Xmas In Bonaire!

Greeting travel fans!

Long time, no blog.  I hope everyone is doing well as Stacy and I suffer through day after day of 81 degrees and sunshine on Bonaire.  It's a terrible price to pay, but someone has to do it.

We left Portland on the 23rd on a red eye to Atlanta.  Sounds great: sleep on the flight, etc. but the reality is we left around 11PM and the flight was only 4 and a half hours long so, at best, we got maybe 2 hours of sleep.  Then our flight to Bonaire left around 9:30 and made it to Bonaire around 2:30 local time so that day was pretty much entirely shot.  For those who care, Bonaire is on eastern time plus 1 hour.  You do the math.

We are staying at Buddy Dive Resort which is pretty nice but totally geared towards the diver crowd.  With our 1 bedroom with kitchenette, we get a rental truck and all the air fills we can want, Nitrox included.  You see, Bonaire is a shore diver's paradise which means you drive around the island, locate a dive site conveniently marked by a yellow painted stone with the site's name on it, gear up and walk on in.  There are 60-something total sites around the island so even diving 3 or 4 dives a day, you aren't going to hit them all.

So far we have done 16 dives over 5 days of diving.  We hit it hard and did 4 dives each day the first 2 days.  The problem with that is by the end of the day you are wiped out such that you eat dinner and barely make it to bed before the sandman hits you up side the head.  We dialed it back to 2 dives the next day to try to catch up on non-dive related activities and ended up hitting the local brewery, conveniently named Brewery Bonaire, for a "quick" flight of their offerings.

To be honest, the beers were a little too geared to the Dutch for my tastes (quick side note: Bonaire is/was part of the Dutch Antilles so the fact the beer is geared towards the Dutch makes a ton of sense...it's just me that isn't a huge fan...but your tastes may vary and they were super duper nice).  Overall, there were a couple that, if I were to live here, I would be happy with, but I likes my PNW IPAs and they were were serving wits and doppels, so sue me.

While there, we met and talked with Rich and Sue who own a sailing/diving charter called Bonaire From the Sea.  Now we haven't partaken of their service so caveat emptor, but they were the nicest people and our quick stop turned into a 2 hour or more chat with two thoroughly entertaining people who sound like they love what they do.  They recommended dive sites, restaurants, and regaled us with tales of their adventures moving from England to Bonaire to completely change their professions and enjoy what the island has to offer.  For what it's worth, Stacy and I both agree we want to do at least a day on their boat of not a whole week next time we come here.

We dove another 4 dives yesterday including a night dive that lasted maybe 15 minutes but it was to see the ostracods.  Holy crap, friends.  I really can't describe it well enough to say what we saw, but basically every month, up to 8 or so days after the full moon, these little microscopic crustaceans have a mating ritual that looks like fireworks crossed with a starry sky.  Now I haven't verified this but the story I was told was the females let loose these glowing egg things that flash upwards (and sideways and downwards) like links of a DNA helix, bit by bit, and these are happening all around you.  Then as the lights get towards the top, the males release their...uhm...seed...in this glowing blue circle of light that's 5 inches in diameter.  So you have these blinking climbing flits of light around you in the ocean and these glowing circles of blue on the surface and its constantly happening everywhere.  The crazy thing is that this really only happens in Bonaire, but it happens after every full moon!  So if you ever plan a trip to come here for diving or snorkeling, plan to come right after a full moon.  Awesome.

Today we took it relatively easy and did another 2 dives for a total of 16 in 5 days.  Not too bad.  We are both getting better with the cameras and taking photos underwater.  And I guess with that, it's time to show rather than tell.  Remember: click to embiggen...and I think you can right click open in new tab to get even embiggener

Octopus hiding not very well in the coral

This is a honeycomb cowfish.  Check out the horns.  Not sure why its not a bullfish....

Lettuce Slug...head on!

Lionfish....apparently you can get lionfish pizza here.  Haven't tried that...yet

Little spotted moray eel out in the open.  Maybe a foot long

Mantis Shrimp peeking out from its hidey hole.  Pretty cool critter, but hard to get a good photo

Nimble Spray Crab....sideways top to bottom.  You can see the red eyes and then the legs.  They are hiders too

Octopus out in the open.  sort of trying to camouflage but not really doing that great

This is a Pederson cleaner shrimp in front of an awesome pink/purple anemone.  This is about an inch long so I got to practice my macro photography

This is a Queen Angelfish.  Super camera shy and was darting all round, but I clicked a the right time.

