Caribbean Note VIII

Wow, our last Saturday on Bonaire. This time next Saturday we’ll be on our way back to Portland. This has been a great trip, but we’re looking forward to seeing you all.

Last week we dove a new site in the south called Soft Coral Garden and it’s trying to break into our top five dive sites hit parade. What a great site for coral lovers! It’s a dive that’s kind of like swimming along the path at the Japanese Garden; around every coral head is a new arcology of life; so much variety and interwoven habitat.

On the big dive last week I set a new personal depth record with a 430 ft deep dive down the wall at Karpata that required a total of three hours run time to account for the deco. This is the closest I’ll ever get to my lifelong dream of becoming an astronaut. On a dive like this I really do feel like I’m seeing new things in a place few have been able to go. I feel like I’m on the outside edge of experience. Berit joined me for an hour while I worked my way back from seventy feet to thirty feet and was there when I surfaced to help haul my sling bottles out of the surf. She was a big help, a great safety diver and wonderful dive buddy.

Yesterday we spent the day in Washington Slagbaai Park, which is comprised of two huge plantations in the north that have been donated to the island and designated a nature preserve and public park. We made camp in the park at a site called Wayaka II with our friends and left them to snorkel and sit on the beach while we dove the site. We were shadowed on the dive by three big tarpon and on our return were greeted by a pair of huge (two foot plus?) Midnight Parrot Fish in the shallows near the beach.

This is a nice place to picnic ‘cause it’s one of the few places on the island where the sand collects to cover the coral rubble along the shoreline. We think it’s one of the best spots on the island to snorkel. Berit brought along our (waterproof to thirty feet) camera to get some fish pictures and discovered it’s a lot tougher than she’d imagined to get them to hold still and pose. She did manage to get a couple (attached) and even a French Angel Fish who’d swim up to you as you got into the water in case (like Rexx) there was food to be had.

Slagbaai is also the site of the biggest mountain on Bonaire, Mt. Brandaris, which has a hiking trail clear to the top where the summit (the highest point on the whole island) tops out at a whopping 784 feet!

Tonight we’re going to a kind of fancy restaurant called Wil’s, to celebrate the 19th anniversary of our first date. Awwwwwwe . . . how cute!

Caribbean Note VII

This week we finished old business and errands and got back to the serious work of diving.

I was able to get good information and a map to an old donkey trail that leads to a divable cave. I’ll check that tomorrow and if it proves out I’ll have located three caves with depths of up to ninety feet and hundreds of feet of passages to explore. The more people I talk to the more I understand that nobody has the whole story about Bonaire Caves. Each person who has dived them knows, at best, a few places that are wet, but most of those places are not divable. I’m still searching for a rumored fourth cave in the north, but I’m not sure it really exists; and that’s out of literally hundreds of dry caves and wet wells on the island.

Berit and I have been diving the east coast this week and have seen some great sights. The soft corals between Lac Bay and The Willemstoren Lighthouse are amazing. There are fields of Sea Fans waving in the shallow surge and big potholes and undercuts carved out of the ironstone bottom by the winter storms, all filled with lobsters and urchins and anemones galore. We even saw a sleeping Hawksbill turtle in the coral.

Today we saw the biggest fish we had ever seen in the water. We think it was a Tiger Grouper and while we see groupers all the time, they’re usually around two feet in length and weigh twenty or thirty pounds; a pretty big fish for sure but this fish today looked like a Volkswagen, and it was just a few feet from us! It had to weigh several hundred pounds and was HUGE!! I’ve heard about big groupers like this but thought they’d all been killed by spear fishermen long ago. Nice to see there’s at least one still around.

We saw an Eagle Ray paired with a Southern Stingray cruising along together; and soon after a squadron of five Eagle Rays all effortlessly swimming along like a group of fighter planes patrolling the reef; and fish of all kinds schooling for protection. The Barrel Sponges and Elkhorn Coral are thick here as well as the big Gorgonians. There are stupendous stands of hard coral in the north, but they are abundant here on the east side too.

The one thing we still don’t see are sharks. We understand the east coast is known for Reef Sharks and Nurse Sharks, but they are not around when we are there. We’ve done a lot of dives here and can say with a certainty that Baby Beach and Cai Reef are our current favorite sites.

Next weekend will be our last note from the Caribbean. We’ll be home the following weekend and look forward to seeing you all. Seven weeks down and two to go.

Caribbean Note VI

First weird occurrence was a plane crash just off our coast about a half mile. Turns out a small drug plane was using the lights of Bonaire to navigate at night and while flying low along the waterfront, in front of all the tourists having dinner in the nice restaurants there, exploded and fell into the sea. There was a man still strapped into his seat and burned up before the plane sank and bales of Cocaine floating at the crash site.

And while everyone was trying to solve that mystery a small commercial plane crashed in the same place a couple days later. This time ten people were aboard and everyone was rescued except the pilot who was knocked unconscious in the crash and couldn't be pulled from the cockpit before the plane sank in something more than 600 feet of water.

