Bonaire wrap-up!

Hey all!

I bet you thought this wasn't going to happen.  Me too!  But I did get some cool pictures and had fun the last few days in Bonaire so I thought I would get off my duff and do this.  I have to admit I was planning on doing it after we got back to Portland, but then laziness took over and I zoned out in front of the TV watching football for teams I don't even care about (Go Chiefs!).  Anyway, back to the fun....

Where were we....frog fish....then what.  Well we were on a dive at a place called Tori's Reef that was just a great dive through the whole thing where I was thinking "man we have seen a TON of fish!"  I know I show pictures of small things that don't move and that's mainly because they don't move and that makes taking those pictures easier.  But the reefs in Bonaire have a ton of fish and I try to get photos to share the overall feeling, but they never really do justice.  Anyway, we are on this dive towards the end and I was thinking what a great dive it was and the only way to make it better would be to see a spotted eagle ray when one glided into my view!

When we saw some in Cozumel, they were usually doing a fly by so you basically turn your head to follow them and that was that.  This one sort of came in and then nosed around in the sand eating right in front of us.  We got some really good quality time with it.  Not as much as I would have liked, but still...check that box off!

At this point, we had seen just about everything we had on our "I want to see..." list except for seahorses.  We (and by we, I mean Stacy since she is definitely an extrovert and can make friends with a cardboard box as my mom affectionately points out) had been asking around but other than a few "I heard there was one over in this general vicinity" tales, there was nothing concrete until the second to last diving day we had.  Turns out there was one that was one dive site over from the dive resort we were staying at! 

We got up "early" the next morning (6:30, in the water around 7) to go find it before breakfast.  We surface swam over to the site (what it sounds like...you wear a BCD [buoyancy control device] that you put air in that helps you stay on the surface...and not sink to the bottom when you are going deep... and swim on your back kicking your fin covered feet) and went to find the spot where it was supposed to be.  Queue a repeat of the frogfish hunt.  Not quite as bad, but "it will be right here" was about 30 feet off of where we actually found it.  But find it we did!  It was a pretty big one with it's tail curled around a little piece of coral swaying too and fro in the surge.  Good times.

We had heard of another one at a different site and spent some time trying to find it, but the current that day was pretty strong so if it had been there...it wasn't anymore.  Did get to see a peacock flounder so it wasn't a total waste.

Diving was good overall beyond that.  We repeated a couple of previous dives at some favorite sites and a dove a couple of other ones that were still on our to do list.  Nothing super awesome but still good times all around.

Little side story: one dude who worked at the resort in the restaurant that we saw pretty much every day for breakfast invited us to his house on the last day.  Dennis (spelling assumed) was a really nice guy who always smiled and his wife and kids were in Honduras (where she was from) so I guess he was bored?  To be honest we never asked him why he invited us over but we went (with visions of either getting robbed there or our room while we were gone).  Nothing of the sort happened.  We just talked about differences in our lives and hung out at his house for an hour or so.  He did ask us why we (me) agreed to come so quickly...and they only thing I could think of was "because you asked and it would be rude to say no".  Which is really the truth.  Dennis was/is a nice man who brightened out mornings with his smile and visiting his home gave us some insight into daily life for natives. 

Couple of final notes: The flights back were great.  Delta was a great airline with nice and helpful people the entire way.  Hyatt Place Atlanta North, on the other hand had some issues.  The rooms were nice and we slept well, but they had a sign at the front desk saying they had airport shuttles running every 15 minutes after 6 or 6:30.  Our flight out of Atlanta (we had a layover) was at 9am and we were down for breakfast around 6:20.  There was a shuttle that picked up a group around 6:30 that we didn't get because we were eating.  The next shuttle showed up around 7:15 after we already had visions of missing our flight because of it.  We made the flight so all was well, but that added some stress we didn't need.  Not fun times. Boo!

Other than that, we made it back and are now going back to work (sad emoji).  But those jobs let us take these trips so maybe I should turn that frown upside down! 

Too many words...so here are the final photos! click to embiggen...right click open in new tab to get even embiggener!

Ya'll know....cool photo, huh?

This is a fairy basslet.  Cool coloring and it zips around.   

Nother lionfish

That seahorse we found.  It's a longsnout seahorse 

Spotted moray with a banded coral shrimp buddy

Two scorpion fish.  One in the foreground and then you can see the head of the other one middle/top/right.

