Tuesday morning we headed north to Karpata. We’d been warned that the wind kicked up and made it harder to dive after 10am, so we wanted to get started early.

At the top of the stairs to Karpata:

Things didn’t get off to a very good start. As soon as we descended I turned my video camera on – and the external monitor stayed blank. Then I realized it wasn’t exactly blank. It had water in it.

Alas.

Luckily, the external monitor is the one part of my rig with some redundancy; I can use the tiny viewfinder on the back of the housing instead. Not optimal, but usable. And the flooded monitor provided its own entertainment, filling up with funny little crystals of god-knows-what, and spitting bubbles out the back as the electricity/saltwater combo oxidized.

And aside from my flood, it was a gorgeous dive. We swam south from the entry, which we’d never done on our last trip. The visibility was wonderful, and the dive site was more pristine than some of the busier dives down south.

We all decided to skip a stop at the condo, and head straight down to Invisibles, a little south of the Hilma Hooker. I’d read in the guidebook that garden eels could be found here on the swim out to the dropoff, which I assumed must be some sort of typo as we’ve never seen garden eels in shallow water. So I was thrilled to discover that there really were patches of garden eels in 15 feet of water!

Me shooting some garden eels:

Carol was the only one shooting macro on this dive, so of course I spotted more juvenile filefish than on any other dive. We also found lots of nesting banded butterflyfish hanging out in sponges, and had a spotted eagle ray fly-by.

Nesting butterflyfish:

Jeff and I squeezed in a quick dive back at Bari, where we saw lots of little filefish and yellowhead jawfish. At about 50 feet, we noticed a huge cloud of something around a pile of sponges. I didn’t see any divers or large fish in the area that could have kicked up sand, and it didn’t dissipate, so I suspected some sort of sponge spawning. I’ll never know for sure!

In the evening, we had our next guided dive: a night tour of Kralendijk’s Town Pier. The pier pilings are absolutely covered with an amazing variety of colored sponges, making this a world-famous dive. Only four groups of four divers each are allowed at any given time to keep damage to a minimum. Michael decided to sit this one out, so it was just three of us and our guide.

I wasn’t too impressed by our first visit here. The pilings were beautiful, but got old fast – and even with only sixteen divers in the water, it felt insanely crowded when most of those were inexperienced divers bumping into each other and confusing who’s with who. It also didn’t do wonders for the visibility.

So I was thrilled to discover clear water as soon as we descended, and not another diver anywhere in sight! In fact, on the whole dive we only encountered one other group, even though we overstayed our one-hour slot and were under for nearly 90 minutes.

Colorful pier piling (photo by Carol Yin):

Besides the beauty of the pilings themselves, we were treated to constant visits by the resident tarpons, lots of juvenile drums hiding near bits of trash, two frogfish doing their best to blend into the sponges, and a chain moray out on the prowl. It was my longest dive to date, and I could have done with another 30 minutes to explore!

A tiny yellow frogfish hiding on a pier piling:

You can see the rest of Jeff’s Town Pier photos here.

After dumping all our camera gear back at the condo, we treated ourselves to Pasa Bon Pizza (even more delicious than I remembered), and crashed into sleepy piles back at the condo.

Jeff and I finally managed a four-dive day on Monday – but only by squeezing one in before breakfast.

Since the gear room didn’t open until 8:30, we hauled all our scuba stuff up to the balcony the night before, and plopped into the water at 7:30am to do a pre-breakfast dive. I had the macro lens on, which actually winds up taking a lot of the enjoyment out of the dive for me because I spend so much mental effort stressing over focus issues. There’s certainly no shortage of macro critters in Bonaire, though; I spotted dozens of little secretary blennies peeking out of holes, and even saw some of my local favorite, yellow-headed jawfish, popping up and down in the coral rubble.

Carol and Michael met us for breakfast, and then we drove north to a favorite site of ours from last time: Oil Slick Leap. We thought it might be a little more camera-friendly, since there’s a ladder down into the water. Since it’s the windy season, the chop was picking up quite a bit already by 10am, making the camera hand-offs at the ladder bottom a bit of a pain.

It was just as pretty a dive as I remembered, once we got underwater and away from the wind. There’s a large shallow area near the entry that’s great to poke around in looking for little stuff, but also a beautiful drop-off covered with gorgonians and all kinds of interesting fish. I spent some time filming a barracuda who wasn’t very shy, and finding little blennies for the macro photographers to play with.

