Bonaire. Wow, where do I start?
It's been about two weeks that we've been back from that beautiful island and I'm still struggling with how to describe my experiences. I guess I'll start with the most obvious thing from this trip- the trip was all about diving (and no we did not see a shark, which was too bad). We dove so much, so incredibly much and I loved every second of it! There were a couple times that I would be so wiped out I would decline scuba, but for the most part I dove roughly 12 times (I lost count, but I wrote it down somewhere..)
Anyway, diving was the absolute best. Every time I was down there all I could think about was finding an octopus and how I felt as if I was flying. If you've never been scuba diving before you really should learn, it's awesome. Gliding over the reefs was like flying over a whole new world. The closer you got to the reefs the more fish and critters you could see, such as a secretary blenny (which is my favorite!). They burrow in to coral and then stick their heads out and look around, they aren't too keen on you swimming close to them though. Here's what they look like (not my photo though unfortunately).
For the nights and mornings we were generally on our resort called Buddy Dive. They were very sweet to us there (as most of them knew Dr. Unger and Dr. Enz since they've taken groups before). The resort had the best breakfast EVER with things like fresh pineapple, hundreds of fresh croissants and really good oatmeal. It was incredible, and included! So we definitely spent a lot of time at breakfast. Here is a day and night photo of the resort:
So besides diving and looking at incredible things (sea turtles, dolphins, fish, coral) we also did a lot of land stuff like exploring the coral cliffs and looking for birds. Though we did not see the crested cara-cara, one of Bonaire's coolest birds, we did see a hundred birds called Bananaquits which are the cutest things ever. We also explored two of the towns. The main one (where we stayed) is called Kralendijk and the other is Rincon which we just drove through. Kralendijk is very tourist based and unfortunately we saw not one but two cruise ships. Which was really disappointing as this island was dwarfed by the ship's monstrous size. On the brightside the tourists would go and buy tons of crafts the locals made (who spoke this awesome language called Papiamentu) and the locals would jack their prices just for the cruise ship. It made me feel better about the waste of that ship to see it was at least stimulating their economy.
It's been about two weeks that we've been back from that beautiful island and I'm still struggling with how to describe my experiences. I guess I'll start with the most obvious thing from this trip- the trip was all about diving (and no we did not see a shark, which was too bad). We dove so much, so incredibly much and I loved every second of it! There were a couple times that I would be so wiped out I would decline scuba, but for the most part I dove roughly 12 times (I lost count, but I wrote it down somewhere..)
Anyway, diving was the absolute best. Every time I was down there all I could think about was finding an octopus and how I felt as if I was flying. If you've never been scuba diving before you really should learn, it's awesome. Gliding over the reefs was like flying over a whole new world. The closer you got to the reefs the more fish and critters you could see, such as a secretary blenny (which is my favorite!). They burrow in to coral and then stick their heads out and look around, they aren't too keen on you swimming close to them though. Here's what they look like (not my photo though unfortunately).
For the nights and mornings we were generally on our resort called Buddy Dive. They were very sweet to us there (as most of them knew Dr. Unger and Dr. Enz since they've taken groups before). The resort had the best breakfast EVER with things like fresh pineapple, hundreds of fresh croissants and really good oatmeal. It was incredible, and included! So we definitely spent a lot of time at breakfast. Here is a day and night photo of the resort:
Big 'ol ship. And we are several blocks away from it.
On that note I guess I'll speak to what the downside to the visit- the amount of trash on the island. It was really sad to visit the coast that wasn't used by the tourists, because there nobody cared about cleaning it up. The rocks were filled with bits of plastic that ranged from tiny slivers to oil containers for cars. The surprising part is that most of it was from other places such as America, the coast of South America and Europe.
A tiny amount of the trash we picked up...
The outskirts of the town of Kralendijk!
On a happier note, we visited the crazier side of the island. By crazy I mean the most intense waves/ocean I have ever seen in my life! The other side of the island (the side no one really dove on) was facing the open ocean- or Europe!- so the currents there were incredible.
(That's me! In front of a crazy big wave.)
We also visited the salt pans on Bonaire, the slave huts that were rebuilt as a reminder of the part Bonaire played during the slave trade, an old lighthouse, lots of donkeys and lots of birds. Altogether it was an amazingly cool trip! I wish that I could visit again.
Thank you so much MC for this opportunity!