Nother day in Bonaire

I know I just updated yesterday, but I had a good day today so thought I would do a quick hit for those of you jonesing for another installment….and I expect that, of course, is all of you.

I dove 2 times today and then took the afternoon off for Rincon Day (also the Queens Birthday). All the shops are closed down and everyone goes out to Rincon (one of the towns on the island) for this huge street party with food, drinks, and music. There was even a small parade consisting of a trailer with a band on it followed by dancers dressed in traditional (as in back in the slave days) island garb. Beer was cheap-ish ($1.50 per bottle…an 8.5oz bottle that is) and you could buy beer and wander around town. The food looked interesting, but it was all in Dutch…or the local language so I am not entirely sure what was being offered, but I think it was chicken and ribs and stuff like that based off what I saw. I had lunch before I went (I am stupid cause it smelled GOOD there) so I was just sucking down Amstels (2,50 gilders please...which brings us to a GTJTTOTD: Dutch people and their territories use a comma for a decimel point and the period for a comma so $1,000.00 in the US would instead look like 1.000,00 here. This could be all of Europe for all I know, but for sure its the Dutch…just be aware).

Couple of observations on my traveling so far. First, as a Maker’s Mark ambassador, I am saddened by the lack of Maker’s Mark availability on these islands. Granted there might have been some bars on the Caymans that had it, but I didn’t see it anywhere except for the airport in Jamaica and I was there at 9 in the morning so it was a little early for a Maker’s Mark and coke (actually diet coke, but you get the idea). For some reason both here and in Curacao (pronounced cure-a-sow, btw), its all about Dewars…meh. Second, the cigarette packs here don’t mess around with the warnings. It’s none of that “might cause cancer” or “could cause birth defects” crap. Every pack says: Smoking will kill you. Bam. Oh and I was wrong about the Americanization of Bonaire. There is a Subway here and I saw there is a KFC listed on the Bonaire info website…so there is some Americanization creepage, but still not too bad. I could see living or retiring here. Super relaxed and awesome weather. Of course I am only here for 6 days so maybe I am still in the honeymoon phase….I could also see the Cayman Islands for that matter…if I could afford it, of course.

Anyway, here are some pictures for your enjoyment!

Self picture...getting some nice sun

What is quite possibly the most awesome hairdo ever! look at that! Half-dome and then the remainder is braided! My dad could work that now and I might be able to pull that off soon (if the top keeps drifting away)
Hmmm...I can't decide...do I want the Spiribs or the Porchops? They both sound awesome (and all kidding aside, the meat on the grill smelled great!)
The lone "float" in the parade. Had a band on it cranking out local tunes. It was led by a police car...to keep the traffic away I guess (streets were blocked so the police car was actually sort of funny)
Dancers following the band float dressed in traditional garb. Dude in the center knows how to do a parade: he is drinking a beer while being a part of it and dancing...so is the guy behind him.

And now some dive photos:
They're everywhere! Fish galore....

One more time:

Cowfish (see the "horns" over the eyes...)

Nother spotted eel looking out

I am sort of proud of this photo of the red banded shrimp...looks good, don't it?

A flounder hanging out on a rock...pretty cool looking, no? I think it's a peacock flounder...had to chase the little bugger down to 100 feet before he stopped on the ledge

An underwater self portrait. As you can tell from this and the other picture, I haven't shaved since Punta Cana. The beard is (I think) messing with my mask a little bit. I have some water leakage...or at least more than normal...that I am constantly getting rid of (which isn't hard...breath in through mouth and out through nose and it forces the water out of the mask...its just annoying)

Seahorse!!! I am saddened its not focused as well as it should be (I think the rocks in the background are focused) but I wanted to share with everyone anyway. Again, I wish there was some perspective I could show on this cause the thing was easily 3 feet long...kidding! It was maybe 3 inches long...really cool looking

So there you go. Another fun day and some good diving! I have 3 dives tomorrow and then on Saturday I am going to drive around the island and visit the national park that is suppsed to be interesting in a desert sort of way.

I am having a fun time but why wouldn't I? It's our time, the People's time.

Cya

Bon Bini from Bonaire!

I am sitting on the back porch of my “unit” (aka apartment) in Bonaire drinking a Polar Beer (a pilsner beer made in Venezuela…that’s right!...me and Chavez are tight like that….and for those who want to know, its not bad and its cheap to boot…only 8oz per bottle tho) and eating an apple. Weird combo that is actually going together fairly well. Weather.com says its 87 right now, but it doesn’t really feel like it. I guess the breeze helps out a bit…and the shade.

