The airport we arrived at was tiny, since the island itself is fairly small (which is another reason I loved it), and basically open-air. A man named Sam picked us up from the airport and took us to our condo for the week, Villa Makoshi. On the way to Perla Bonaire, the condo community where Makoshi was located, we were taken on a winding tour of the confusing layout of the island. Nothing is built or based on logic, which is really confusing to someone who comes from a city built on a grid system (aka me). The next reason I fell in love with Bonaire: everything was colors, COLORS, COLORS! Each building was painted a different rainbow hue, seafoam green houses next to coral orange scuba diving shops.
I took a lot of pictures of different colored buildings just because they were so beautiful. These will come in handy for the next installment of the RAINBOW CHALLENGE! A lot of houses were surrounded with barbed wire, or a creative take on barbed wire such as broken shards of shells glued to the wall. I assume this is because of the theft problem mentioned in my previous post. My favorite house was a cool, light blue with swifts painted along the windows. I vowed that someday I would either own that house, or a house like it. Once we reached the villa, our parents headed out with Sam to pick up our own pickup truck that we were renting while Gabe and I hit the pool. This is where we met Shauna, our neighbor and residential divemaster. We talked for a long time until she excused herself to warm up from her dives earlier that day. Before she left, however, she gave me a welcome beer (an Amstel!) Starting our trip in Bonaire with a beer in the pool was luxury defined, in my opinion. I saw birds that I would identify as Tropical Mockingbirds and Troupial Orioles later in the palm trees surrounding the pool as I sipped my beer and wondered where the hell my parents were. Just as I wondered if a drug cartel had murdered them (which had been one of mine and Shauna's conversation topics earlier), they arrived with our truck. I lay out in the sun for awhile while other peeps did their own thing.
In the evening my dad requested that we walk down to Dive Buddy, a scuba dive shop just down the street, to see if we could do an orientation session and get our marine park tags (since Bonaire is a marine sanctuary, all scuba divers must undergo a buoyancy orientation and buy a marine park pass). On the way there, mom and I excitedly pointed out wild parrots and took stupid pictures (because that's what I do).
The man overseeing the shop was a little bit sharp with us and told us there was no way we could get in the water that day, since they were closing up, and that we could come back in the morning to certify. To top it off, he told us that boat dives were booked up until Monday of next week, which was two days away. My dad was DEVASTATED. There was SO MUCH DRAMA because he was just SO DEVASTATED that we a) couldn't get in the water that day and b) all boat dives were booked up. I persuaded everyone that we should eat at the Poolbar, the restaurant located at the Buddy Dive resort, where a lot of heated conversations took place. It was ridiculous. He even went as far to say that it was my fault because I was dawdling and taking pictures since we were, you know, ON VACATION. I tried to ignore the angry atmosphere and instead enjoyed my happy hour drink and burger.
Mmmmm
Gabe waiting to go "certify" for scuba
A Laughing Gull, one of the iconic residents of Bonaire
Boats in the sunset
The sunset was beautiful. Sitting at a table right next to the ocean, situated so I could view the sunset perfectly was AMAZING. It cheered me up a great deal, and after dinner everyone else calmed down too. Phew. We went grocery shopping at the new Van der Tweel (after driving around for half an hour trying to find it). I've never been out of the country before (not counting times I was on a cruise), so the grocery store was like an AWESOME EXPERIENCE. I was ridiculously excited to weigh the fruits and push the button that printed a sticker you stick on the fruits telling you HOW MUCH YOU PAY.
Phineas y Ferb!
After grocery shopping, we headed back to the condo and swam in the pool with booze. ULTIMATE VACATION. The pool had a color-changing light so it was like a giant glow-cube.
