Darlene's December 7-21st Trip Report Part 2 Woodwind, Sailing, Snorkeling, Touring and Friends: I just love reading Bonaire Talk and meeting a whole bunch of people that share my same love for Bonaire! It is so much fun and my group of friends just keeps getting larger and larger!!! Thanks Jake and Linda!!! We had the December 8th dinner planned before we even got to Bonaire thanks to Mercy Baron. The people that I can remember that were there were; Jake, Linda, Michael Gaynor, Bas, Joann, Angie, Joann’s friend Paul, myself, Mercy Baron, Sue and & Geoffrey Feldman, Annie Phelan and Maggie and Becky. I apologize to all the people I forgot to mention. It was a great fun evening with new friends!!! I tried the goat stew for the first time and really enjoyed it. The Sangria flowed through out the evening. On the way into the dinner Sue and Geoffrey presented me with this really nice life vest. It is the kind that can inflate with a co2 cartridge quickly. I have health issues and they were worried about me snorkeling alone so they got it for me so I would be safe. I thought that was so sweet!!!!! Thank you Sue and Geoffrey!!!!! You are the best!!!!! I attended the Taste of Bonaire and it was a really fun time with a lot of good food to be sampled. A lot of the local restaurants sell samples of their food. I just wish I had a bigger appetite. I saw all my new friends from the BT dinner there so it made the evening even nicer! I also met Susie Swigert and Dara Walters there. Frits, the manager at the Divi, recognized me from my last trip and chatted with me for a while. I think it is pretty neat to be remembered like that from trip to trip!!!! Jake and Linda had a table there with their Art and Photography. Their work is incredible!!!! I bought two prints of Linda’s and Tom just finished making the frames. They are gorgeous!!!!!! Linda you are one talented lady!!!! Jake your photography is top notch and I especially liked the little Antillean girl in the blue dress. I have a feeling that I will be owning that one next time! Another artist that was at the Taste of Bonaire was Tortuga Arts. I purchased a beautiful mobile of all hand painted true to life fish. Of course it had to have my three favorites on it, the Queen angel, French Angel and Rock Beauty. It is truly a work of art and very reasonably priced. On the topic of art, another of my favorite artists, Jan Huckaby, did a couple of oil paintings for me of my husband and my favorite fish. She did a Queen Angelfish and a Rock Beauty Angelfish. They came out awesome and she did the background corals in the colors of my room so they look great in the grouping that I had them done for!!! Thanks so much, Jan!!!!! I actually came out of the water for a little while and spent a couple of days touring around the island with Joann and her daughter Angie. Angie had never been to Bonaire before and we wanted to show her around. We did northern route to Gotomere with a trip to Rincon and a trip up to Seru Largo where the view of Bonaire and Kline are incredible!! I think it is the highest point in Bonaire with a beautiful statue and viewing area. It is well worth the trip. Renee brought me in to Rincon one Saturday morning for the locals market. Unfortunately there was a ship in dock so they were all in town. We took a walk around and saw all the old homes that give Rincon its charm. Then we made a stop at the Rose Inn. It is a very nice place with a shaded veranda. I hear the food is very good, but we just stopped to quench our thirst! We then went to a beautiful place that I didn’t know existed. It is located very high and there is a shrine in this beautiful rock formation. I think it was called Gruatadi di Lourdes. It was a very peaceful and beautiful moment. If you climb a little ways behind the formation there is an incredible view of the island. Joann, Angie and I went to the street cam on December 13th around 3:30. Nobody posted us but we were captured. I will try to add the picture. Joann and Angie proceeded to do a dive at Small Wall and I did a wonderful snorkel. Yana even came in with me for a while. She is quite the little fish, ya know. We then had a wonderful visit with the Richter family and we went and got some Pasa Bon Pizza for a sunset dinner on the patio. Linda also gave us a tour of her art studio and it was very interesting hearing her give her interpretations of her art. There is such feeling in every brush stroke of her paintings. I enjoyed every moment of our visit. Thanks so much for having us!!!! A fun thing that Joann and I decided to do is go to a new place called Picture Bonaire. It is located right in town and you dress up in Antillean clothes and have your picture taken with a great background. One night after dinner at Richard’s we heard steel drums playing. We followed our ears over to the Plaza where the Silver Bullet Steel Drum Band was playing. They were really good and it was a nice way to finish off our nice dinner. I lost count of all the green flashes that I saw this trip. It seemed that the sunsets were more vibrant than ever and it was so nice sharing them with other people. Joann and I never missed a sunset during the whole two weeks we were there