I dove 3 times today so there will be pictures coming round the bend. I actually got a little cold on that last dive which is weird considering the water is like 81 degrees, but I guess too much exposure to that temp cools a body down. The awesome crazy thing is I have been the last person on the boat each dive. This is from Mr. “blows through air”…so I guess my work is paying off. For those of you who wish to know, the following things have helped: lighten the amount of weight I put on until its just enough to keep me down, breath in and out slowly (Crowley had a good suggestion: breath in for 5 seconds and then out for 5 seconds…and rather than gasp in, suck the air in slowly…it all helps), and just cruise along nice and slowly.

Part of the “Cruise along nice and slowly” involves not paddling a lot. I was doing that in DR (2 weeks ago…you all remember…the start of the trip) and one of my dive buddies said something. I hadn’t realized I was doing it until he mentioned it. Since then I have been working on doing just about one kick per breath. In the mean time I have been looking at fellow divers and you can almost tell who is new and who has done a lot of diving by the fin action. The new people are flip, flip, flip while the experienced are more flip…………flip……..flip….you get the idea…and if not, oh well.

Oh I was asked what the difference between Amstel and Amstel Bright is….come on…that one was easy: its brighter! Hey oh! Ba dum dum (my rim shot). Nah, I would say it’s like Bud vs. Bud Ice or something like that.

Let’s back up a bit cause leaving Curacao was a bit of an adventure. The cab right to and from the airport was supposed to be $40 (is that reasonable? I don't do cabs and the ride was around 30 minutes....seemed like a lot anyway...). I had to be picked up at 5:30 to make it to the airport by 6 for the 7am flight. On the way to the airport, the cab driver said “since I had to get up so early, the price is $50, they told you that, right?” and I said “no”, but I was already in the cab on the way and didn’t really fight it. Then, when I finally checked in, Dutch Antilles Express (DAE) has a 20 kilogram limit for the trip from Curacao to Bonaire and I doubled that with my baggage. Its 3 gilders per kilo for overage so I had to pay 60 gilders (about $36) extra to get my boarding pass and my luggage on the plane. In the mean time, there was this gaggle of older ladies who all had gigantic pieces of luggage. They all ganged on one helper and I KNOW she didn’t check their shizzle. Finally, to leave Curacao I had to fork over another $8 airport fees (which is funny cause if I was going to the US instead it would have been like $30…same airport…higher fees….though don’t waive the flag of victory yet, I have to pay an exit fee when I leave Bonaire and I think its $40).

Death plane from Curacao. Not sure if I was supposed to be able to take the picture since we were on the tarmac, but I snuck shot it. It held 48 people and had NO leg room:

So I made it to Bonaire and the place I am staying, Coral Paradise Resort, is pretty nice. It was the only place I saw on trip advisor that had nothing but 5 star ratings...I mean everywhere else had at least 1 douche that gave it 1 star because the clerk sneezed at the wrong time or something, but this place was nothing but good reviews (and I can see why). The room has 2 queen sized beds and a kitchenette and runs $140 a night up to 4 people so it’s not a bad deal at all. Of course, you need to look at the airfare (HIGH) and see if it is really worth it. Hopefully airfare will drop coming here sometime, cause already I think I would like to come back. Anyway, CP is owned/operated by Kenny Treadway and his wife and Kenny is a good ole boy from New Orleans, LA that retired from T-shirt making bidness (said he supplied about 75% of all T-shirts sold in the French Quarter) after 25 years, cashed out his 401K (pre collapse) and built this place to retire to. He is quite the character. His place is right next to Captain Don’s Habitat and I dive through them. It’s all good.

From what I can tell (and have been told) the ABCs (Aruba, Bonaire, and Curacao) go pretty much like this: Aruba is the most Americanized and other than the hotels, there isn’t much to do, but apparently they have Taco Bell. Curacao is more Dutch and the natives aren’t as friendly as Aruba (I don’t know…they seemed relatively nice to me) and while there are McDonalds and KFC’s there, that’s about it for the chains. Bonaire is less Americanized than either. I don’t think I have seen anything food chain here and that’s all good. Its much more laid back…not as populated...and pretty serene. I will know more (I hope) after I drive around the island on Saturday. They do have a warehouse food store like a poor man’s Costco here. I got groceries for he week (breakfast and lunch) and hit 3 different supermarkets checking stuff out. The selection isn’t too bad….