Back in the shallows, we were entertained by an enormous swarm of blue tangs that descended on the area like locusts to eat algae off the coral, darting en masse from one coral head to the next.

We spent the rest of the day back at Bari Reef for an afternoon and a night dive. The afternoon dive was nothing special (I was on macro again – argh), but night dives are always fun. In Bonaire, you usually wind up being followed by tarpon, huge silvery fish that hunt for dinner by your dive light. There was also some sort of enormous snapper trying to get in on the action.

I was especially entranced by basket stars. During the day, they just look like strange lumps inside gorgonians. But at night, they unfold in these amazing fractal patterns, and feed off tiny plankton in the water.

After our dive, Jeff and I raced over to Papaya Moon, a mexican restaurant in Kralendijk where Carol and Michael were having dinner with a bunch of folks from digitaldiver.net. Based on our food experiences last time, I wasn’t expecting too much, but we were in for a surprise. Everything was amazing – I can’t recommend this restaurant enough to anyone visiting Bonaire. The entire DDN crowd ordered the dessert special: apple pie. (I know – weird at a mexican place, right?) Although not normally a pie person, Jeff and I caved to peer pressure, and were glad we did. They make the most amazing pie, loaded up with thin-sliced apples and caramel, and served on a hot fajita platter with ice cream. Definitely perfect after-diving food!

Tuesday morning, Jeff and I headed back to the Hilma Hooker by ourselves while Carol and Michael went to Windsock. We didn’t get that much of an early start, but we still managed to do our dive and meet them at Windsock before they got in the water. We finished off our surface interval there and then followed them in. Windsock is just next to the airport runway, and I think it’s hands-down the easiest beach entry ever. It’s a very sandy beach, with only a few dead coral bits to get around in the shallows, so you just walk right in without worrying about tripping or slipping on anything.

Best of all, it’s a pretty great dive site, too! The slope is full of beautiful coral formations, and I also found the world’s stupidest fish at this dive site. I have lots of video of a lizardfish who kept getting scared and would dart away – about two feet, an then let me settle back in for some more video. But my favorite was the bright yellow trumpetfish who was “hiding” in a purple gorgonian, and seemed quite confident that I couldn’t see him.

We scarfed down some lunch in town, and then met up with a divemaster back at Sand Dollar for our afternoon dive on Salt Pier. Since it’s a working pier for the salt ships, every group needs to register with the harbormaster and go with a guide, even though you only dive when there aren’t boats there. It’s a great place for fish nerds: there are half a dozen sets of pier pilings which provide nesting areas and shade for schooling fish. French and queen angelfish are all over the place, as well as schools of snapper and lots of sergeant majors protecting nests.

Jeff perked up when our divemaster mentioned it was also a good place to find tarpon. Sure enough, when we headed to the northern edge of the pier, we found an entire school of tarpon cruising around. Jeff played with the big fish while I swam in and out of the pier pilings, occasionally letting my hair down for a photo.

We pondered a night dive, but ultimately decided to take it easy and rest up for a busier day on Wednesday…

I spent most of Saturday looking forward to Sunday: a full day of diving, after a real night’s sleep. And as a special bonus, the day I’d hit dive #400; I’m a total sucker for meaningless milestones.Jeff and I made noises about attempting an early morning dive, but opted to sleep in a little instead and do our first dive after breakfast. This also meant we didn’t have to haul our dive gear up the night before; Sand Dollar has the rather annoying policy that you can only access the gear storage area from 8:30am-9:30pm, making it a bit of a pain to dive early or late.

We had fond memories from our last trip of one of Bonaire’s best-known dives, the wreck of the Hilma Hooker, so the four of us drove down south to check it out around 10am. We got off to a bit of a false start when Michael realized he’d left some crucial gear at the condo, and had to make a quick run back up north. It actually worked out for the best, as we didn’t descend until nearly 11am, after most of the morning divers had already departed. In fact, for most of the dive, we had the whole wreck to ourselves!

As would happen over and over again throughout the week, I was amazed to discover how easy this dive seemed now that I had some more experience under my belt.