Keeping it royal, this is a Queen Parrotfish.  They chew on the coral and you can hear them grinding it down while you dive

The red dude in the center is a frogfish.  Very hard to spot usually because they don't move and blend in really well.  Red fish on green coral...dude was colorblind or something.  

This is a sharptail eel.  It was out in the open and did not appreciate us trying to photograph it...at all

I had always heard this was a slipper lobster so that's what I am going with.  Yes, those 2 dots are it's eyes.

School of Smallmouth Grunts.  Pretty yellow stripes

Flamingo tongue.  Found on the sides of soft coral.  

This is a sponge peppermint shrimp found conveniently inside a sponge.  The red stripes are where it gets it's name

This is a spotted cleaner shrimp.  Looks sort of like the Pederson shrimp...but with spots.

This is a spotted drum fish.  The adult version.  If you look back at the Cozumel blog, I have photos of juvenile versions of this.  So this is what they look like when they are grown up

This is a squat shrimp.  About the size of an ant.  It lives in Anemones and is pretty cool looking in my opinion.

This is a Stacyfish in it's natural habitat.  

This is a yellowline arrow crab.  It's got a long snout as you can see.

Banded coral shrimp hanging out in some coral

Apparently there is a band called Baracuda because the link I wanted was the 9th one down.  FWIW, one of Baracuda's songs is "Ass Up"...so sounds like a winner.  Oh crap...I think I sounds like an old man!  Get off my lawn!!

This is a bearded fireworm hanging out on some soft coral

Blackcap Basslet

This is a Blenny.  Super tiny.  And angry looking

This is a chain moray eel.  Again, I look it up so you don't have to.  Of course, if I am wrong, blame reefguide.org :)

This is a lizard fish.  They just hang out on the bottom like this.

Green Moray Eel.  This one was pretty big.  I would guess as big around as my bicep and probably 4 feet long

Hey! Its your's truly.  Terrible weather.  Look at all those clouds!

Looking back at the shore from where we descended for the dive.  Our truck is one of those you can see.  Again...tons of clouds!

Whew!  I had all kinds of plans to do this every day or every other and those dives just took it out of me.  Plus wading through hundreds of photos to find ones that don't suck and then cropping them to showcase the thing I was trying to photograph is time consuming.  So maybe there will be another one before the "final" one and maybe not.  We will see.

Until then, love to all!

Remember: Its our time, the people's time!

Jim

Cozumel diving

Hey all!

Long time, no blog.  Stacy and I just got back from a week of diving in Cozumel, Mexico.  Beautiful blue waters with great visibility and tons of life made for a great week of diving.  We stayed in a 2 bedroom condo at Villa Mayaluum that had a full kitchen to boot.  We made almost all of our breakfasts and lunches there and went out for dinner.  The place was about 2 miles out of town, but the walk to town was on a boardwalk along the water so the sunsets and breezes made up for the hikes.  On top of that, the outfit we dove with, Scuba Mau (shout out!) was right next door to the condos.

We dove every morning except...Monday, I think.  There was a strong wind and chop so the port was closed to small craft like our dive boat.  When we did dive, it was a 2 dive trip leaving around 9 and getting back around 1:30 or so.  We also did a twilight and night dive on Wednesday so that was a 4 dive packed day.  We slept well that night.  We saw all kinds of goodness throughout the week: spotted eagle rays, nurse sharks, turtles out the ying yang, an octopus on the night dive along with a sea snake out slithering around, crabs, shrimp and tons of fish.

I also got an external strobe for my underwater camera.  It's pretty sweet, but I am having to learn how to actually work my camera now with shutter speeds and fstops and ISO adjustments to make the pictures look good.  I took a TON of photos and most of them were washed out blasts of white light due to the strobe and me not knowing how to work my camera properly.  I got better as the week went on but I really need to take a class on how to fully use my camera to get better.  Luckily, Portland Community College has classes on that so I plan on signing up for one.