Again, did 3 different dives today. The first was at a place called Rappel cause they used to have to rappel down to get to the site from land (we did a boat instead…much easier). The second and third sites were out at Bonaire Klein (a small island just off shore) and had some cool things to offer. The reefs here are incredible for the topography. So far the sea life isn’t completely overpowering me with its abundance, but for sure some if the fish you do see are HUGE. I had to do a checkout dive yesterday (just to make sure my gear was all working properly) and dove the shallows in front of the resort. In about 10 feet of water I see what I thought was a shark it was so big. Had to easily be 4-5 feet long. It was actually a tarpon that was ginormous and it had friends about as big. It was interesting to just float there and watch them swim around.

And without further ado, here are your pictures (click on to embiggen):

Like a tay in tha winnnnnn (Nell reference)
A flounder of some sort buried in the sand. You can see the spots...I think this might be a peacock flounder, but what do I know. Still prety cool lookin'!
Where is riki tiki tavi when I need him?

For all my Jewish friends, a spong menorah!

Huge puffer fish (unpuffed, of course). Easily was a foot long if not longer.

No idea what this is, but I like the neon blue colorings on it. Cool looking dude

I think they called this a tiger grouper. Not real sure, but it was about 3 feet long nose to tail. I wish there were people in the photos to give perspective.

Turtle!

So I was swimming along looking for cool things to look at when I saw something out of the corner of my eye. It was a see through something like jellyfish (and maybe it is one) with a long tail (tenticle). I don't know my camera that well yet so what I did was put my hand out about where the thing was to set the focus and then snapped the picture. If you blow it up you can see it fairly well...not as well as I would like, but it is one of the cooler things I saw today and it was small compared to all the big stuff.

I dunno...some kind of sea fern of some sort. Thought it looked pretty cool

I believe this is a blue grouper of some sort. Again, perspective is everything cause this thing was BIG. The trumpet fish on top of it was easily 2 and a half feet long.

A lizard fish (I think)...looks like a lizard, anyway....if it was a fish:

It's the queen's birthday tomorrow (the Netherland's queen...Beatrix I think is her name) and is a national holiday. Supposed to be some celebrating going on or something. I need to check with Kenny to get the scoop. For sure more diving is coming cause I have 5 more boat dives to do in the next 2 days. Woo hoo!

Hope everone is doing well and taking the time to enjoy life because its our time, the People's time!

Curacao Diving!

Well it’s my last day in Curacao and it has been nice and relaxing. Overall, I would say the weather has been hot with a hint of smolder…but the place I am staying is down on an inlet, out of the sun and gets a killer breeze which lowers the overall temp a lot. Got to love that!

I went downtown…or to the touristy part of Curacao today. It was sadly devoid of really trashy trinkets. Instead it was mostly clothing and what not. I guess Dutch tourists dig island garb or something. It was interesting walking around seeing all these red/pink Dutch people who had been in the sun way too long. Of course yesterday I baked a bit too much during the surface interval after the first dive (surface interval is a minimum required time that you stay out of the water to allow all the bad Nitrogen that has been collecting in your body to get out.) So I am a bit red and itchy myself.

The buildings in downtown Curacao are all painted bright pastel colors (sorry, didn’t have my camera with me…it was in the case drying out after the dive...but this picture shows what I am talking about a bit). It’s really pretty although a lot of the buildings are vacant and in disrepair. Crowley, the dive master I dove with, said the story is one of the governors (or whatever the overseer of the island is called…it’s a Dutch territory so it’s not a president or anything) had bad migraines and complained that all the white buildings brought them on so he ordered all the buildings painted pastel colors. Sounds good, anyway.

In the middle of Curacao (and I mean this literally, there is a waterway going through Willemstad to a bay in the center of the island), there is an oil refinery. Apparently, back in the day, Shell had a big operation here. Nowadays, Venezuela sends their crude up here to get refined, gets it back, and then sells it to Curacao with a little mark-up. Chavez is no dummy. Oh and Crowley said Curacao is the home port for the cruise ship Freewinds. Guess what that is…I’ll wait. No. Wrong. Guess again. That’s right, it is a cruise ship operated by Scientologists. According to Crowley Tom Cruise has been down to sail on it. It goes out to international waters and apparently that’s where the final “you are the king shit, high muckey muck” ceremony takes place and all your Thetans are clean...or gone…or whatever they are supposed to do.

The past three days I have done 2 dives a day with Crowley and various others who would come out for the day. Crowley…how do you like that one? First time I saw his name in one of my initial contact emails, I thought of Alistair Crowley and the Ozzy song Mr. Crowley….what went on in your head? He was a pretty cool British dude who came here after getting tired of being a dive master in Thailand…after being tired of being a Systems Expert for Nortel…go figure.

