Bonaire (“bone-air”) is an island off the coast of Venezuela noted for its scuba diving and not much else. It’s part of the Netherlands Antilles islands, five islands that are an autonomous part of the Netherlands. The island is surrounded by coral reefs, most of which are a short swim offshore. The coast was made into a protected national marine park in 1979, so they are all in very good condition. So if you want to make a dive you just throw your equipment in the back of your rental truck, pick a reef on the map, drive there, and walk in the water. Although you can also take boats to less accessible reefs, they really aren’t any better than the reefs you can easily swim to.

Friday, March 15, 2002

As we were hoisting our bags out of the trunk in the “Park 2 Fly” parking lot, Nicole said, “My suitcase is packed so tight, I hope it doesn’t explode.” I noted that it'd be best not to make any references to her suitcase exploding once we are inside the airport. On the flight from NYC to San Juan, the pilot’s name was “Peter Orifice.” Since pilots are called Captain, I guess that makes him “Captain Orifice,” which might be a good name for a gay comic book hero.

We were told that we could not possibly get lost finding the hotel, which I took as a challenge. A challenge, I’m happy to say, we were equal to. Although we had plenty of maps, it was pitch black out and our truck had no interior light, so every time we wanted to read the map we had to pull off to the side of the road and get in front of the headlights.

Saturday, March 16, 2002

It appears I have been visited by the underpants gnomes. I know I packed many pairs of boxers, but they are nowhere to be found. I’ve gone for weeks with the same pair of underwear in college, when I was too lazy to do laundry, but I am still concerned.

Nicole needs five open water “skills dives” to get her NAUI certification. Before we embarked on our trip, we paid for unlimited diving at our dive shop. When we arrived, we discovered that although our dive shop has a universal diving instructor, they are not a universal dive shop. They offer PADI certification only. So we have to pay again for Nicole to dive at another dive shop until she is certified. Today, to keep Nicole company, I dove with Nicole and her dive instructor at the other dive shop.

The reefs in Bonaire are almost exclusively populated by smaller fish, but Nicole was nevertheless very concerned about sharks before she dove. The dive master told Nicole that she had done thousands of dives in Bonaire and she had only ever seen a shark once. D’oh! If only she had said she had never seen a shark. Fortunately, although she was very nervous before she got in the water, it turns out Nicole is a natural born diver.

Feral Donkey Poop

Though the official language of Bonaire is Dutch, the commonly spoken language is a pidgin language called “Papiamentu,” which is largely made up of Dutch, Spanish and Portuguese. English and Spanish are also widely spoken. Prices are in US dollars or Netherlands Antilles guilders.

The economy of Bonaire appears to be struggling. There was a beautiful bankrupt resort right across from us, and another enormous resort just a short walk away with busted out windows and falling down buildings.

There are lots of feral donkeys roaming around, as well as a lot of feral donkey poop. The donkey poop does not roam, however. I thought donkeys where supposed to go “Hee-haw”? The noise they make sounds more like screeching tires, and they make it outside our window early in the morning.

Discovered that I had stuffed all my underwear under my pillow last night, to bulk it up. I was so sleepy I had forgotten. That clears up that mystery.

Sunday, March 17 2002

Nicole saw a restaurant called “It Rains Chickens.”

Studying Hard

Nicole finished both her dives before noon, while I dove with a guy we met at our dive shop. His name was Oliver, and he was from the UK. After lunch, we went to the beach with he, his Venezualan girlfriend and their baby, “Allejandro.” They put suntan lotion on Allejandro and he rolled around in the sand so he looked like a country fried steak baby. The beaches in Bonaire have no seashells, but they have pretty pieces of coral everywhere, and they are punctuated by donkey poop. We saw a sign on the beach in Dutch that seemed to be saying that dogs aren’t allowed to poop on the beach. That’s the exclusive province of the donkeys apparently.

We met Santa Claus today! Turns out he owns a Lebanese restaurant in Bonaire. Apparently he was originally from Lebanon, but he lived for forty years in Venezuela. He still goes back every year to pose for advertisements. He said that Venezuelans never come to Bonaire because they like to party, and there ain't no partying in Bonaire.

Umbrella Drinks

That evening, Nicole desperately wanted an umbrella drink. It was very important to her that the bar we went to was on the beach, and that the drink had an umbrella in it. We walked to a nearby tikki bar. It was too windy for umbrella drinks to be practical, but we did it anyway. They didn’t take credit cards and I had little cash, but the girl at the bar told us we could run a tab and stop by tomorrow to pay it. Life is casual here.

I bought a fairly expensive Sony Digital Camera for the trip, along with a fairly expensive underwater housing and a surprisingly expensive color filter (surprising to me anyway, that they would charge 100 bucks for a circular piece of colored glass). Thus far my luck has not been stellar.

Dive #1: didn’t bring camera; been a while since I’ve dove and I didn’t want to futz with it.

Dive #2: dove with the housing alone, to make sure the thing didn’t leak and destroy my camera. I had read some horror stories before I left.

