What to expect from parrot fish in Bonaire By Jon Lehman While diving in Bonaire, it occurred to me scuba diving is a great sport if your spouse is the type of person who talks and talks incessantly about inconsequential things. Depending on how many dives you do, it gives you at least one or more hours a day of sublime peace and quiet. Now wait just a minute. I'm not talking about MY wife. And if you tell her I said she talks too much I'll deny it and say that you were the one who said it. Before I say more about Bonaire, let me tell you what our dive trip was like in Costa Rica. Close your eyes and picture your favorite gravel pit. Oh yeah, that one with the nice bone-chilling thermocline and the visibility that rivals a mud puddle. Add in wild air-sucking tank-draining currents that push you backward no matter how hard you kick. Then picture swimming behind the divemaster. Heck with looking for fish. All you are trying to do is see his fins so you don't get lost. Then all of a sudden it gets dark like you are going to run into a wall that you can't quite see but you know it's there. (Reminds me of a joke: what does a fish say when it hits a wall? Dam.) It's a wall alright - a wall of fish or rays - so many it's impossible to count or guess, thousands. And you are right in the middle of them. They are over you, under you, in front and behind. You've lost the divemaster, but who cares. That's diving in Costa Rica. We went in October. May is supposed to be a much better month for visibility. But we had a great time in Costa Rica despite the visibility. Now where were we, oh yeah, Bonaire. This was our seventh trip. We've tried all different times of the year but late October and early November is our favorite. The water is warm (84 degrees) and there is lots of fish activity. We saw octopus, turtles, squid and all the other fish, which were too many to name. Besides, some of them had Dutch names and I couldn't even pronounce them, let alone spell them. We're from the small town of Kickapoo. Here a gourmet restaurant is one where you leave the tray on the table after you eat. It's not like that in Bonaire. About every restaurant has its own chief. Some of our favorite places this time were Rose Inn, Donna & Giorgio, Swiss Chalet, Lion's Den, Old Inn, Chez Nous, Antriol Catering, and Rendez-Vous. We didn't have a bad meal on the island. We ran into Larry with Larry's Wild Side Diving at Rose Inn in Rincon. His is the only business that takes boat trips to the windy side of Bonaire where there are lots of big fish, turtles and rays. He has a new boat that should be in service in January. We made plans with Larry's Wild Side Diving for next year. We had planned to do a shore dive on the wild side this year but ear and knee problems made us postpone it. The ear and knee problems were ours, not the fish. Oh, you figured that out. You are so clever. Larry is military-looking dive instructor with lots of experience and a good sense of humor. We're looking forward to diving with him. He can be reached on his cell at (599) 790-9156 or home at (599) 717-5246. Tell him Jon and Joyce sent you and you want the "Mimi" treatment. He'll think that's really funny and it won't hardly cost you a whole lot more. We stayed at Buddy Dive Resort. It's our favorite Bonaire resort. Since we go to Bonaire so often, people say we should get our own place. But at Buddy's they feed us breakfast, give us a nice truck to drive, we don't have to worry about utility bills, they clean up our mess in the room, and occasionally there are topless Dutch ladies on Buddy's beach. Now why would we want our own place? I should mention more about the diving on Bonaire but there are so many trip reports to tell you how great it is. So I'll just mention the parrot fish. Those suckers can really poop. |