In need of a good long surface interval, we took a little time to regroup after the memory card incident. After a leisurely lunch, some hammock time, and a few minutes to browse all the pretty pictures we did have to get our spirits up, we headed down to the tourist street to do a bit of shopping.

This is an area where the four of us are quite alike: we are NOT shoppers! An hour was exactly enough for all of us to do a little knick-knack hunting for friends, grab some ice cream, and then be sick of the tourist street.

We headed back up to DBV to pick up our dive gear. Interestingly, the inconvenience of driving up and down the hill between dives wasn’t really bothering me anymore. For our afternoon dive, we wanted to go pay the ReefCam a visit. There are four webcams stationed at Eden Beach Resort, which we’ve all looked in on frequently since we planned this Bonaire trip. The cams have their own message board, and people are always very quick to post a capture when divers appear on the ReefCam. We wanted our very own Reefcam pics!

At the entry, it looked like a phenomenally boring dive. There was nothing but bleached coral rubble as far as I could see – and the current was ripping! Determined, we found a cable leading away from the dock and followed it to the webcam.

After posing in front of the reefcam for a few minutes, we went to check out the small wreck that it faces. As soon as I passed over to the far side of the wreck, I got the shock of the week: the hugest green moray I could have imagined! This puppy was easily 8-10 feet long, and more than a foot in diameter. Yowza!

Still fighting the current, we headed back up into the shallower, rubbly area. Much to my delight, the “boring” coral rubble turned out to be home to all kinds of fun little fish – including some jawfish hovering vertically over their burrows!

At this point, Kathy’s ears were really killing her, so she called it a day. My ears were also killing me, but I decided to go for another dive with Jeff anyway. We headed back up to Oil Slick Leap for a dusk dive, and I gave Jeff explicit instructions to get me some goby pics. He complied.

Unfortunately, the ear-pain issue started to become serious enough that I called the dive after a measly 45 minutes. (Note sarcasm: our usual California dives are 30-35 minutes.)

For our second-to-last night in Bonaire, we split up to each do our own “Date Night.” Ben and Kathy went back to City Cafe, while Jeff and I hit an Italian place Esther had recommended. I wasn’t blown away by the food, but what I DID love was the little peeping frogs that serenaded us – and then started hopping across the ground! They were so tiny, they just looked like pebbles until they hopped.

We chose the one restaurant in Bonaire that serves dinner in less than 2 hours, so we had a little time to kill waiting for the Brantleys. We walked along the shore a bit, occasionally ducking in out of the rain, which had decided to start up again. Once reunited with Ben and Kathy, we decided we’d all do one last dive together in the morning on Menno’s boat.

Menno managed to snag us the mooring at Carl’s Hill Saturday morning, and we had a blast there (despite some relatively crummy visibility, probably due to the return of rain). Menno took us down to the area where the seahorse hangs out, and directed us to spread out and search for it. I’m much prouder than I should be to say that I found it first!

Menno and I make a pretty good tag-team. Later in the dive, he indicated he’d spotted a filefish in a gorgonian. I didn’t find the one he was looking at, but once I started poking around in the vicinity, I found my very own juvenile filefish – this one hanging out on the edge of the gorgonian, so Jeff could actually photograph it! And then Jeff found a grown filefish to photograph. (Whoah there, buddy – no stealing my spotter job!)

As if on cue, it started raining again on our way back to the marina. Amazingly, the bad weather that we took as a jinx during our first dive in Bonaire had proved to be anything but, staying completely out of our way for all our dives! But now that we were done diving, the rain had some catching up to do. It put a bit of a damper on Ben and Kathy’s afternoon photography plans, though I think they still managed to get some good shots.

Jeff and I, in a reversal of roles, finally decided to put in some hammock-vegging time all afternoon instead.