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!