The first day (and I didn’t bring my camera cause…I dunno why) we dove the reef at the dive shop itself. The company I dove with is called the Dive Bus (check out their site...its pretty cool)…and they have a van they use to drive people around to the dive sites. Pretty cool idea. Apparently Bonaire is even more of a shore dive place and I didn’t see anything like this there. Anyway, the dive site there is called the car pile cause back in the early 70’s some dude thought it would be a great idea to create a reef out of old cars…which have now rusted away to where you can really only see their frames anymore. The reef where there are no cars was pretty nice. The sea life isn’t as abundant as the Caymans, but it isn’t bad. Saw tons of scorpion fish and eels and the reason I wish I had had the camera: a peacock flounder…which sounds odd and does lie flat with both eyes on one side, but was still really cool looking. I also played with how much weight I took. I was doing 18 pounds in the Caymans and did 16 on the first dive and then 14 on the second with no problems. I have no idea if it is related or if I am just getting the breathing down (5 seconds in and 5 seconds out…nice and slow), but the dives were 55 and 62 minutes long. Granted we were 60 feet going out and then around 20 feet coming back, but I was happy with my air consumption.

Yesterday we dove a place called Vaersenbaai (how would you like that as your wheel of fortune word? “I would like another freaking vowel, Pat”). These are all shore dives meaning you drive there, gear up, and then walk into the water and swim out a ways on the surface before going under (saves the air). Supposedly there had been eagle rays spotted there, but we didn’t see any on either dive. It was pretty cool, on the first dive we walked out on the beach, swam out and followed the reef to the left (and then came back) and on the second dive we followed it on the right. I did take my camera for this one and we saw a lot of good stuff…(see below).

A little (relatively speaking) turtle. Nice colors on its shell (once again, click on picture to see large sized version):

A group or herd or pride or flock or what-have-you of blue tang...also known as Dory after the character in Finding Nemo. I am sure all of them speak whale too:

Cool looking anemone (in my opinion anyway). Has these blue/purple tips:
Spotted Moray eel. They aren't chomping at you, they are smelling if you are edible:
Wouldn't yah barracuda!
I believe this is a golden moray eel.
Today we dove a site called Director’s Bay (named after the private beach the directors of Shell used to have) and a place called tug boat (for the tug boat that sank after the ship it was tugging (or pulling) dropped its anchor through the boat). On the way there, we passed the well to do portion of the island. Crowley pointed out this one huge house on a hills that apparently Andruw Jones owns (formerly a baseball player for the Braves…not sure where he plays now). Crowley said he is from here. Didn’t see a while ton of stuff today, but they were still nice dives. Not as good as Vaersenbaai, but still not a total waste of time.

I think these are just sponges, but they are so green...prety cool against the reef:

Another scorpion fish for all you scorpion fish fans (look at the girder):

Red banded shrimp again. Two of them although only one really shows up:

This is a trumpet fish. Lots of them hanging about (litterally...they basically hang straight down for some reason...it's how they roll):

I was hoping this had a name like "white spotted death snake" or something equally scary, but its really just a sharptail eel. Name isn't quite as threatening.
I fly out of here at 7am tomorrow to Bonaire (all of 45 miles away). When I checked out today (or paid up) they were first telling me I needed to be at the airport 2 hours before the plane left, but when I said I was going to Bonaire, they changed that to only an hour before. I guess I don’t have to go through Customs maybe? We will see. I still have to leave here at 5:30 to get there in time.

So far I am having a great time diving. I haven’t really been out in the evenings or explored all that much, but the relaxation is pretty kick butt…and my fridge has been supplying plenty of cold Amstel so I am happy (need to drink the last 6 tonight so I don’t waste them). Actually I am drinking and Amstel Bright. For those of you who were wondering, it doesn't seem like its a light beer...as a matter of fact, I think the back of the bottle says it all: Amstel Bright is a thirst quenching premium quality beer brewed according to the original recipe from the Dutch Caribbean.

I need to get this posted and the pictures added…and then take some time to relax. Our time…the People’s time.

Next one coming from Bonaire!

Kicking it in Curacao!

Made it to Curacao after going through Montego Bay, Jamaica. I actually had to go through customs in Jamaica in order to catch my connection, but the lines were much shorter than they were in Miami when I was doing the Cayman’s connection and I got the cool Jamaican accent as an added bonus.

I had to walk outside from the arrival area to the check-in area so I actually set foot on Jamaican soil (or concrete) and breathed fresh Jamaican air. I usually get a magnet from any country I visit, but I figure the 20 minutes outside + the 2 hours in the airport don’t really count…so no Jamaican magnet. Gotta earn that $hit!