I passed out at like 10:30 PM because I was so tired, despite the time zone change. We woke up early the next morning so we could certify first thing. When looking out the kitchen window (which had bars over it to keep out THIEVES), I saw a green heron! We headed over to Dive Friends, the other major scuba renting organization on the island (and way friendlier, according to our upstairs neighbors). The dive center closest to us was just barely being built, so it was a cute little open-air wooden shack that smelled like fresh lumber, complete with lime green and bright yellow accents. We got there just a tiny bit earlier than the employees, a tall man named Martin (pronounced MarTYN) with tattoos on his leg reading "This Way Up ^" and "(c) 1975" and an adorable blonde dutch girl named Tessa, or Tess. At first they told us that we probably couldn't do our buoyancy test there, since usually it must be done at a designated pier, but since the other location was so dusty due to construction we got to certify at that location, called The Cliff. They sat us down and told us the rules of the marine park and had us fill out paperwork so we could get our marine park tags, which we attached to our BCDs. Then he called people at the Yellow Submarine location to bring us gear in our sizes while we wandered around the shack and talked to Tess and Martin. They were both hilarious and adorable, I wish I would have taken a picture of them (or taken them home with me). We talked about wearing the shorty wetsuits to prom (which were horrific), how terrible the "We Are Young Song" is (Martin called it sort of pathetic), and how everything to do with water is basically miraculous.
The shorty wetsuits are TERRIBLE TO GET ON! Especially if they are not wet and zip up from the thigh. BAD PLACE TO ZIP UP, BRO. Basically it took awhile to get mine on and it sucked. But when we finally were all geared up, I had to refresh my memory (Martin helped a lot) on how to prepare everything, and we were ready to go. At this point, another car pulled up and Martin told us that it was the solo diver that came there every day to gather gear. My mom said, "Wouldn't it be funny if it was Shauna?" We laughed about this until who else but Shauna waltzed into the dive shack. She said she was going to come along with us, since she wanted to see mine and my brother's first time in the water (thinking it was going to be comical). She assured us that she was a divemaster, which immediately assuaged my dad's fear, since the reason he wanted to go on a boat dive first was because he was sure that he would accidentally kill us all in the ocean if we went by ourselves. At this point in time, I basically told him SEE DAD? EVERYTHING TURNED OUT AWESOME BECAUSE WE MET THESE BOMBASS PEOPLE AND NOW WE HAVE OUR OWN PERSONAL DIVEMASTER COMING WITH US. Just like that. The entry to Cliff was fucking hard though. I was not used to having to teeter into the ocean with forty lbs of gear on my back, trying to avoid rocks as I was forced into them by waves. Finally, I made it past the rock field and into deep enough water that I could sit down and attempt to put my fins on. This was a whole new challenge, because I was trying to unbuckle the fins and rebuckle them in the water, which is IMPOSSIBLE. I had to have my dad help me, eventually, because it had been seven minutes and everyone was awkwardly staring at me as I just lay face down in the water, struggling with my fins. Finally, we all swam out, passed our buoyancy test, and for the first time started to dive.
IT WAS AMAZING. If you ever have the chance to get certified, DO IT, and if you EVER get the chance to go to Bonaire, DOUBLE DO IT. Snorkeling at certain spots was also fun, but scuba diving provided us with a view into a new world. It sounds cheesy, but it was definitely a new world. I was worried about my ears, because I've always had trouble equalizing, but it wasn't an issue in the ocean. I travelled across the sloping bottom easily and when we reached the reef, I was astounded. To describe diving, I would say that it's a lot like dreaming. The dream/dive itself is beautiful, full of swirling colors and fantastic creatures; just an overwhelming amount of visual stimuli that seem impossible to all be found together in one place. Shauna, being our appointed guide, showed us things like Christmas Tree Worms, little worms in a rainbow of colors: purple, red, yellow, orange, navy blue, that attach themselves to substrate. When you touch them, they immediately shrink back into their little shells that have been attached to rocks or coral. She also showed us Banded Shrimp and Golden Arrow Crabs, tiny daddy-longlegish crabs that have comically cone-shaped heads and tiny purple claws at