Bonaire 1: Saltwater therapy

When I was young I noticed how well my cuts healed in saltwater. Now I notice it about my internal wounds. There is just something elemental about the chemistry and minerals in salt water. Or maybe it's just the buoyancy.

There are over 100 dive sites around Bonaire to choose from

We've been on the island of Bonaire for almost two weeks now and glad to report feeling happy. In case you have never heard of Bonaire, it's part of the Dutch Antilles, 50 miles north of Venezuela and on the same latitude as Nicaragua. The land is arid, native vegetation leans towards thorny. Lots of goats, iguanas and donkeys. About 17,000 people live here and like most quiet Caribbean islands, it suffers brain drain from local people leaving for better jobs in the states, Holland or nearby sister islands, Aruba and Curacao. People here speak Papiomento, a language that mixes Dutch, Spanish and a little of dis and dat. Lots of Dutch tourists and resident. The mix is very congenial, no one seems in a rush, most are quick with a joke. I think we all seem to agree that we are lucky to be here, despite the heat.

We ended up here by accident. Plan A would have us in SE Asia right now, likely Vietnam. So Plan B put us here with no dive gear, not even a snorkel. Luckily we managed to find some used dive gear and snorkeling equipment so we are up and running. 

Diving is the best reason to be here. The entire island is surrounded by reef and has been part of a marine park since about 1994. Normally we use dive boats to get to the reef. Here, however, our car is our dive boat. We have tanks in the back of the care most of the time and gather our gear to head out when we are ready. This is the "rainy" season so the past few days it's been between squalls. That has also decreased our visibility. Doesn't seem to disturb the reef denizens and that's who we come to see. Every dive is a mystery, anticipation about what will we be lucky enough to see? One day it's a eagle ray who swims by us, then stops, turns towards us and head by us within 10 feet. The next day it's beautiful school of squid, hovering nearby as we take our first look around. And there is so much we miss, to be sure, as it's alive with creatures covering nearly every square inch of sand and rock.

Here are a few of our favorite creatures to date:

Frogfish, looks like a sponge, right?

We did manage to find a frogfish, (with the help of our dive shop (shout out to the awesome dive folks at Dive Friends Bonaire) who told us about a resident fellow sitting regularly on top of a sponge. The photographers that were swimming around her were another great locator!

We are still on the lookout for seahorse, might need another assist from better eyes than ours, we look and look in their habitat and have yet to be graced by the sight of that lovely little shape.

We are here until 12/5. It's such a luxury to be in one house, one location for one whole month! We will try to post again before we leave with updates from the sea!