My brief taste of Jamaica walking from the "arrivals" area to the "departures"

I flew Cayman Airways from the Caymans to Montego Bay (all 45 minutes of the flight). Nice seats! Lots of leg room. It was still coach, but I can’t really complain. I flew Air Jamaica down to Curacao. You want to talk about grain of rice in the black bean soup, that was me. Not that there is anything wrong with that…its just I was for sure in the minority on that flight. In a counterpoint to Cayman Airways, there was no leg room, but I had the whole row to myself so I was able to stretch out a little bit. Plus they have Champagne service for their snack and beverage thingy. I didn’t have any champagne but there were a lot of bottles on their cart.

Customs in Curacao was a bit invasive. They actually pawed through my stuff a little bit. Of course the dude picked the suitcase with all my dirty clothes in it to check so I had some silent satisfaction when he was handling my dirty boxer briefs (and that answers that question). He had gloves on but still…

I am staying in the Limestone Holiday Apartments sort of south east of the main city, Willemstad. It has a little kitchenette and comes with a car rental (mine is a Suzuki hatchback).

MTV, pimp my ride! -or- cruisemobile Curacao style:

In my reservations communications (a bunch of emails back and forth) with the owner, Roel, he said there would be taxi 42 waiting for me when I got off the plane. I got off the plane, through customs, out the door and no taxi 42. As a side note, all taxis’ license plates start TX## so taxi 42 would be TX42…had it been there. I had printed out all the travel info for the entire trip (an excellent GTJTTOTD, btw…print out all your travel stuff especially if you did it all yourself…oh and Cammy was totally right! The Cayman’s GTJTTOTD shouldn’t have been walkling…it should have been look right, left and right when crossing the street since they drive on the wrong side of the road, the stuff coming from your right will be what hits you first) so I reread the ones dealing with here and it turns out the original flight was supposed to land at 3PM and it had since changed to 2PM. I was through customs by 2:30 so I leaned back to wait…relatively patiently, for TX42. I gave him until 3:30 and then found a taxi driver who knew where this place was (first lady had no clue), took the cab out here and was met by Roel’s dad (funny old dude…barely speaks English, but was making me laugh).

He led me to a 2 bedroom apartment (I had only booked a 1 bedroom), showed me around and told me Roel was running errands and would meet me shortly. When Roel finally showed up, he said he had me down as coming in the next day (even though my printed stuff said “23rd”) not that it was a problem, but the one bedroom apartment I had booked had someone in it. The one I was in was for some KLM (Dutch airliner I believe) people who might be coming in that night but were probably coming today. So I could use the 2 bedroom for a night and then move over to the 1 bedroom as long as the KLM people didn’t show up. Otherwise, there was this closet (okay not THAT bad, but pretty close) they could put me in for the evening. Hey, I am on vacation…so its all good. I slept in the 2 bedroom, got up and kept everything together today and then while I was out exploring the island, they moved my stuff over. No problems! Oh and it rains here. It’s a drive-by rain…pours for 10 minutes and then is clear, but it has been cloudy off and on all day.

View from my porch..not as good as Sunset House, but not too bad:
I went to the grocery store last night and barely got lost. All the streets are Dutchy and end in “weg” which I guess means street? To add to the confusion, maybe only half of them are marked and then the signs are facing the wrong way. It was an adventure getting out of town today (drove around the island) and I was totally going the wrong way before I finally found some street names, pulled over and poured over the map. Thank goodness for maps!

Anyway, grocery store…they have them here. They even have many of the same things we eat like Oscar Meyer products and Kraft cheeses. They also have a sliced meat section that had everything from salami to “tung” which, I think, is tongue. Sadly, there were no spaghettios so I am not sure I could make it here (kidding! Haven’t had those for a long time). They do have a beer aisle and we are back to Coca Cola Light (in 11oz cans instead of 12oz, but I don’t think that is why it is “light”). They do Amstel beer a lot here. Not Amstel light. That’s for wimps. They go full core Amstel in these 8.5oz bottles. I feel like a giant when I am drinking one. My hand wraps all the way around it. Funny thing is I didn’t see any Amstel Light. They have Amstel Bright, though so maybe that is the same thing? I thought that was a cool name no matter what the contents really were. The strangest thing I saw was canned hotdogs. They had a whole section of normally packaged hot dogs, but on the canned food aisle...canned hot dogs...yah know...for kids! I picked up some eggs, bread and sandwich stuff to try to keep my expenses down a bit while here. I mean why else do a kitchenette. Oh, the store doesn’t have bags for your groceries. You have to either bring your own, or they packed my stuff in a box that was available. The things you learn.