Peacock flounder for yah

This is a red hind.  You can often find them sitting like this or on coral....one shot is all you get before they bail

This is a shot of Salt Pier....Bonaire salt is apparently the shit.  They have tons of ponds to dry out seawater and a giant mountain of salt.  This is a dive site unless a cargo ship is there to get salt.  I don't think we saw a ship the whole time we were there...at that pier.

Little lionfish.  Very wispy...

Another photo of a spotted cleaner shrimp. I like this one!

That spotted eagle ray leaving us

spotted moray

And finally, a turtle...no flash because it was too far away and I didn't do any white balancing because I am lazy.  Enjoy!

Well there you go!  Hope you enjoyed it.  I will try to get more proactive with the blog and do more of the smaller trips we do.  Stacy and I are headed up to do a cold water dive in a couple of weeks so maybe I can share that! 

Until then: it's our time, the people's time!

Love to all
Jim

Frog Fish

Happy New Year Everybody!

I hope the new year is finding everyone in happy spirits.

Stacy and I stayed up (barely) to see the fireworks here on Bonaire and it was a great time.  They sell all kinds of fireworks a couple days before New Years Eve and it appears the entire island bought a few mortars to celebrate the turning of the clock.  Buddy Dive (where we are staying) shot some off their docks but rather than some professional company with a prepared show, it was a guy with a hand torch walking around and lighting the various mortars that were staged far enough apart to not catch each other on fire.  It appeared most of the resorts had some kind of show and, while they weren't the huge ones you can see in New York or Vegas, there were enough going off that it didn't matter!  Good times.

But hey, this blog wasn't to catch everyone up yet.  I will do another one maybe from Atlanta on our way back.  Instead this entry is being done to celebrate frog fish.  I have to be honest and admit that I haven't found any in the wild on my own.  I have always either had them pointed out to me (by someone who knew exactly where to look) or had directions on where to find them.  That's what happened a couple of days ago.

We were sitting on the tailgate of our truck in between dives and Stacy started talking to the guys next to us.  Quickly she had their life stories which included this was their 28th year of coming here over the holidays.  We spoke of our love of seahorses and frogfish and while they couldn't help us with the seahorses, they gave us "directions" to find a red and yellow frogfish pair that were at one particular dive site.  The directions were litterally "go to the left-most buoy and descend to around 47 feet and you will see these fingers of coral jutting out.  Follow those back to the reef and there are 2 frogfish there".

Now we followed their directions and descended to 47 feet and then swam back to the reef wall that was about 30 feet away.  The first problem was there were 3 different clusters of finger-like coral in the 40-50 foot range there so we hunted around all 3 of them with no luck.  I seriously thought they had been messing with us.  But we scoured all 3 of them one more time and on the last one before I was going to say "fuck it" I saw a hint of red and thought "that looks like a tail".  I followed it around to the front and could see its eyes.  I found the red one!!!!  The funny thing was, it was so close to the reef that it looked like a sponge and when Stacy saw me start taking pictures of it, she thought I was going to be disappointed when I realized I was taking a bunch of wasted photos.  But then I pointed right to it and you could see the "aha!" moment with her too.  I backed off to let her take some photos and then she rose up a bit and found the yellow one too!  Success all around.

With that, here are the shots.  To be fair, the flash makes the red one stand out WAY more than it did in natural light so you guys are going to say "how could you miss THAT?".  Trust me...they blend in.  The yellow one we should have seen from the beginning, but it both were on the reef above the finger-like coral and we had been searching in among it rather than around it.  Lesson learned.

With that, here are the shots I got (click to embiggen, right click -> open in new tab to get even more biggened):

This is the red frogfish head on.  You can see its mouth and eyes as well as its front fin.

Side shot of the frogfish.  You can see its tail is sitting on some red coral/sponge and blends right in.  The spots help it blend in even more.  

The yellow frogfish was more out in the open but there are chunks of yellow sponge/coral on these reefs that he would blend right into. On the right side of his face (or on his left side) you can see a very fine filament with a little white tuft on top.  When not being disgruntled getting his picture taken, he had  that out in front of him to attract a fish for dinner.

Side view of the yellow frogfish.  All that mottling really helps them blend in.   Hey they might be ugly, but they are cool!

Again I hope life is treating everyone well!  More to come.  Until then: Its our time, the people's time!

Love to all
Jim