Quite an exciting week!

We have made friends with a local (Bonairian) couple and it's kind of like being friends with Archie and Edith Bunker. He worked for years as a local cop and knows everyone (or everyone knows him) but is retired now and (kind of) hates the Dutch. If you consider the Dutch hold the local people in the standard colonial headlock after centuries of slavery and the virtual slavery of the plantation system, it's not hard to see his point of view. She is as sweet as any grandmother could be and speaks very little English, but has always been the stay at home mom and is the expert on cooking local foods. Since Berit and I enjoy trying new things we've been having a weekly dinner with them where the ladies make Oxtail Stew and Funchi and Red Beans (with pig's tails) and Rice and the old standby's like Iguana and Fish Head Stew etc.

Well, he is quite the amature web browser and spends some time everyday watching web broadcasts and getting his news and information on the computer and was having a problem with his CPU overheating and shutting off. He knew that Berit was connected to the mysterious programming world so asked if she would take a look at his computer and see if she could fix it. Berit agreed and we spent all day Monday diagnosing and solving the problem. We had to visit every little PC shop on the island 'til we found a heat sink fan to replace to one that was malfunctioning but in the end we were successful and put everything back together again and fired up the computer . . . and it wouldn't come back up.

The computer had been working when we shut it down and opened it up. The fan was working now, but the computer would not boot up. We must have zapped the motherboard, or maybe the processor had just gotten so hot it was shot, but all in all we took a computer that had a minor problem and turned it into a computer with a major problem. We took it to a repair shop and after an extensive diagnosis concluded that the motherboard was not working and should be replaced.

That was all on Monday. Tomorrow is Monday and we still don't have it back. He is fit to be tied. We've had endless excuses for why it's not ready yet, including the plane crash delayed the part from Curacao, but he is convinced that it's all lies and the lazy people who promised one thing on Monday and another on Wednesday and something else on Friday are just jerking us around and somehow behind it all the Dutch could somehow be responsible!!

We hope to have the computer back on Monday because Tuesday we are having another dinner, In order to have a break from the local food Berit is cooking Pot Roast. WooHoo!!

You know the ultimate disappointment in the new foods zone was the day Verna cooked pizza for us. We kids were little and Mom and Dad were going to General Conference in Independence and left us with Stan and Verna and their kids while they were gone. Verna was (circa 1960's) a health food nut and great money saver where food preparation was concerned, but her meals were always healthy and nutritious. So when we heard she was cooking pizza we were thrilled! We loved pizza, and because Mom was in the same vein and always prepared our meals at home, we never got to have pizza. We were stunned to think how lucky those kids were that their mother was so great a chef that she could actually make pizza at home.

When it was served that night for dinner our glee turned to disgust. She had used whole wheat flour and the topping was kidneys. It was the most horrid thing we had ever tried to eat, and because of the "you have to finish your plate before you can leave the table" rule we were forced to sit there stirring the kidneys (not meat) on top of the bread (not crust) until she'd had enough of our wastefulness and let us escape. I thought it was the worst meal of my life . . . until the Okra stew.

I'll let Berit tell that story:

First of all, let me say, I loved the Okra Stew. Last week, over Oxtail Stew, they mentioned that if they could get some good Okra that they would make us some Okra Stew next time. Well, I immediately flashed back on my childhood experiences with okra, although few, and had to wonder if that would be a good idea, but what can you say when someone has offered to cook you a meal. Later in the day Michael and I discussed the "stew" and Michael had a few things to say about okra. His main objection being the drool-like, snot-like liquid that results from cooking okra. As far as he's concerned the only way to eat okra is fried to death. He mentioned that if the stew was going to have any of the snot-like liquid that that was going to be a big problem. All I could do was chuckle. It was going to be very entertaining.

Tuesday arrived and our guests showed up with a big pot of stew and mouths watering. They each said that they could single-handedly eat the whole pot. He lifted the lid and Michael's worst nightmare presented itself in full blown green slimy goodness. The men went outside to have a beer while Monica and I prepared the funchi. Funchi is made of corn meal and I think is probably comparable to polenta. I've tried making it here and I like it but it's another thing that Michael doesn't care for. When all was ready, he dished us all up huge bowls full of stew and we each dropped a chunk of funchi into our bowl. You each a little funchi with each spoon of stew. Absolute bliss for our guests and also myself, pure torture for poor Michael. Later he told me that every time he looked at any of us we would have a long thread of slime hanging from our mouths down to our bowls. And did I mention that the stew contained fish and salted pig's tails. Well, Michael survived without losing his lunch in front of our friends and managed to down about half of his bowl. The rest of us all had seconds. Mmm-mmm good! They returned on Friday with Red Beans and Rice. Delicious -- and Michael thinks so too.

We miss you guy's! We hope to see you all soon. Three more weeks is all we have left and we will be back.

Caribbean Note V

Wow. The end of the fifth week already. How time flies.