the end of their long front limbs. I also saw the first of many eels, staring up at me from his little hidey hole as I passed above him. I kept getting in trouble during the dive, because I would accidentally go lower than everyone else, or go too far ahead in my excitement (later I learned that you have to slowly inflate your BCD as you go down because the water compresses and brings you down farther than you mean to go). Basically, it was amazing. So many colors and different creatures to see, and I was thrilled that my ears weren't acting up at all. Because I was new to diving and because I was panicking a bit at first (with the flippers) and then was so excited about what I was seeing underwater, I used up my air FAST. Our entire dive was only about 29 minutes (which is pathetically short), and I almost ran out of air on the way up. As we ascended, we stopped to do our three minutes safety stop, which is when I had the most trouble. My BCD had filled with air, because when you go up from a depth the air expands (physics!), so I kept floating up. So I desperately kicked to stay down at the safety stop level, but I was in an awkward upside-down position the entire time. It was sort of shitty. But then again, it was also my first dive GIVE ME A BREAK. Getting out was easier than getting in, fortunately, and Martin helped me up the small ledge to the beach. We disassembled our gear, rinsed it, and Martin showed us how to package it to make it easier to tote around. I declared that I was going to live in my wetsuit, because it had taken so long and so much effort to struggle into it. There was no way in hell that I was going through it again. I would never take off the wet suit again. As I waited for everyone else to disassemble their gear, Tess was painting driftwood signs for the dive center. She was trying to mix a light purple, which she called a "gay purple", so I helped her out with it before we left for lunch.
We headed back home, ate lunch ravenously, and then headed out to Buddy Reef, our next destination. Dad let me ride in the back of the pickup truck the way there, which was absolutely exhilarating for me. Riding in the back of a truck, hair wet, salty, and frizzy in a ponytail whipped around by the wind, and smiling at the family in the car behind us, who seemed astounded that I was riding in the back of the truck was enough to make me glad to be alive. I mean, the fact that we were discovering new underwater worlds, swimming in the ocean, and living on a tropical island temporarily were also amazing and made me love life, but just the little moment of riding in the back of the pickup truck really struck that spark in my heart. We got to Buddy Dive and started setting up gear. I went around the boardwalk to talk to the lady at the dive shop to ask if there were any bird guides, because I was dying without one (I wasn't able to identify any of the birds I'd seen until later). We had a nice chat about the different birds that could be seen in the area (even though she didn't have a bird guide), which was cool. Then MORE DRAMA HAPPENED. First of all, I totally set up my tank and BCD correctly, but Dad got confused and switched it. So I had it on incorrectly, which my new friend at the dive shop pointed out and fixed for me. Then I put my weight belt on too low below my hips, so it started slipping off when I was in the water, so I had to get back out (with Dad all pissy about it) and try to fix it. AT this point, I dropped the weight belt on my foot, which was the last straw. My Dad irritably asked me, "Do you need help?" to which I tearfully replied, "NO!" and turned away from him, sniffling and trying to fix my weight belt. At this point, the divemaster who was a bit snippy with us the night before came up to me and asked gently, "Who did this? Are you okay?" I told him that I was fine and he helped me with my weight belt and mask, cleaning it out for me and putting on defog. It was so nice, I immediately felt better. The wiles of a crying female, eh? For reals though, it was sooo nice and I was really happy that people were helping me. I finally got back in the water, all wrongs righted, struggled with my flippers a bit, and then saw tons of cool stuff. We saw lots of puffer fish, a huge porcupine fish, scaled cowfishes, crabs, lots of large silver fish and parrotfish hiding in a group underneath the pier, and just so many colors. There were these cool glowing green and purple corals and what was called pipe coral, which literally looked like giant, green, bendy pipe-cleaners sticking out of the sand. We swam to an overturned fishing vessel called La Machaca, which was coated in corals, soft sponges, and different colored algae, attracting multiple types of parrotfish.
