Bonaire Night Diving

CLICK ON ANY PICTURE TO ENLARGE

Here are some pictures from night dives in Bonaire. This dive was the reef that lies just behind our boats on the mooring balls.

These pictures are Trumpet fish that are trying to hide in the coral. They stay upside down and swing with the current.

Here is a picture of a squid. Kim had her light on it and it was just swimming straight into the light.

Tarpon are huge fish that are very curious and will approach you at night. The one we saw at night is to the left. We also saw some in the daytime, to the right, in one spot we saw a school of about 7. They also sometimes just lay in the water motionless.

Eels just swim about at night, or stick their head out of the coral to catch their prey.

Here is a little reef crab, Mike spotted.

In this picture, look to the top - center/right and you can see two fire worms.

Cheers, Mike and Kim on Ka'imi

Underwater Bonaire

CLICK ON ANY PHOTO TO ENLARGE

One of the biggest attractions to Bonaire is its crystal clear water and beautiful coral reefs. Coral reefs are complex associations of living animals. Stoney corals are the major reef builders, they look like brown/green colored rocks. The tiny animal, called a polyp, extracts calcium from seawater and deposits this beneath itself as a limestone skeleton. The polyps of one coral head are all linked together into one giant colony. The limestone structures produced by stoney corals provide a home to lots of tiny bottom dwelling animals as well as the array of reef fish that swim above the reefs.

Bonaire and Klein Bonaire (the little island just off the coast) are surrounded by one almost continuous fringing reef. A shallow and narrow terrace slopes down from the shoreline to a depth of 30 feet (10m) and then drops, typically at an angle of 45 degrees, to depths of 130 feet (40m). There are variations to this, like vertical walls and double reef formations - which are both incredible to dive on.

We have been diving A LOT since we arrived. The visibility has been anywhere from 70 feet to over a 100 feet. We have pictures of most everything we have seen, except the spotted eagle rays. There are 96 named dive sites on Bonaire and Klein Bonaire, and we will never be able to do them all in this trip. A lot of our friends just got certified to Scuba Dive while here in Bonaire. The first picture is that group, on their first dive with us, after the certification process. Ken on Second Wind was one of those newly certified. He took a bunch of us out on his boat, to the north coast of Bonaire for a first dive, and then to Klein for the seconc dive. Here is Mike and Kim after the second dive on the steps of Second Wind and in the water . (Photos of Ken and Mike and Kim are courtesy of Second Wind.)

The following photos are from our dives (courtesy of Mike).

Midnight Parrotfish and Trumpet Fish

Spanish Hogfish and Blackbar Soldier Fish

Stoplight Parrotfish, Terminal Phase and Porcupine Fish

French Angelfish and Queen Angelfish

Three spotted Damselfish from different angles. It might be hard to spot in the picture to the right, look in the center of the picture.

Barracuda - they are very territorial and curious. We have seen many here and throughout the Caribbean. They will watch you and sometimes approach you out of curiosity, but will turn away before getting too close.

Turtle - we have seen many turtles here in Bonaire. This is the only one we could photograph. This one was also unafraid, he just let us swim with him and watch him.

We have put night diving pictures in the next update. Bye for now, Mike and Kim submerged in Bonaire :))

Holidays in Bonaire

In 1945 Columbus lost his exclusive rights to explore the new world, after a falling out with Queen Isabella. The new world and the Caribbean, became open territory and Alonso de Ojeda and Amerigo Vespucci were first to explore the region. Alonso de Ojeda previously lieutenant to Columbus, was the first to discover Bonaire in 1499. We arrived in Bonaire on December 6, 2006, in time to enjoy Christmas and New Years with friends on the Island. We picked a mooring at the very end, the picture is a pan of what we see on the island from our boat.

We spent Christmas Eve on our friends boat South of Reality. We had a potluck dinner, gift exchange and at dusk we motored their catamaran up and down the anchorage singing Christmas Carols, we had a great evening. For Christmas we all went to the Flamingo Resort for a buffet dinner. The pictures: in the green elf hats are Ken and Roberta our friends from Second Wind (Tony from World Citizen in the background) and in the red Santa hats our hosts Byron and Denise from South of Reality.