For those who care, the monetary unit here is the Gilder (same thing in the Netherlands, I believe) and it seems like the exchange rate is around 5 Gilders per $3 US…yep, just checked and its 1.66 Gilders per dollar. Most places so far accept Dollars and, once converted, it’s about the same price as what you can get in the US. The trick is they give you the change in gilders, though. Since Bonaire (my next stop) is also one of the Netherland Antilles, I went ahead and withdrew 200 gilders from an ATM…guess I need to check my bank account and make sure they only took out $120…if my calculations aren’t totally hosed. Its eastern time here, or at least I am 3 hours ahead of the west coast. Maybe they don’t do daylights savings. The locals speak Dutch (as do most visitors), a little English (thank goodness) and some patois of Dutch mixed with Spanish and maybe Portuguese? It's pretty lyrical whatever it is.

Today I took the advice of the place I am diving with (tomorrow I start 3 more days of diving) and drove around the island a bit. I got a little misoriented there at the beginning, but quickly got back on track. They drive on the right (correct) side of the road here and its my kind of driving. Out past the city, I didn’t see any speed limits…its more of a “what can your car handle on these crappy roads” kind of thing. Also, if someone is turning left and there is room to do so, pass them on the right even if there isn’t a real lane there. It’s the way driving ought to be…

I went to the National Park Shete Boka on the northwest point of the island. It’s a rocky coast kind of thing with big crashing waves and natural bridges carved by the ocean and things like that. It’s also a desert-like environment with lizards all over the place sunning themselves. Good times.

Dune....Arakis.....Curacao...Desert Planet...the worm is the spice...You shall be known as Mua'dib....okay enough Dune references...lots of cacti and lizards on Curacao:

Surf crashing against the rocky north shore of the island
I continued on to the poorly marked beach called Grote Knip (really…I sort of figured the turnoff was the right one based off the map and where I was…there was no sign…never was a sign…but one of the people at the beach said “Grota here” so I think I was in the right place). It’s on the southern coast of the island and the waters were glassy just 20 minutes after leaving Shete Boka on the north shore. The lesson here is: live on the south side of the island for calm waters. They said it was one of their most popular beaches and the turquoise water made me understand why. I really just stayed on the overlook above it, but looking down into the water, it was super duper clear. I think I am going to enjoy the diving tomorrow assuming there is sea life and/or good looking reefs…we will see.

The beach at Grote Knip...not bad...

Made it back into town around 2 and since I hadn’t eaten lunch, I broke down and ate at McDonalds…yeah, I know…how could I…well it actually took a u-turn and some creative driving and then saying “quarter pounder combo, please”…that’s how. It came with exactly one packet of ketchup and one packet of mayonnaise. I asked for additional ketchup…and got one more. Let’s not go overboard, okay? I figured what the heck, I would try the mayo since apparently that’s how the Dutch roll. It wasn’t too bad. Not as good, in my opinion, as the tomatoey goodness of ketchup, but I could see why it caught on. Oh, they did have…or do have…on the menu a curry chicken sandwich. Looks like their regular chicken sandwiches but I guess with curry flavoring. Seems like spices are a big thing here.

Speaking of spices, all the spices at the grocery store were labeled in Dutch! I think salt is “sel” but I could be wrong. Didn’t see anything resembling black pepper….

Anyway, this is already too long. I am sitting on my porch, drinking a real man’s mini Amstel, enjoying the nice late afternoon breeze remembering: it’s our time, the People’s time.

Marathon Cayman's post...with pictures!

First off, I gotta brag a bit and say I ate Dolphin for dinner last night! A big juicy dolphin burger with fries. It had this sort of tangy sauce with it that made everything go down real good. F’ Flipper is all I gotta say about that! Of course dolphin is another name for Mahi Mahi so you can all put the phone down and stop the calls to ASPCA or Greenpeace or whatever. It WAS good though.

Second, in case you didn't know or try, the photos I am posting can be clicked upon and you will see the original (big) photo.
Geiko anyone? These guys were all over the place sunning themselves.

This is my last day in the Caymans. I head out to Curacao tomorrow morning for more fun and excitement. Actually I don’t dive again until…uhm…Saturday (had to think about what day it is today. It is pretty awesome when you don’t have to know or care about that stuff). On the plus side, I did take my camera out the past couple of days here and got some pretty good pictures so this blog should be chock full of them! The blog says it has an 8MB limit, but I think that is per picture. We will see how much we can stretch it out.