When we dove it in 2004, even the entry was horribly challenging for me. The surf is generally zero-to-ankleslappers, but there’s a bit of a step down right where the water hits the shore. You’re hobbling around on rocks that are full of holes, slippery algae, and spiny urchins, and once you’re past the obviously tricky part you still have a ways to go in knee-deep water with random holes and rocks trying to trip you up. I used to need Jeff’s hand to hold all the way in to keep from wobbling and falling over, and that was when I wasn’t dealing with a camera.

Carol still had a bit of tricky time with the entry (her camera is the heaviest), but I found it to be much easier than I remembered. I took my time feeling out the good spots to step, sat down as soon as it was comfortable to do so, and didn’t expend nearly as much energy worrying about tipping over as I did last time.

Likewise, the “long” surface swim just didn’t seem that bad after a few summers of LA county’s ADP program. And the dive itself, which was super-short and stressful for me on our first trip due to its depth, felt like a total breeze now that we were diving on Nitrox. All in all, I just felt infinitely more relaxed and comfortable with all aspects of diving. It’s amazing how much difference a little experience can make – and how the exact same dive sites even looked different to me when sizing them up.

We took advantage of the extra bottom time (Nitrox!) and checked out both ends of the Hilma Hooker. I actually spent most of my time in between, cruising back and forth through the hold that’s open at both ends, with a neat window where you can look out at the rest of your dive buddies. (Something else that was scary to me last time.) We spent about twenty minutes at depth, then slowly cruised our way back into the shallows, with a nice long stop for me at the top of the ship’s hull to check out all the nesting fish.

We didn’t have far to go for our next dive: Angel City is just next door to the Hilma Hooker. We took our time setting up gear and soaking up a little sun, and I dug out a couple of paper party hats for Carol and I to don for our underwater birthday photos.

Angel City boasts easy access to Bonaire’s second fringing reef, which comes to its highest point in this area before dropping off. You can see the second reef from the first one at this site (and the ones on either side), so it’s an easy swim to go check it out. Being a little deeper and a little less-dived, the second reef is downright lush with coral and sponge growth. There were strange coral formations everywhere, each with its own cloud of little fish. Up above, schools of larger fish cruised the area, teasing all the photographers up into the water column as we tried to get closer.

It was a gorgeous place to celebrate dive #400!

It was already mid-afternoon by the time we left Angel City and headed back up to our condo. After scarfing down a late lunch from Sand Dollar grocery, Carol was ready for some down time. The rest of us decided to hop in at Bari Reef to see what we could find.

My favorite thing about Sand Dollar’s house reef is that you really don’t have to go far at all to start seeing interesting things. On this dive – and every dive – we basically landed right on top of interesting subjects. I spent the start of the dive in 15 feet of water watching a sharptail eel hunting through the coral rubble for his dinner.

I had the macro lens on for this dive, which is equal parts fun and excruciating; lots of neat little critters to shoot, but focusing on them can be a serious bitch! I’m still learning the ropes in that department. But I was excited to spot what may be the tiniest fish I’ve ever seen, and I found it entirely be accident. I was shooting some interesting texture on a sponge when I noticed something with eyeballs on my monitor – which was zoomed all the way in and at close range. Sure enough, it turned out to be some sort of juvenile blenny (like blennies aren’t small enough when they’re grown up), not any longer than my pinky joint. I have lots of blurry footage to prove it. As well as this photo from Jeff:

Jeff was dying to hop back in for a night dive, but I pleaded exhaustion. (I know! After just three dives!) I blamed the previous day’s travel schedule. And so ended Day 2 in Bonaire…

It almost went off without a hitch.

The last time we went to Bonaire, it involved a red-eye, multiple connections, and two painfully long layovers – one in the Curacao airport, which was truly awful. And we each paid about $1200 for the privilege.

This time, thanks to Continental’s new direct flights to Bonaire, we paid less than half that and only had to deal with one red-eye and and a layover in Houston – not such a horrible place to be stuck. We were there for a while, though; since the Houston-Bonaire flight only leaves once a week, we took an early LAX-Houston hop just in case anything went wrong.

Jeff and I met up with our friend Carol at LAX, where she said goodbye to her short-on-vacation-time boyfriend and introduced us to her non-boyfriend, Michael, who was our other dive buddy for the week. We’d met Michael once before on a dive boat, but I hadn’t been able to put the face to the name when she invited him to come along to Bonaire. When he showed up at our gate, I was relieved to discover he was someone I absolutely adored. Imagine a 50-something-year old LA professional photographer with a wicked sense of humor and about as irreverent and heathen-y as it gets, then make him a scuba diver – a perfect fit for us!