Dive #3: dove with the housing and the camera. Despite my using liberal amounts of anti-fog solution, the damned thing fogged up almost immediately.

Dive #4: this time I packed the camera in the apartment instead of on the beach, on the theory that the cool air in the apartment would hold less moisture than the hot air on the beach. Worked OK for a half an hour, at which point the housing fogged up completely again.

Monday, March 18, 2002

The manager of the hotel, Miguel, told us that he, like almost all the natives of the island, has never been scuba diving.

Antisocial Flamingo

Nicole, Oliver, and I did a dive in the morning. On our first dive, I accidentally dove to the limit of recreational diving. I was following a fish around, and I looked at my depth gauge and discovered that it I was at 130 feet. I looked up and Nicole was freaking out above me. We came up very slowly, with numerous safety stops, so as to not get the bends. On the drive back, we saw a lake noted for it’s flamingos. I always thought that flamingos hung out in big flocks, but apparently these flamingos were antisocial.

For our second dive we chose a reef near our hotel. This reef had an amazing neverending steam of fish. I'm not sure if the stream circled around at some point beyond where we could see (unlikely, visibility was very good), or there was simply an infinite number of fish in a straight line (my theory). The exit from the reef was difficult, with the waves pushing us into rocks. While trying to avoid being pushed into the sharp rocks, I backed into a sea urchin and a few of the quills broke off in my calf. Then I slipped on a rock and banged up my knee. Then, my buoyancy control vest freaked out and started inflating, so that it started squeezing the life out of me. I called to Nicole and she managed to turn off my air; then I was able to deflated the vest. Finally, Nicole got the bright idea of putting on our masks and snorkels and leaning over and sticking our heads in the water to navigate our way through the large, hurty rocks and the spiny black sons a’ bitches.

Dinner at Santa's

For the most part, all the divers are our age or older, in some cases much older. Most of the tourists are hard core divers who do up to five dives a day, but because Nicole and I (a) get up late and (b) are lazy, we only ever get in two dives a day. Still, it already feels like we’ve been here a week because diving and hauling around dive equipment is draining. In fact, we actually managed to *lose* weight, which has got to be unheard of in an island vacation.

We ate at Santa Claus’s Lebanese restaurant for dinner. He wrapped a piece of raw steak to my leg, which he claimed would draw the sea urchin spines out of my leg, though he was unable to tell me the mechanism by which that worked.

Examples of Papiamentu:

Good Day = Bon Dia (similar to Spanish “Buenos Dias“)

Chair = stuhl (same as the Dutch “stuhl”)

Tuesday, March 19, 2002

Nicole claims she couldn’t sleep because she was being attacked by mosquitoes, even though she was drenched in mosquito repellent. I was lying right next to her, not using a sheet or mosquito repellent, and I didn’t get bit at all.

I told Oliver about Santa Claus’ advice about keeping raw meat on my calf with the sea urchin spines and that I didn’t know what the mechanism was. He said that he thought the mechanism was “bollucks.” He talked to the head of our dive shop, and his advice was to keep moving and keep it clean and they will work themselves out; if you try to cut them out, your leg will almost certainly become infected. If you’re supposed to keep it clean, putting a slab of raw meat on it would seem to be “counter indicated.” I may have to have my gangrenous leg sawed off, but the guys at the dive shop offered to give me a box so I can take it through customs.

I think the donkeys pooped outside our window, because the apartment is pretty stinky this morning.

Nicole gets pretty cranky when the dive exit is difficult. “Weber’s Joy” was not as difficult as “The Cliffs” from yesterday, but there where still strong waves waiting to smash you into the sharp rocks or the sharper coral.

Just Missed Him!

I rented a video light in the hopes that the color in my pictures would be better; taking pictures with the ambient light leads to a lot of blue. Here’s a surprising fact: fish hate having a strong light shined in their faces! Accordingly, then tend to swim away from it, which makes photography difficult. Also, the light imparts a reddish tinge, except when the sun overpowers it, imparting a bluish tinge. There tends to be lag with a digital camera between the time you press the button and when the camera takes the picture, and the fish move fast, so I’ve been getting lots of blurry pictures of fishes tails. Also the stupid housing is still steaming up after 15 minutes, even though I packed it in an air conditioned room and applied anti-fog. It’s also tricky getting your picture without bumping into the coral. Whatever professional underwater photographers get paid, as far as I am concerned, it’s not enough. On my fifth dive with a camera, I finally got one good photograph of a fish. It makes the several hundreds of dollars I spent on digital underwater photography equipment all worthwhile!

Nicole had wanted to see an octopus. According to the guys at our dive shop, they are very tough to see because they camouflage themselves so well. On a dive today, Nicole saw two octopi and a puffer fish swim by. She tried to catch my attention, but I was too busy futzing with the camera and video light. She said they had looks on their faces like, “Matt’s never going to believe that you saw us.” She thinks they may have winked at her as well. While trying to get a good picture of a Moray Eel, I kept getting closer and closer, and Nicole claims that I was pissing it off and that it was going to attack me. I maintain that, because they are so freaky looking and they have to open and close their mouths to breath, they look threatening even when they are chilling out.