I am a little happy not to have to dive with the dude (Paul) I have been diving with anymore. He is a nice enough guy, but given what I know now, I wouldn’t have buddied up with him given a choice. He is, in my opinion, a selfish diver. He swims around to look at things that interest him and expects me to follow him and stay within his sight (which is what you want to do as a buddy diver [keeping your buddy in sight, that is], but generally the where to swim and what to look at is a mutual thing). If I got too far away from him (due to him swimming willy nilly) he would say something once we surfaced. Also he wants to cover some ground on the dives. I mean he paddles his fins constantly to cover as much area as he can…this causes him/us to blow through air much faster than if you are calm and more mellow. Yesterday, I was ending the dives with more air than he was…which is odd considering the discrepancy in the number of dives we have done. Finally, he is no scout. Dude had no idea where we would be in relation to the boat. On the plus side, I started paying more attention and my internal compass (or whatever) was pretty good with which direction the boat was at any given moment. For obvious reasons this is a good thing to know. I don't want to totally bag on the poor guy cause, again, he isn't THAT bad, but I think I want a more mellow "let's mosey around and see whats here" kind of dive buddy and he ain't that.

There was an older guy diving named Mike that was out all the days I was there. He owns a dive shop on Long Island (pronounced almost like LonGa Island if you are from there) and has been diving for probably longer than I have been alive. I have been asking people with more experience their suggestions on not blowing through air and his were:
1) Don’t carry too much weight. Sounds weird, but apparently the less weight that you carry (you have to carry some in order to sink down), the better. He said most people put too much weight in and that causes them to work harder and use more air in the BCD (the vest you wear). I think I will play with this a bit in Curacao.
2) Don’t use your arms at all. Doesn’t do any good (I already knew this part). Fins can get you wherever you want to go…it just takes practice. And if you look at people who have been diving for a long time, most of the time they are swimming with their arms crossed to just keep them out of the way.
3) Breath slowly. Which makes sense and is relatively obvious, but it’s sort of hard to do. I think it also matches up well with “remain calm” since that is conducive to breathing slowly.
He was down with a group of guys who were constantly making corny jokes and trying, not very successfully, to be funny. Nice bunch of guys even though. The one cool thing is Mike had a video camera the whole time including when we went to Stingray City (yes I did go). He took my address and said he would send me a DVD of at least that part. I said throw as much as you can on there…its all good, so we will see.

Speaking of diving, we had some good ones on Monday. We first went to this site called Big tunnels that was on the wall. At around 100 feet there are these swim through tunnels that we swam through as well as this pinnacle that rose up to around 40 feet or so. We saw some pretty big tarpon that were 3 feet long (at a guess). The camera survived a maximum depth of 105 feet (what my dive computer said I got down to at one point) which is good since the case says its good up to 130 feet (deeper than I plan on diving any time soon).

View looking up the wall from 100 feet down. Remember, you can click on the picture to get the larger version (or even shift+click on the picture to open in a new window...at least in Windows, you Mac people are on your own)
Tarpon swimming around. On the lower left side, you can see a fin one of the other divers was wearing. The fins are 1.5 to 2 feet long so you can get a little scale on these things...they were pretty big.

Yellow finned something-or-others....fish were everywhere

The next dive was at a place called the Devil’s Grotto or Eden Point. Not sure why its named that, but it basically is in around 40 feet of water and these rocks and reefs have all these pass throughs (tunnels that generally don’t have complete ceilings so some light comes down). Saw a turtle right off the bat and then one of the dive masters found a pretty awesome looking scorpion fish. We also saw a southern stingray swimming about. The grotto itself was pretty cool with some huge fish taking it easy in there. I would say this is my favorite spot out of all of them. It’s over near where the cruise ships come in to the harbor so apparently its only good if there are none in port (and there weren’t). For sure if you ever come here, this is a must see.

Look...a turtle!!

One of the pass throughs near the grotto. That's Paul right in front of me and one of the dive masters in front of him

Do you see the Scorpion fish? Pretty cool, huh? Poisonous too

In the Devil's Grotto itself:

Tons of fish all over the reef. The sea life here is unreal.

Went to a site called Table top yesterday. It looks like a table top, I guess. It was okay….saw a turtle right off the boat as well as another scorpion fish. It was a fine site, but I guess a bit of a let down after the Grotto. We also did a place called Kent’s Caves that was just tons of pass throughs that have been worn out of the reefs/rock over time. It’s sort of funny, I went into a little cave in Thailand and was FREAKING out at the time. I blew through my air from hyperventilating. For some reason here it has been all cool. It’s actually sort of neat to swim under these shelves looking for stuff that might be hiding out.

