Bonaire: Day 1: SCUBA!

Today was our first official full day in Bonaire. We woke up the the sun shining and beautiful, though a little breezy weather. We had breakfast at Rum Runners, a buffet style with fresh fruit, eggs, sausage, and an omelet bar. They also had fresh squeezed juices. At 9 we had our dive orientation. It was you're typical what you're allowed to do on the marine preserve and what you aren't. They also talked about the different areas that we can go to for diving. After the orientation, we picked up our marine park passes and grabbed weights for our BCs. 

Today we just did shore dives. Our first dive, Drew and I partnered. I didn't have enough weight in my BC so it was a bit of a battle the entire dive. We went south on the House Reef and were down around 56 ft at our lowest part. For the most part we cruised around 30 ft since it was a check out dive to see how everything was working. Despite my weight problems, we still were down about 50 minutes. We saw a little spotted eel, no more than a foot long. We also saw a tarpon that was between 4 and 5 feet long. Because Bonaire is a marine preserve, the coral is still pretty vibrant and there are just TONS of fish. There are big parrot fish, sgt majors, gar (pencil fish), an plenty of others. We decided we need to pick up a book on fish names because we don't know very many.

For lunch we stayed at the Habitat again. I had a smoked salmon sandwich that was pretty good. The view is the best part.

Drew and I did our second dive at 2:30. We both changed out weights and the dive was much smoother this time. Well, once I changed tanks because mine was leaking air when we got in the water and after we had to emergency surface because my regular wasn't hooked up to my BC. After that it was a great dive. We went north along the House Reef, hanging at aroung 60 ft along the shelf. There were so many kinds of coral; big fans, vibrant orange brain, long purple tubes, green mossy looking balls, just to name a few. We saw another eel, about a foot and a half white one with green fins. We also saw two sea turtles. The first was yellow with a yellow and brown shell and had a bit of a pointed beak. The second was your typical green lagerhead. Turtles are so cool.  It was looking like it might storm when we first went down, and the fish were in big schools together, but it was nice and sunny when we finally surfaced. 

After showering and freshening up, we went over to the bar for our complementary rum punches and a meet and greet with Captain Don himself. He's a salty old sea dog, but a nice guy. They also had a steal drummer singing and playing. We had dinner at the Habitat. I had the sea linguini (wahoo and shrimp) and calamari. We ate on the lowest deck, so in early evening high winds we got a little ocean spray, but it subsided pretty quickly. Overall it was a pretty great day.

Until tomorrow, bon voyage!

Two Weeks!

Hi everyone,

So finals have just finished here at USC and Winter Break has officially begun. I must say, that while this semester was so much fun and also really interesting, I'm glad to have a little time off to decompress. Break also means that its almost time for me to go to Bonaire! But if that wasn't enough, I've never been in my parents house for Christmas. We always travel either up to Ohio to see my dad's side of the family or to Florida to see my mom's. This is a Florida year, so we leave Saturday to head to Tampa/Clearwater. Basically this means two straight weeks of traveling.

I am so excited to finally be taking an actual trip again. I've been checking the weather everyday and it's been sunny with highs of 82 and lows of 79 for weeks now. I'll certainly take it.

The trip is planned through Open Water Adventures, a dive shop in Charlotte where both my brother and I were certified years ago. There are 28 of us going on the trip. This will be their 10th trip in 7 years and Joe (one of the owners) says it's one of his favorite places to dive. Can't complain about the number one shore diving place in the world.

I don't know if I will be posting during the trip or after, but posts should be up early January!

Bon Voyage

Picture curtosy of Joe Gaydeski (Openwater Adventures)