The next morning while eating breakfast, a lizard entered our house through the front door for like a second before we all stared at him awkwardly and he scurried out.
He thinks he's people.
After breakfast we dove Andrea I, a site popular for sea turtles, which was my next desired animal to see. As we returned from the reef (an entire hour underwater, woo!), we saw a little Hawksbill turtle hiding beneath a swaying "bush" of seaweed. She was so cute! She was missing her back right fin though :( We followed her for awhile, watching as she ascended to the surface to get a couple of gulps of air and then following her as she weaved through the water gracefully. We each gently petted her shell as she passed by us and I held her little flipper for a brief second. I have now held the hands of both rays and turtles, yay! We saw her go up for air once again and then suddenly just disappear into the open ocean. It was weird, she was there one second and then literally gone the next. On the way back to shore, we also saw a GIANT parrotfish, four times as big as the turtle we'd just seen. It was amazing. We went to Elle's Deli for lunch, a delicious local restaurant where I got a sandwich called the Nikiobi with pesto, mozzarella, tomatoes, chicken, and provolone. It was delicious. We dove Angel's City next, our first double reef system, meaning that instead of just one reef and a drop-off, there are two reefs with a sandy bottom between the two, meaning you can weave between the two of them, but its easier to get lost in those systems. We pulled up in our truck and started getting ready to dive.
The double reef system was so cool, like a miniature reef kingdom. It's almost reassuring to sink to the sandy bottom and be surrounded by reefs on both sides, since usually it's a reef to one side and THE OCEAN on the other. Dad had bought an underwater flashlight the day before, so I diligently searched under nooks and crannies in the coral and rocks for nurse sharks. I spent a majority of the dive pretending to be a bottom feeder, skimming across the floor and shining my flashlight into every dark crevice I could see. At one point, I saw a large, greyish tail that I thought was a shark tail, so I got really excited and swam around to the front of the cave. Instead of a shark, it was a GIANT green moray eel. It was the biggest eel I'd ever seen, and he just gaped at me. We started at each other for awhile until my Dad used his underwater noisemaker to prompt me to move on. Visibility was really poor on this dive, only about thirty feet, so at one point my Dad went on ahead into the cloudy water while Gabe and I were distracted by cool reef creatures. Gabe and I looked around and then at each other, worried about what to do. Suddenly, we heard Dad's shaker, the underwater noisemaker, but couldn't tell where it was coming from due to us being, you know, underwater. Fortunately, Dad emerged from the murkiness and we stuck closely to him for the rest of the dive. As the name promised, there was a ton of angelfish. We saw French Angelfish, which we'd seen before, Rock Beauties, tons of black and yellow striped ones and bright yellow ones with black spots near their tails (I've forgotten their names), and finally a Queen Angelfish! I'd wanted to see one the entire trip because they're so pretty, with turquoise patterns, canary yellow fins, and lime green faces. We also saw Split Crown Feather Dusters, little anemone-like creatures with a marbled carmel-chocolate pattern, a big orange anemone with rubbery, swollen tentacles, three juvenile Spotted Drumfish hiding in the shade of a rock in the shallows, and multiple little cleaner fish hanging out on the insides of sponges that I checked with my flashlight.
The only reason I remember all of this is because I wrote it down in excruciating detail after the dive. In my first post I mentioned that diving is like dreaming in that it's a beautiful, mesmerizing world full of hazy color and impossibly weird-looking, amazing creatures. However, it's also like dreaming because it's hard to remember anything when you surface, or "wake up". By the afternoon, I could barely remember what I'd seen on the morning dive unless I'd written it down. Since it was our last full day of diving, I decided I would write down everything I'd seen in detail, especially the colors and the behavior. Those were my absolute favorite things about any dive, second only to seeing new animals (like the turtle!). After the dive, we headed over to Tori's Landing, a popular snorkeling site for fish diversity right next to the salt processing plant. The harvesting ponds were tinged with pink from the flamingo's favorite food source (though we didn't see any) and the piles of salt surrounding these pools looked like snow. It was beautiful in a strange, processed way. Tori's Reef is also right next door to Salt Pier, another dive site situated beneath a huge pier/conveyer belt thing that used to help with the salt processing. It gave off a weird, creepy vibe and I was glad that we weren't diving there. Apparently night dives are popular at Salt Pier, but you can only go if you have permission and go with a registered divemaster. We had neither one, but it was okay since Dad too was like, "...that's creepy shit". Anyways, we jumped into the water at Tori's Reef (there are small channels leading to influx doors to the processing plant, which were closed when we were there) and immediately were bombarded with millions of tiny fish. There were also about three Peacock Flounders flitting around the bottom, and it was shallow enough that I could really see their navy blue jaguar spots on their backs. As we swam into deeper water, I saw a southern stingray filter feeding along the bottom. I excitedly called my family over and we watched him as he lazily drifted along the sandy bottom, a sharksucker stuck to his back. We saw lots of filefish, angelfish, Queen Triggerfish, scorpionfish, porcupine fish, pufferfish, cowfish, squirrelfish, soldiers...we basically saw every single fish we'd seen the entire trip (minus parrotfish) in one single area. Tori's Reef seriously WAS the hotspot for fish diversity.
After our snorkel, it was sunset so we headed home, rinsed our gear, and ate a dinner of hot dogs before watching Wrath of Khan.