After our dive (which was lengthened to 35 minutes this time), we snorkeled. I saw a chimney eel slithering along the bottom, feeding in the rubble. It was funny because he had a little entourage with him. He finally dug himself a little hole under a rock, ditching his entourage and forcing them to find their own food. While snorkeling, I bumped my head on piers twice, once diving down to see what something was (I thought it was an octopus, but it turned out to be a piece of fabric) and then ascending and accidentally surfacing underneath the pier, and the second time doing a similar thing in diving down under the other pier to swim through the group of fish that had gathered there, aaaand then surfacing and hitting my head again. I was so sick of hurting myself by the end of the day. We got out, dried off, got dressed and semi-presentable (and I took off my wetsuit, despite my earlier promise), and we headed to go eat some dinner at a PIZZA PLACE.
Getting ready. Ish
The preggers cat hanging out in front of the pizza place
Rum and coke, separated (I had originally just gotten the coke, and then Dad asked why it wasn't a rum and coke, so I changed that immediately)
Gabe wanted to take a picture of my hair (since it'd gone crazy), but instead it turned into an awkward picture of me and my boobs. Keeping it, though
We were famished (diving makes you HUNGRY), so we dove into our garlic bread and pizza, Gabe and I going as far as to finish an entire large pizza. It was really delicious. I got pretty drunk from my two rum and cokes, which I think was mostly due to dehydration. After dinner, we decided to go for a walk along the Marina. I took a couple of blurry, drunken pictures.
A sign made up of pieced together license plates
Drempels! I say this now whenever I see a speed bump
Boatssss
While walking, I saw a girl reading out on the porch in front of her house. It turns out that it was Tessa! She recognized us and asked where we'd gone diving that diving that day and how many times. We talked to her for a few seconds and then peaced out. We finished our walk at the Marina and headed home, Gabe and I riding in the back of the pick-up truck. Gabe asked me as we returned to the condo, "So this is supposed to be exhilarating?"
YES, IT IS EXHILARATING OKAY.
When we got home, we saw that there was a cute little kitty on the porch.
I named her Katydid. We hung out at the pool and played with the cat, who kept trying to enter the condo whenever we opened the door. She slunk away to Shauna's place when she realized that I wasn't going to feed her, and Shauna ended up giving her water and ham. I finished off the night with some X-Files
(Los Expendientes Secretos X!) and then passed out.
The next morning we dove at 1000 Steps. Aptly named because there are about 70 steps leading down to the beach, which feels like 1000 steps on the way back up with soaking wet and heavy scuba gear.
I didn't get a picture of the actual steps (even though I meant to), so I found on on the INTERNET
(from Google)
This shows the top of the steps, plus the yellow rock marking the dive site. Every single site was marked with one of these yellow rocks. Before we got to 1000 Steps, we ran into Shauna again at the dive center when we went to pick up tanks, who told us she could show us where 1000 Steps was and dive with us in the morning if we wanted, since she had to fly out the next day. We agreed and followed her to the site, where I set up all my gear PERFECTLY! All the mistakes and drama that had occurred the day before had made me a better human being. Dad was freaking out a little bit because he kept messing up and he was being way too hard on himself, but it did make me feel nice that I had gotten everything ready and hadn't made a single mistake. Taking the gear down the steps was really precarious and slightly terrifying (I was afraid I would trip and roll down the rest of the way, propelled to certain death by the weight of my tank), but the steps themselves were really cool looking and they led to an absolutely gorgeous beach. Once we'd gotten down the steps, we easily entered the water and I was able to slip on my flippers (the trick is to not unbuckle them and then rebuckle them, it's to loosen them all the way so you can slip them on and then tighten them in the water, BAM). We saw tons of cool coral structures and soft sponges again, like elkhorn coral and purple tube sponge. At one point we saw a brain coral structure that was HUGE, like the brain of a giant alien that died in the sea. We saw more Golden Arrow Crabs; this time Shauna plucked one off the reef and handed it to me. It pranced over my hand and felt like tiny, featherlight tickles. It kept trying to leap off my hand and jet back to the reef, but it was easy to catch him again and hand him off to my Dad or brother. We played with him for awhile and then gently set him back down on the reef.
