, wasting time searching at 28 feet, when from above, down drops an ugly green blob, the Frog fish! Not only ugly but not too smart, he stops on an orange coral head so we can’t miss him. Naturally, there is no one there but us to authenticate the finding. After a bit we move on and see our first spotted drum of the trip and a rather large spotted moray. We head north for a while and do some ‘flying’…this is when you move out from the reef profile and maintain your depth as the reef drops off below you…it is like when you were a little kid and dreamed you could fly--small pleasures--grab them where you find them.
August 15 Last day before we have to leave, boooo! We head south, looking under the boat again for the Frog fish, he is gone, oh well…we go about half way to Bari before we turn around and swim ever so slowly against the mild current. We take our time on the land interval; this is going to be our last dive. We head north on the surface towards Capt’ Don’s and drop down to do a close look at the Macarani. We are at the stern of the wreck when Marie points to the deep blue, moving up are two coronet fish (?), one about 4 feet long, the other close to 5 feet. The jaws almost look like duck bills and the eyes, well they look like human eyes, they look intelligent. After checking out the wreck, we do a semi turn and drift away on the current. When we see something of interest, we kick ever so slowly to maintain position and absorb the scene. We do some more ‘flying’ as we return to Buddy’s. Caylin returns from doing La Diania’s leap and swimming north to Karpata (no turtle sighting) with Careen. After lunch we go to Torrie’s reef. This is some of the best snorkeling on the trip, we hug the shore line going north and then south and then spend time at the entrance inlet.
August 16 It comes, we go. In between we manage some quick snorkel action, some pool action and another lunch at the Lost Penquin, yes, another full pitcher of Ice tea!
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By Dean Botsford (Experienced BonaireTalker - Post #269) on Saturday, August 30, 2003 - 5:25 pm: 
. Happy 26th Anniversary!