Picky Kitty

For dinner we ate at a restaurant called “Beefeaters.” The dinner started with a seafood soup that Nicole loved until she saw that it contained tentacles, at which point she freaked out. So I ate hers. I tried to convince her not to be such a wuss, but to be honest, the tentacles were kind of gross. I had the Argentine Mixed Plate, which was pretty good except for one item which appeared to be, and almost certainly was, braided intestines. Nicole offered some to the two black cats begging for food, and even they both refused to even try it. I then observed one of the cats licking its own butt, so how picky could it be? I tried a very small piece and it tasted like a tube of gristle stuffed with something sandy and unpleasant.

Even the smallest, most out of the way places will take US dollars with no problems. They seem delightfully surprised when you pay them in “real money” (Netherland Antilles Guilders).

Wednesday, March 20, 2002

My left arm is covered in mosquito bites this morning. I must have accidentally let it stray to Nicole’s side of the bed. We did some nice relaxing dives today.

We ate at “It Rains Chickens.” We thought it would be a fried chicken place, but it turned out to be a nice Indonesian restaurant.

Thursday, March 21, 2002

Slave Shelters; the slaves worked the old salt works; today it's mostly automated and solar powered.

We did a dive this morning at a dive called “White Slave.” At first I thought we were in the wrong location as we swam out and there was no reef, and we swam out some more and there was no reef, then we swam out farther and there was still no reef. We eventually found it, but it took ten minutes to swim out there, and with total bottom time being typically 30-45 minutes, that is a big chunk of time. Not only was it way out there, but it also appeared that the current was against us both heading out and swimming back, which hardly seems possible. Afterward, we were pretty beat, so we spent the rest of the day shopping.

I tried setting up the camera at night in an air conditioned car, but the housing still fogged up immediately. We went to a place where you could rent a computer with internet access by the hour. I found a recommendation that the camera housing should be packed with dessicant (water-absorbing material), such as the silica packets that come with shoes.

We drove through the small town of Tera Kora looking for a restaurant called “Maiky Snack” which claimed to serve authentic local food, but with no good map of the area outside of the main town of Kralendijk (“cray-len-dike”), we were unable to find it. I then looked closer at the guidebook and noticed it was closed on Thursdays anyway. So we turned around to head back and someone chucked a rock at our car, putting a good sized dent in it. Nicole claims I turned around on their lawn, but how can you tell? It all looks like scrub.

Friday, March 22, 20

Urchins lying in wait

Went to a shoe store to buy some shoes for the sole purpose of getting some silica packets. Unfortunately, they were all out of shoes bigger than size 9, so I used a five-finger discount to get the silica packets. In my defense, I would have bought a pair of shoes if they had any my size. The silica packet in the housing did not work perfectly, but it did seem to delay the inevitable fogging of the camera housing..

The exit on our last dive of the trip was very treacherous, with the waves and the rocks and the coral and the urchins and the hurting. Nicole got very frustrated, tore off her mask along with a good chunk of hair and yelled that she was never going diving again. I made it to shore and shed my equipment and headed back to take her equipment, which made it easier for her to make it back to shore. As we were leaving, one of the other divers who had heard me call out her name said, “I hope you change your mind and go diving again, Nicole.” I think she will.

Saturday, March 23, 2002

Feral Goat

You aren’t supposed to dive within 24 hours of your flight, so today we went to Washington/Slagbaai National Park instead. I was expecting it to be like the rest of the island, a bunch of scrub brush with a few cactus, but it was actually fairly pretty and interesting, especially the blowholes on the eastern edge of the island. Supposedly the eastern edge of the island has spectacular reefs, but it’s far too dangerous for recreational divers to dive there.

The band “De Dijk” was advertised everywhere as “the best all-time band from Holland”, which, when you consider the competition (nobody) is a pretty bold claim. Our dive master said that they were “world famous in Holland.” They were playing tonight, our last night on the island, and though we really should have gone to bed early so we could make our flight the next day, we succumbed to the lure of seeing what a bunch of Dutch people partying was like. We were expecting the band to be like “A-Ha” or “Roxette” or something, but it was just solid rock ‘n’ roll. They were pretty good actually.

Sunday, March 24, 2002

We arrived at the airport, way, way later than we were supposed to. With just minutes to spare, actually. Somehow we managed to get through security and everything else and actually make it on our plane.

When we arrived at home there was a message from my bosses’ boss on the answering machine. “Maybe he’s calling to…promote you?” said Nicole hopefully. You have to admire that kind of optimism. In fact he was calling to tell me that I was being laid off. Which means my vacation turned out to be extended to a month longer than I had planned, which is not a particularly bad thing. If only I'd known that, we wouldn't have flown back.

(Click "slideshow" link below for more pictures.)