(picture from Google)
Damselfish are little sassy black fish that are incredibly territorial and live all over the reef. Shauna and Martin told us that sometimes they'd bite if they found you in their territory and were pissed off enough. The bites don't hurt, but they're enough to startle you/get your attention. Shauna likes to harass them a bit, or "give them shit" as she says, because they're so huffy and territorial. We also saw an adult drumfish, which Shauna indicated by pretending to play a drum underwater. Over the week we perfected our different animal signals to let others know what was around.
Adult Drumfish (from Google)
This time, Gabe ran out of air faster than I did and Shauna had to send him up (another first!), so he and Dad went in while Shauna and I explored the shallows some more. We found a Golden Chain Eel hiding in a small clump of corals and petted him on his head because he was completely docile! Or maybe he was so shocked that he couldn't move. We also saw damselfish rubbing their sides on different rocks, which had white marks on them from the damselfish constantly doing figure-eights, and a couple of peacock flounders. We finally surfaced and switched out our scuba gear in order to snorkel. A half hour into our snorkel interval, Shauna asked us if we wanted to move onto another site (because she wanted to dive some more before her 24 hour pre-flight period of no diving). We returned to shore, where we found adorable hermit crabs as we packaged up our gear. We found a teeny tiny one and then a larger one.
"hello!"
"later, dude"
Now came the part I dreaded the most: going back up the steps. It really did feel like 1000 steps as I climbed with a damp, hot wetsuit clinging to my body, holding my fins and mask in my left hand, and with forty lbs of gear on my back. It was HELL. Finally, I reached the top of the steps and a little piece of my soul died. The good news is that there were yellow-shouldered parrots in the trees as we got into the truck to drive to our next site. The next place was called Oil Slick Leap, an easy entry site where you giant stride into the ocean off a small cliff.
The view from the dock, with the ladder you can either use to exit or enter, if you're afraid of jumping
Shauna
We did a giant stride off the cliff and descended to see a bunch of cool nudibranchs, like the flamingo tongue and a feathery pink one that we didn't identify.
I thought the pink one was an octopus tentacle and was super excited for a second before Gabe poked it and it floated down into the depths, clearly not an octopus. We saw a lot of huge Tarpon (silver pelagic fish) and a damselfish finally bit me! I squealed the first time it happened, because I was so surprised and not expecting it because I didn't even see him at first. Then it happened a second time on the same dive, when I was playing with a damselfish near his mass of coral. I hung out for five minutes just watching him and twirling around him with my fingers, which he would swim through, before turning away to leave. When I did that, he totally BIT ME. Cute little JERK. Dad and Gabe got out first again, due to Gabe using up his oxygen, while Shauna and I stayed down. When we did get out, we stripped out of our scuba gear and then did some cliff jumping. Over and over again, we climbed the ladder to reach the docks, clambered over the lava rock, positioned ourselves on the highest point of the cliff, and leapt off into the ocean. It was SO MUCH FUN. I want to go cliff jumping a lot more this summer (and maybe even conquer higher heights!). There was one woman who refused to do the giant stride, she was so terrifying of jumping off the cliff. It was kind of funny. After I was satiated with jumping, I snorkeled around and saw tons of different parrotfish, triggerfish, more damselfish, and a lot of the tiny little wrasses. We climbed out again, admiring the crabs hanging out on the rocks behind the ladder as we did so, and said our goodbyes to Shauna. We then went home, changed, and searched for FOOD. The one issue with this trip was that we were so enthralled with diving that, often, we would either forget to eat or just wouldn't have time to eat. So at this point, at 4 PM when almost nothing was open, we were STARVING and desperate for something to eat. Luckily, we found a place that was not only open, but also DELICIOUS. I got the tenderest fish and chips I had ever eaten in my LIFE. Plus they served it with this garlic sauce that makes my mouth water just thinking about it. We tried to find a bookstore to get a bird guide, but it turns out that the "bookstore" was actually a semi-sad office supply store with one wire rack of paperback novels. COOL. We returned to the restaurant to find out that our meals came with free dessert, YES. After dinner, we found out that my wetsuit (which actually turned out to be Gabe's wetsuit, in the end) was GONE. We at first thought it had been stolen and were pissed. We were scheduled to go on a night dive that night,though, so we couldn't dwell for long. We met up with the night diving group at Yellow Submarine, another Dive Friends location. I got a new, WAY BETTER wetsuit (that didn't try to bite me when I put it on AND it didn't take fourteen years to zip up either) and we got ready for the dive, securing flashlights around our wrists and marching out to the water's edge. We began the dive just at sunset, so it wasn't completely dark yet. I looked to the left as we descended to see a spotted eagle ray flitting away from us, the first ray of the trip! As we continued, I also saw a weird anemone-looking worm thing that, as I hovered over it, slurped back into his little hole, much like a Christmas Tree Worm, lots of Golden Arrow Crabs and Banded Shrimp out of their hidey holes and frolicking up and down the reef, and LOTS of Tarpon.