Our first flight left on time, so we wound up with six hours to spend in Houston. We were supposed to meet Ben and Kathy there, who were flying from Denver. Jeff got an email from Ben warning that they were having some sort of passport issues, but they’d be on a later flight and should still make it. I called Ben to get the full scoop: apparently, their passports had gone through the washing machine (literally) at some point. Ben had actually used his since then to travel to Paris on United, so he’d assumed everything was fine. But Continental had denied them boarding because their passports were not up to code.

Since he’s a loyal United customer, that airline tried to fix him up. The passports scanned just fine with United, so they took a United flight from Denver to Houston where they’d be transferred back to the Continental flight. Hopefully no problem, right?

Wrong. They arrived just as Continental was doing passport checks on every passenger. As soon as they reached the counter and presented their slightly-damaged (but not the important, front page) passports, the Continental representative started frowning. Apparently that whole “denied boarding” thing in Denver had made it into the system, and their whole itinerary with Continental had been deleted. After 30 minutes of intense discussion between Ben and a manager, the verdict was in: no Bonaire for the Brantleys. Even if Continental bent the rules and let them fly, Bonaire customs would almost certainly turn them away. And being late on a Friday night, when no passport offices were open, they were basically just out of luck.

Ben and Kathy handled it with remarkable grace – I would have absolutely lost it in their position. In fact, I did a pretty good job of losing it in my position. But we didn’t have much time to commiserate; we had a plane to catch, and the Brantleys had luggage to collect and a hotel to reach.

My only real complaint about Continental’s Bonaire service is the lousy timing – we landed at 5:30am after 3.5 hours of fitful dozing. Not the best mood to start a trip in! Carol and I kept watch on our pile-o-bags (below) while the boys picked up our rental trucks.

Because of Kathy’s fatigue issues, I’d requested a room that would be available first thing Saturday morning when we arrived. So we owed it to our missing friends that we were able to walk right into a lovely second story apartment at Sand Dollar and unload all our stuff at seven in the morning. We also owed them some extra space… with no Brantleys, Carol and Michael were able to each spread out into their own room.

We tried several times during the week to request a downgrade in the hopes of getting the Brantleys some cash back, but no luck – the place was packed. Much guilt was felt, but a little relief as well, to be honest – because the room we had was wonderful. Being on the second floor, with a screened in patio, meant we had a nice breeze and a relatively secure place to leave dive gear. We were also on a corner, so the patio was a huge wraparound one with several seating areas, an excellent “camera table”, pegs for gear, and a hammock.

I’ll have to make it up to the Brantleys somehow the next time we go on a dive trip!

After breakfast and an hour-long dive orientation, I was a complete zombie and in no shape to hop in the water. I lay down for a short nap, and apparently fell into such a deep sleep that Jeff had a really hard time waking me up after 45 minutes. We dragged our sleepy asses down to the Sand Dollar dock and hit the water around 1pm for our checkout dive.

I was instantly blown away by the visibility. Our first Bonaire trip was in December, and I remember the vis usually being around 60-70′. Here at Bari Reef, it was easily 100′ – and the water was perfectly calm and still. We dive so much in California that it feels downright shocking to be able to maintain your exact position in the water column without battling any current or surge. I left the camera behind for this dive and just enjoyed the feeling of doing an effortless dive in clear water!

Another surprise to me was spotting a turtle – on our last trip, we only saw turtles on the east side, but apparently Bari Reef is a popular hangout for them these days.

I also found myself getting really chilled in just my 2mil suit, which had kept me more than warm enough last time. On our surface interval, I swung by the dive shop to add a 2.5mil vest, which I wore the rest of the week and stayed perfectly comfortable in the 79-81 degree water.

Dive #2 was at Bari Reef again – with such a convenient house reef, and as tired as we were, none of us felt the urge to travel. We got in the water around 5, so we spotted some of the early dusk action: lots of spawning creole wrasses zooming all over the reef, peacock flounders sailing over the sand in search of mates, and a sharptail eel on his evening hunt, accompanied by a motley crew of fish sidekicks.

Below is my favorite clip from the day – Magic Carpet Flounder!

After Dive #2, we zombied our way through dinner at The Reef restaurant (attached to Sand Dollar and surprisingly delicious) and collapsed early for a long night’s sleep…