Its turtle paparazzi! See the poor thing trying to get away in the middle of the crowd

Another Where's Waldo with a scorpion fish

Its a red banded rock (or maybe coral) shrimp hanging out

I think they said this was a boxfish...could be wrong, but it was cool looking

And finally, we went to Stingray City. Its in the north sound of Grand Cayman. The story goes that fishermen would come in from their day of fishing into this sound (one of the largest natural lagoons in the world) and pull onto the calm side of the barrier reef and clean their fish. The stingrays, not being stupid, would come in for the free food. Divers heard about this and came out to check it out. Over the last 20-30 years they have been getting the rays used to seeing people so they are actually pretty docile….in Theory.

My friends Tam and Sophia went when they were here, although they went to a shallow, snorkel/stand area. We went to a spot that had about 10 feet of water, sat around on the bottom in a circle and then the dive master would give us little chinks of calamari to hold in our fist. You rub your fist in the stingrays nose (pretty much the entire front of the ray) and he will then follow your fist around wherever it goes. It’s pretty cool although at one point I had 2 or 3 rays around me and I got a little nervous. Of course, this was after one of the little bastids bit me trying to get to the squid goodness inside my fist. They don’t have teeth but instead suck the food in and use bony plates to grind up their food…he bony plated me a bit. I got some video footage too and like I said above, Mike claims he will send me a DVD of it all. If you wanted to know, the top side has a little bit of grittiness to it, but the undersides are really smooth.

The dive master doing a "Stingray Sombrero" leading it around with a fist full of calimari

Here kitty kitty...

One of the little F'ers bit me! Or bony plated me, anyway

There is also this large green moray eel that lives out there. Apparently it’s so old it has cataracts (and it looked like it too). When most of the squid was gone the dive master led us over to a little rock reef area and out comes this 4 or 5 foot eel looking for some snacks. We were told in the boat before the dive (you always have pre-dive briefings to cover what the dive will be doing and safety stuff….its just the way good dive operations roll) that if he comes towards you to cross your arms and put your fingers under your arms (to avoid providing tempting wiggling bits). Of course, after the eel gets all the remaining goodies from the dive master, he starts making a beeline towards me. I was watching him approach thinking “oh shit” and then I remembered the briefing and all was well. He just sort of sniffed around me and swam away. As he was leaving, I did reach out and pet him. He was super smooth. Really a cool sensation. That’s right, people! I petted some stingrays AND a moray eel. I would say you can call me Steve Irwin Jr., but I didn’t try to stick my thumb up their butts (South Park joke).

The big green moray eel. The dive master right next to it shows how big it was

Walked into George Town this morning to see what was there. Unfortunately, there were also 4, count ‘em 4 cruise ships in port so me and 1000000000 of my closest friends were wandering around looking at the stuff there. I was sort of amazed about the number of jewelry/watch stores there were. I think they outnumber the souvenir shops…although I suppose they could be considered really expensive souvenirs.

Since this is a British colony or territory or whatever, they drive on the left (or wrong) side of the road here. I am sort of glad I didn’t get a rental car while I was here because I am sure I would have ended up in the wrong lane at some point. I didn’t really need it although I have had to eat all my meals here at My Bar (the name of the bar…lots of locals hanging out there too, btw). I suppose I could have walked into town, but I was usually pretty tired by the end of the day. Plus, they have had some really good food here (Indian food was the special Monday night. Really good).

Anyway, driving on the left side of the road. The GTJTTOTD could be: don’t go into town when there are 4 cruise ships docked unless you want to deal with a lot of clueless people, but I think that one should be fairly obvious. Instead, today’s GTJTTOTD is: when you are in a country that drives on the wrong side of the road, the locals tend to expect you to walk the same way too….at least here they do. For instance, in the States, it is generally accepted that when you are walking down a hall, sidewalk, or other walkway, and you see someone approaching you going the other way, you keep to the right so pedestrians flow smoothly. Here, you want to stay on the left side. I wasn’t thinking about this while happily walking down the right side of a sidewalk until someone going the other way was approaching me in “my” lane doing a super slow version of chicken. I was thinking “what is this fool doing?” when I realized I was the fool in this instance and got over. I have no idea if this is also the case in England or India (chime in if you have experience!), but it would make sense.

Finally while I was walking, I think I found my new catch phrase…or at least the standard answer when someone asks me what time it is:

That's right, friends, it's our time, the People's time!

Hope everyone is doing well! Love to all and remember:

It's our time, the People's time!