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!
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| Ya'll know....cool photo, huh? |
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| This is a fairy basslet. Cool coloring and it zips around. |
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| Nother lionfish |
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| That seahorse we found. It's a longsnout seahorse |
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| Spotted moray with a banded coral shrimp buddy |
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| Two scorpion fish. One in the foreground and then you can see the head of the other one middle/top/right. |
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| Peacock flounder for yah |
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| 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 |
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| 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. |
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| Little lionfish. Very wispy... |
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| Another photo of a spotted cleaner shrimp. I like this one! |
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| That spotted eagle ray leaving us |
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| spotted moray |
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| 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! |
Until then: it's our time, the people's time!
Love to all
Jim
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Where's the spotted eagle ray digging for food? You only show it leaving. Also, yay, seahorse!
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