Crazy food of the trip was lingua tacos...or taco since I only had one.  We went to this divey taco place the last night in town and they had that on the menu.  So along with 3 tacos al pastor (pork tacos marinaded with pineapple) I did a lingua taco...lingua = cow tongue.  It was okay...sort of rich beef flavor, but not much more.  We (meaning Stacy since she rules) also found a micro brewery in town: Cervezaria Punta Sur.  Decent beer, but they had great pizza.  Yes...I had pizza in Mexico...we were there 8 days.  I had plenty of Mexican too.

Blah blah blah..get to the pictures already.  Tons of thanks to Stacy for helping me ID all the critters below.  We took hours googling and pouring through fish ID books so you don't have to.  Also her critical eye helped me make the photos that much better.  Yay Stacy!  Okay..tons of photos so here we go.  Remember, click to embiggen!

4 juvenile drum fish here...you almost never see more than 2 together.  We didn't ID the other fish, but give you a hint of how small the drum fish are.  

This is an anemone shrimp.  I really like these critters, but they are small, mostly see through and hard as heck to get in focus.  This is the best photo I got of one

This is an arrow crab.  I had never seen one...that I can recall...until we went to Roatan last year.  On this trip, they were everywhere.  Hard to get a good photo cause they have this long nose that is always out of focus.  Stupid nose.

This is a baby (or just really small) spotted moray eel.  maybe an inch in diameter.  Yeah...I like this photo

We were looking for a seahorse in this seaweed area sort of hovering close to the bottom when this guy came out of nowhere and scared the crap out of me.  It's a Balloon fish.  Check out the eyes...or eye.

Thus furry critter is a banded clinging crab...clinging to an anemone.  Its sort of looking to the lower left corner so you can see the eyes down there.  Stacy spotted this one and pointed it out to me.  Took me a minute to even realize it wasn't a part of the coral...it moved and gave itself away.

Banded coral shrimp I saw on the night dive.  Not the best photo of one, but the best I got on this dive

Stacy and the dive master we were with, Rafael, pointed towards this sponge...I thought they were pointing to this super tiny hermit crab and I was taking pictures of it...or trying to, when this crawled past.  This, a bristle worm, is what they were trying to point out.

This nightmare looking thing is a channel crab we saw on the night dive.

Hermit crab.  I am super happy about this photo.  It has the coolest blue eyes!

Me dorking around with the ISO settings to get the light playing through this pass through.  Some really cool topology on the dives.

Anyone hungry?  This is a protected marine park so there were large lobsters everywhere...but this gang is getting a little ridiculous

Side shot of a peacock flounder.  How freaky is this thing?  Pretty cool shot if I do say so myself.

This is a queen triggerfish.  I wish I had a little bit better lighting but you can get a feel for the color.

Saw this guy, a scrawled filefish, just as we were descending on a dive.  Got this one shot off before he bailed out of there.

Another, larger spotted moray eel we saw on the night dive. 

These little dudes are squat shrimp and hide inside anemones.  Super tiny...like a couple grains of rice sized....but fun to try to get a good picture of

Stacy and I were thinking the same thing.  "Get a photo of that cool barracuda!"

Stripebelly puffer fish...interesting bumpy skin. 

Was going for the photo of the three spot damselfish and got her to pose perfectly.  Didn't realize there was a hermit crab and a brittle starfish in the background until I looked at the picture later.

This is a toad fish.  They hide under shelves like this and are hard to get a picture of.  I didn't realize they had yellow fins until I got this picture.  Crazy how the eyes even have the striping.

I wish I had a bit better lighting on this but I think it's pretty cool that I got this turtle and the rainbow wrasse in the same shot....pure luck, btw.

Stacy checking out a turtle on one of our dives.

Another turtle with a couple of black angelfish photobombing.

A little washed out (too much flash or not enough something else) but you can see this spotted moray's teeth...obviously not happy with the big dude in it's grill.

Finally, a yellow headed jawfish in the middle.  They drop down into holes when threatened but I got this one before he did.  Saw these in Roatan too...they keep their eggs in their mouths to protect them.  Saw that in Roatan...not this trip though.

Okay...we are done.  Hope you enjoy and always remember: it's our time, the people's time!

Love to all!
Jim