(from Google)
The Tarpon like to hang out with night diving groups because the flashlights stun reef fish, who think that it's suddenly daytime all of a sudden and freak out a little bit. Then the Tarpon eat them. Hardcore. I got to see the Tarpon stalking and hunting fish, which was really cool. They sucked them in via their special jaw mechanism that creates a wind tunnel, eliminating all possibilities of escape. DAMNNN. Another cool thing is that our guide, Patrick, brought along a Lionfish hunting harpoon. Lionfish, while really cool looking, are actually terrible for the Bonaire ecosystem because they're introduced fish and thus the native fish have no natural defenses against them and don't even recognize them as a predator. Thus, if you're diving and you see one you're supposed to mark the spot where you saw them so that a specialized dive team of Lionfish shooters can kill them. So Patrick brought along his weird, three-pronged spear and speared two of those suckers. It was the first time I'd seen Lionfish, so I was glad I got to see them (even though they're bad, mmkay).
(it's like a little trident. Images from Google, yo)
I was really afraid that I would be the weakest link and I would have to turn back before anyone else because of my "air hog issue", as Shauna put it. I alerted Tess that I had half a tank at one point, but it was okay because the rest of the team turned back at this point anyway. Thus, I got to finish the dive with everyone, which was AWESOME because we got to see bioluminescence. This is the glowy, lime green zooplankton that populate the water and turn into tiny little fairy lights at night. We sat on the bottom of the ocean and clapped, creating tiny explosions of bright fireworks. It was amazing, like swirls of stars illuminating our hands in the murky water. As we headed up, we saw a bunch of trumpetfish hanging out at the top of the water, attracted to the streetlights lining the street. We emerged, rinsed, and headed home to discover our gate key didn't work.
Let's back up. When we were at Oil Slick, we decided to try out our "dry" bag and put all of our valuable we'd brought with us inside of it. This way, we could take our necessities with us into the water and not have to worry about the petty theft problem. Unfortunately, the dry bag didn't work. So our electronic items, like the gate key and my point and shoot camera, were fried. RIP my beloved blue point and shoot. You were a great little camera. So I jumped the gate and asked Shauna if we could borrow her gate key. We proceeded to hang out by the pool with her, indulging in beer, vodka drinks, and rum cake while she showed us videos she'd taken on her other diving trips of garden eels and manta rays. We swapped emails and had a touching goodbye. She told us that she was happy to be able to dive with us, since things that seemed boring to her now (like Christmas Tree Worms) were made new and exciting through our eyes, since we had never seen them before and she could show them to us. I'm excited to get the pictures of us scuba diving from her, since all of the underwater pictures are on her cool underwater camera (the rest of my pictures had to be taken with my phone). We wrote in our dive logs and then went to bed.
I feel like a quitter for splitting my Bonaire experience into different blog posts (since usually I just throw it all up into one giant, terrifying block of text and pictures), but I still have like six days to talk about still. Soooo I'll leave you with this until the next post.
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