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Trip Reports: Scott and Gale's Rocky Start/Great Trip Part 1
Bonaire Talk: Trip Reports: Archives: Archives 2000 to 2005: Archives - 2005-08-09 to 2005-12-26: Scott and Gale's Rocky Start/Great Trip Part 1
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message  By Scott Phillips (Experienced BonaireTalker - Post #214) on Friday, September 9, 2005 - 10:00 am:     Edit PostPrint Post

We took our eighth trip to Bonaire from 28 Aug to 6 Sep, and while we got off to a pretty rocky start, we ended up having a fantastic vacation, as good a time as any we've ever had in Bonaire. While the travel hassles we experienced definitely sucked, and, no, the experience of getting there was definitely not part of the enjoyment of our trip, for both Gale and I it is absolutely worth the hassle. The words out of both of our mouths on the plane leaving Flamingo Airport were "how soon can we come back"?

I'll try to break my trip report down into manageable parts. Here goes:

GETTING THERE: American Airlines stranded us in San Juan for a day (see "Stuck Inside of San Juan with the Bonaire Blues Again" under the BT topic of Getting There)under ridiculous circumstances, but we were able to (somewhat!) grin and bear it and arrived in Bonaire on the next day's American Eagle flight about a half hour late. Got our bags, left the baggage area, and, lo and behold, there is no one there from Buddy Dive as there always has been in the past. No problem: we grabbed a cab, knowing that Buddy's would pay for it. We arrive at Buddy Dive, get the key for our usual room, go to the room, open the door, and the lights won't go on. As I'm trying other light switches, I realize I'm standing in about a half an inch of water. I turn on my flashlight, and discover that the AC is pouring water into the bedroom, the floor is completely covered in water, and the water is already heading into to living room/kitchen area. Thankful that I've not been electrocuted and thinking, geez, this trip is not starting off well -- better be careful since the vacation gods are obviously not watching over me this year -- I go back to the check in desk and are immediately taken care of and move into an even nicer room. To Buddy Dive Resort's credit, they took care of the situation professionally and promptly. Still, I am hoping that the last two days' events are not an omen of bad things to come....

DIVING: Just outstanding; as soon as we got back into the water we knew that our travel glitches were just minor speed bumps in the Bonaire vacation road. I was typically doing three or four dives a day, Gale 2 or 3, each dive averaging about an hour and 15 minutes or so. We did some boat diving with Buddy's, some drive and dive shore dives with the truck, and some shore dives right there at Buddy's. Every year seems to have a theme of critters that you just keep seeing on nearly every dive; this year it was frogfish (at least 8 or 9 spotted), squid (gotta love 'em) on every other dive, and juvenile smooth trunkfish (y'know, the ones that look like a pea-shaped dice -- Gale found about a dozen of 'em this year). Of course, we spied just about everything else Bonaire has to offer: octopus, huge midnight blue parrotfish, several seahorses, moray eels from huge green to tiny spotted and golden-tail, and far too many other critters to list.

Our final dive was perhaps one of our best ever on Bonaire (and we've done a few hundred dives there). At Buddy Reef/Bari Reef, all in less than 25 feet of water, we saw all of the following on our last dive: a crab shedding it's shell, a huge tarpon, a school of squid, a huge puffer, several small baby conch, and then, while we're gazing up close at another school of squid, Mr. Turtle comes swimming up close to us, and then, while we're deciding whether to watch the squid or the turtle, an eagle ray comes flapping up next the the turtle. We spent the next twenty minutes or so following the turtle (watching him go up to the surface several times), following the eagle ray (watching him graze in the sand) and gazing up close at the squid. We headed in (accompanied by two more tarpon) and decided we could finally go home now as there was nothing left on our wish list to see.

Boat dive highlights included several drift dives over on Klien Bonaire and a guided dive of Something Special by Ned DeLoach (editor of the Paul Human reef books and author of the Reef Fish Behavior book) and his wife Anna where we found two frogfish, an octopus, sailfin blennies showing off their stuff and lots of other cool stuff. Ned and Anna were real nice, and it was great talking to them about fish behavior and their travels. Ned did a book signing at Buddy's on Friday.

Shore dive highlights included all of our favorites (Karpata, Angel City, Oil Slick, Witches Hut, others) and a few new ones including Invisibles (no eagle ray when we were there, but lots of folks seeing them there during the week).

COMING SOON: Accomodations, dining, and whatever else pops into my nitrogen-deprived, PBD brain.

 

Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message  By DARLENE ELLIS (Extraordinary BonaireTalker - Post #1671) on Friday, September 9, 2005 - 10:21 am:     Edit PostPrint Post

Scott,You sure did have a rough start!!!! But when I read about your last dive, it just took my breath away!!!! Totally awesome!!!! I can't wait to be there!!!!!

 

Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message  By Kelly Baum (GDLW) (Supreme BonaireTalker - Post #3127) on Friday, September 9, 2005 - 10:38 am:     Edit PostPrint Post

Scott, great report... I'm with you, Darlene!! I can't wait, either !!!

 

Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message  By Ron Gould (Experienced BonaireTalker - Post #285) on Friday, September 9, 2005 - 11:34 am:     Edit PostPrint Post

Scott,
Great first half report. Tough start but sounds like things shaped up for ya. The last dive sounds better then most other destinations have to offer for the whole trip! Will be looking for the second part. Thanks for sharing... Ron

 

Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message  By Theresa (Experienced BonaireTalker - Post #360) on Wednesday, September 14, 2005 - 1:34 pm:     Edit PostPrint Post

OMG Scott, you poor thing, exactly when can we go back booh American Airlines BOOOOOOOH.

 


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