and another thing we did nightly is end the day with a cocktail sitting on the tanning dock watching the brightly lit sky while listening to the waves. It was just the perfect way to end our days!!!! I spent most of my time in the water. Now that's a surprise! Everyone kept checking my neck for gills again. The snorkeling around the divi is incredible! The cement pier is now full of life and the corals continue to grow! Of course I still love hanging above the little boat that they have sunk to the right of the cement pier with all kinds of life on and in it. There was a huge Barracuda that hung around the whole two weeks. He was usually under the dive dock. One day there were three octopi right around the dive dock then I saw one free swimming in the shallows there. It must be there season for abundance. I also saw a lot of squid and it is the first time that I have seen them really close up. They are really incredible looking with all the iridescent colors. I actually got to see the mating dance!!!!! It was awesome!!!!! I also saw an abundance of lettuce leaf slugs and they are really pretty. There was also a Chain Moray living in the cement pier as well as a spotted drum and much, much more! I snorkeled at the Calabas a lot and then with the Woodwind I went to No Name, Andrea I, Andrea II and Ebo’s Reef or Sampler (I am not sure which one) . All were great snorkels and the corals are really starting to flourish once again. I saw my first red clam at Andrea I. I also went to two other great places with Renee. We went to Torri’s Reef and The South Pier. Tori’s reef has all these ledges in the shallows with an abundance of fish life under them! I saw my first juvenile Queen Angel there. There were also a lot of soap fish. We ended that snorkel with a nice picnic lunch at Donkey’s beach! The South pier is in very deep water and is a working pier. The pilings have the most beautiful corals and sponges on them. I saw sea whips, barrel sponges, stovepipe sponges and much, much more. It was really breathtaking!!! Joann, Angie and I did a guided night snorkel with Renee one night. There is so much cool stuff to see at nighttime right in front of the Divi! Some of our highlights were a huge banded shrimp out in open view, a bunch of lobsters, a rarely sited hairy sea hare, and a walking sea anemone! As all of the regulars know, I sail almost daily with Renee and the Woodwind. Almost all her sails have two snorkel stops and lunch included. Then there is the big BBQ day on Wednesday that I wouldn’t miss for the world and Barney, her Captain still makes the best ribs around!!!! They put out quite a spread over on Kline under the shady little hut that they have there. Mercy sailed quite a few times with me and we had lots of fun together. She would also come and hang with me at the Divi for our afternoon snorkels. We had some really great sitings of turtles. The first day we sailed to Kline I saw six turtles!!!! I saw one poking his head up for air as if he was looking at us as we were gearing up to get in the water!!! I saw turtles on all but one trip to Kline!!! Then I really had a special treat. When the Woodwind was arriving over at Kline the turtle conservation people where there and were about to release two baby turtles that they had just saved!!! I got to see them close up and take pictures and then I watched the little guys take off into the sea!!!!! It was an awesome moment that only happens once in a lifetime!!!!! Some other special treats while sailing were two very large lobsters. They were a little deep for me to take a picture so Renee took my camera down for me and snapped a good one! Then there were a family of three spotted drums! They were there on the two days that I went on the BBQ’s and they were really showing off for my camera! Over at Andrea one day we saw a very rarely sited Jackknife!!! It was way cool and I would have thought it was just another spotted drum if Renee hadn’t pointed out the difference!!! The rest of the fish I consider regulars but I thought I would list them for all you first-timers. Here they are: harliquin bass, greater soapfish, all phases of parrot fish including the big rainbows with the green teeth and the huge midnight blues, Spanish hog fish, puddingwife, yellowhead wrasse, bluehead wrasse, squirrel fish, soldier fish, cardinal fish, lot's of scorpion fish, peacock flounders sandivers, trumpet fish, burr fish, balloon fish, porcupine puffer, honeycomb and scrawled cow fish, smooth and spotted trunk fish, white spotted file fish, spotted and yellow goat fish, spotted drums, glassy sweepers, lots of big redlip blennies, gobies, bristel worms, sea cucumbers, flamingo tounges, squid, arrow crab, fire worms, golden tail morray, and a spotted morray. I think that is most of them and I would like to give special thanks to Renee for pointing out most of the smaller critters and some of the big ones too! That's way I love to go out on the Woodwind so much, she knows where everything lives and she has a real nack for spotting things. That is about all I can remember for today. I hope you enjoyed reading this report as much as I relived my trip writing it!! Can't wait to be back home in March!!!! |