The rinse sinks of our villa
Me in the back of the pick-up truck
We got home to see a Pearly-Eyed Thrasher tearing up the coral centerpiece of the villa next door to us. He kept ripping the thin, veiled pieces off of it. I'm not sure if he was trying to gather nest materials, or was just being destructive
Our condo complex was surrounded by a cactus fence, which is the coolest type of fence I've ever seen (plus it keeps out burglars and hooligans like a charm). They're specifically for keeping out the many donkeys and goats that roam the island, however sometimes we'd see cactus stalks with huge bites chomped out of the trunks, so they may or may not be so effective.
There was a cute little grassquit nest in the fence!
The next morning we got up early so we could enjoy our last dives before our 24 hour pre-flight surface interval. Gabe wanted to sleep in, so just Dad and I headed to Bari Reef. The entrance was near the remnants of the old concrete pier, which the ocean shoved me into while I stumbled into the ocean, trying to put my fins on. Other than the entrance, however, the dive was very peaceful, the ultimate de-stresser/relaxation combo. We saw more of those huge orange anemones and banded shrimp, as well as a lot of angelfish again (another Queen Angelfish!). After seventy minutes (DAMN WE WERE GOOD), we ended the dive, picked up Mom and Gabe, and headed to Jeff-Davis, an intermediate site. The reason it was intermediate was because there was a small cliff leading down to a beautiful beach. Dad told me he would take my gear down and up for me, however, and I was sold. It was an amazing last dive! There were coral structures covered in tiny little starbuds, the colors sharply contrasting from glowing white to olive green, melting into a butter yellow near the bottom. There were tiny tangerine fish with plum striping and electric blue spots on their head, more Flying Gurnards laying poised in the sand until we swam over them and they opened their spiny "wings", flying through the water to escape our shadows, and we held a Golden Arrow Crab again as a last hurrah. We saw what we called Taffy fish, Yellow-striped Goatfish, which were silver, slightly flattened, with yellow stripes and flowing whiskers. They reminded us of Taffy because they would snuffle around the bottom, searching for their food. What I've written in my travel journal next is "Fish, fish, FISH!"
Blurry picture of us finishing up our snorkel. Dad's sneaking up on me
Bonaire hair, after a couple of days with no washes and all salt water, all the time
After our dive, we opted to return home to nap by the pool instead of snorkel some more since we were really tired. After our naps, we returned our gear and then went home and got DRUNK and watched Judge Judy. We were simply wiling away time until the RUM PUNCH PARTY!!! A week before, when we had all moodily gone to the Poolbar to eat, I saw that there was a free rum punch party every Friday night with live music by a reggae artist named Moogie. And at that moment I knew we had to go. WE HAD TO GO SEE MOOGIE AND DRINK RUM PUNCH. So I begged my parents to sign us up. So we pre-gamed and walked over, procuring rum punch and securing seats by an adorable chihuahua puppy, who I cooed over while his owners laughed at the drunk girl cuddling their puppy.
The puppy!!!
A hammock I saw on the way over to the party that I really wanted to lay in
Ooooh, Gabe getting drunk for the first time!
Double-fisting it
Laughing Gulls
They give out popcorn with the drinks as a diabolical plan to make you want to drink MORE
Dad plus all the rum punch
BBQ time!
At one point, while gathering rum punch for the fam, Moogie winked at me and sung me a song. I felt SO HONORED that Moogie had sung to me! When it was time to eat, we got plates full of BBQ and chowed down with our rum punch and vodka cranberries (the porkchops were so yummy). At the end of the night people started dancing, so Mom and I leapt onto the dance floor and started to partay. I almost lost my phone, which luckily was taken to the bar by a good samaritan, where I retrieved it later. At one point I looked down and saw one boob accidentally unsheathed, dancing with gay abandon with me. I quickly covered it and looked up to see an adolescent boy staring at my chest. Hopefully I made his day. When the dancing was finished and Moogie was packing up, I returned to our table, where a nine year old girl told me I was an amazing dancer. I was glowing with happiness by the end of the party, when we walked home, swam in the pool, showered, and watched TV before sadly going to bed, knowing we had to leave the next day.
Mom, Gabe, and I all woke up to go to Eddy's, the restaurant across the street from the villa, to eat breakfast.
It was run by a sweet Spanish couple making homemade omelettes for each customer. After breakfast, we went downtown for a little more exploration and shopping before we had to check in at the airport.
I don't know what it means (since I posted it for being cute, it probably says something vulgar or offensive), but I liked the cute paw print
Scurry dolphin
The slightly terrifying sign for a bathroom in downtown Bonaire
Cool driftwood flamingo
I've always wanted cannabis jim jams shorts
A lovely souvenir where you can remember where you've been from a label via a label-maker
An adorable seahorse charm
Scuba girl string doll!
Saying goodbye
Driftwood pelican
Me and my creepy flamingo humanoid friend
After downtown explorations, we headed back to the villa to say goodbye and pack up. The rest of the time was spent at the airport and feeling a bit low, especially since I had to say goodbye to the ocean and knew I wouldn't dive for a long time. I got over it though and all in all it has been good being back. Thus ends my amazing diving trip to Bonaire :)
Since I've been back, I've gotten to see Maddie (after a whole year), I started getting some stuff done (just a little bit, I have tons more to do), and I get to indulge in summer activities now like Twilight Concerts and AMFs at the Tavernacle! Bring it on Summer!