We also had a sail on World Citizen with some friends. The pictures are: Linda and Hutch, Sandcastle, Byron and Denise, South of Reality, Bert, Not So Interim, Grace, Andrea Lee, Sharon, Pelican's Flight, Mike, Ka'imi, Ken, Second Wind, (Denise again) Kim, Ka'imi, Jim, Pelican's Flight, Roberta, Second Wind.

For New Years, they had an incredible fireworks show. We went aboard Sandcastle, to bring in the New Year. There were fireworks from one end of the island to the other. This is the last year that it will be legal for people to buy and set off fireworks, so they sold all of them cheap and everyone had them.



Hope you all had a wonderful Holiday season. Bye for now, Mike and Kim

Aves De Sotavento

Our last stop before we get to Bonaire is Aves Do Sotavento. We arrive and overnight there. We left at dawn the next morning, but we still had an adventure there. The snorkeling was pretty good right off the boat. We had the anchorage all to ourselves, and the holding was GREAT. The island was a long white beach with a palm tree on it, our favorite. We thought that we might bypass the Coasta Guardia here, but they came out to us!!!! They wanted to come aboard, so we said okay....they didn't speak much English, however, with our limited espaniol and their limited english...we actually communicated quite well. They became extremely nice when Mike asked if he could take their picture, there was lots of posing. We enjoyed meeting them.

We snorkled, went to sleep and left early the next day, to arrive in Bonaire in the early light of day. The sail to Bonaire was excellent, we flew the spinnaker until we got to island. The seas started to build as we got closer to the island, but with the spinnaker we were still handling it all quite well. Once we turned the corner of the island, we had a wonderful sail, even when the winds kicked up to 30+ knots. The island shields the seas so it was a nice run, except that we had to pick up a mooring ball. In that kind of wind - seas or not - it ain't easy. We finally found a mooring and were very happy that Pizzazz a boat anchored here got in their dinghy to help us get the mooring. These moorings are very easy to pick up but with 26 knots of wind on your nose it was hairy ball weiner - as Tim McCurdy would say - so we are in Bonaire, safe, sound and diving like maniacs. Life is GOOD :)

Till next time, Mike and Kim

Aves de Barlavento

CLICK ON ANY PICTURE TO ENLARGE

Our next stop was Aves de Barlavento. We finally brought the spinnaker out and we had about 3-4 knots of wind and we were traveling about 6 - 6.5 knots Speed over Ground. It was great and we used it for most of the sailing out here as it was all downwind and light air.

There are two separate little island archipelagos, separated by about 10 miles of deep water. They got their name from the large number of birds that make them their home. The birds live in the dense mangrove forests on the large island Isla Sur. It is a horseshoe reef that gives protection to the two islands and a few smaller cays. The bird-life on the southern island is pretty cool. There are hundreds of birds in the trees, adults and babies. The majority are various species of booby, but there are also seabirds and herons and we did see a pelican or two. Every dawn and dusk the birds climb out of the trees to feed and it is a sight to see. We couldn't really capture it on the camera, but imagine hundreds of birds setting out from the trees and flying around. They would sometimes find an updraft from the island and you could see them spiraling upwards, trying to find another wind draft. They did most of the hunting on the other side in the sea, so we didn't see that. But the flying was incredible.

There were many fishing boats here and we traded for red snapper once, for a very small bottle of rum (1 pint) and a small pack of cigarettes. We had about 8 red snapper on the deck and Mike kept saying no more - we can't eat that many. But he fried them in beer batter and they were great. It was a good thing too - we were getting low on food. Kim even had to bake some bread.

We did explore the whole island - it was pretty amazing. We found a rock sculpture, and the windward side was just as beautiful and the leeward side.

There was a little water inlet off the windward side. The terrain was mostly stickery plants so we had to be careful. We didn't go too close to the mangroves because we didn't want to upset the birds nesting with their young.

This little needle nose fish stood guard on our anchor rode. He was there everyday with his buddy who we didn't get a picture of. We also had little baby squids under the boat. There was some great snorkeling here. We saw some very big squid, a few great barracudas , some giant midnight queen fish and some very friendly cow fish. We did not get any pictures of these, you'll have to look them up or wait till we post some of the Bonaire underwater shots and we will try to get some of these species to show you.

We had a wonderful time here and were by ourselves in most of the anchorages for the first time - truly alone. We took advantage of it and made ourselves comfortable :)...we used lots of sunscreen.

Til the next island...Mike and Kim on Ka'imi