We started off the week by scouting a new dive site called The Cliff, which is one of the few sites here that features a wall, which starts at about 20fsw and drops straight off to about 60fsw where the reef slopes down to the maximum depth for recreational diving (about 130fsw) and then extends out onto the typical snow white coral sand flats where we often see garden eels and rays. (How's that for a run-on sentence! My seventh grade english teacher is rolling over in her grave.)

The reason we wanted to dive The Cliff was that someone (who dives it at night with a black light) told us it was a good place to observe the coral spawning, because there is such a variety of hard and soft corals and because of the topography you can see a large expanse of the reef all at once. That way when a coral head puffs out its polyps you can spot them here or there and rush around from this one to that one depending on the action at the moment. The coral spawns in September and October and only in conjunction with the full moon, so we had to be in the water between 10:30 and 11:30 PM around the 11th of the month.

Night dives are always tough 'cause it's harder to gear up in the dark and find our way across the coral rubble and into the water with just the help of our dive lights. So after our afternoon scouting dive we knew which direction we wanted to swim on the reef and at what depth we would travel and where the likely coral heads were and what path across the beach to the water. We went home, had dinner and waited 'til around ten o'clock then drove to the site and got our gear together on the tailgate of the truck; then as I turned to reach into the bed of the truck for our gearbag my rebreather crashed to the ground behind me. AAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!

I've been diving my Megalodon for five years and this is the second time I've dropped it. It is chocked full of electronic components and sensors and hoses and fittings and valves and has very delicate connectors everywhere. Plus it weighs close to 100# fully assembled and when it falls things are bound to break. I bent down in the dark and reached around it and gathered it up in my arms like a child who has fallen and found that instead of one piece it was now in three pieces. Needless to say our night dive was over before it started.

We went home. I carefully put the pile of parts on my workbench and piece by piece determined that everything was still OK. The tank brackets had been forced off the canister and the unit was disassembled but nothing was broken. I felt like the whole incident could have been a commercial for the ruggedness of the Megalodon Rebreather. It takes a licking but keeps on ticking! Just like the old Timex watch commercial! The next day I completely disassembled it and cleaned and checked and re-calibrated and put it all back together again and we returned to The Cliff and did our coral spawning dive that night.

This time everything went as planned. . . except for the coral spawning. We saw all kinds of really cool stuff like Parrot Fish sleeping in their mucus membrane cocoons and an octopus out hunting on the reef and brittle stars and hard corals feeding and squadrons of huge Tarpon (jpeg attached) buzzing us and using our lights to hunt reef fish. It was an amazing dive but we'd missed the coral spawning.

We've made friends with a Bonarian couple and expressed our interest in local dishes, so on Wednesday we had them over for dinner they cooked us a big pot of oxtail. I have to tell you it was a little disconcerting to gnaw on the bones of what looked like spinal column but the meat was really good! We've already had Iguana and fish (head) stew and of course goat meat, but now we've had backbone stew too. We love Bonaire!

Today we're diving a favorite site Tolo (aka 'ol Blue). The last time I dove there was on our marathon 2 1/2 hour dive to Witches Hut. . . can't wait!

Caribbean note IV

We hope you're surviving the run up to Halloween and are getting your costumes all figured out for trick-or-treat!

We've just finished a week long Sailing Regatta Festival here on the Island. The sailboat races have been going on all week and prizes awarded for every class of vessel from Sunfish races in the harbor to big boats racing from Curacao to Bonaire to kids with little remote sailboats controlled from the beach. At night the waterfront is crowded with hundreds (thousands?) of people in a Rose Festival kind of atmosphere with music performed by groups from all over and food booths and Saturday Market style crafts booths mixed together with games and contests where people play a game like Bingo for prizes.

Last night was the final blowout and the party was still going on after midnight with everyone dancing and food booths still cooking and selling Shoarmas and BBQ'd goat and little kids running around with lighted toys and old women Salsa dancing with young men and old men drinking beer and watching the young women dressed to the nines stroll up and down the boulevard trying to catch the eye of the young men sitting together in groups along the seawall acting too cool for school. What a busy week. There are several festival times during the year and this was our first. The crowds are multinational, but predominately Bonairian.

Berit and I have finally completed our first dive on the wild side. We went with a local guide who has a good reputation as an East Coast (windward) dive guide and we were very pleased. Normally the water is so rough that diving this side is like a Navy Seal operation where the divers are loaded onto a fast boat and powered out of Lac Bay through the channel into the chop and swells of the Ocean and dropped quickly outside the reef where the group has a chance to see bigger and more of everything there is to see on the western (leeward) side of the Island. Then picked up in the same rocking and rolling conditions as the crew drags everyone aboard and jets back into the calm waters of the bay. These boat dives are typically 45 minute affairs where getting seasick is part of the fun.

What we did instead was walk into the channel from the shore and swim out along the bottom with the current and turn kick along the reef and return the same way. The difference is we were able to cover more of the reef and have a much longer dive (an hour and twenty minutes plus) and see everything there was to see. We dropped into the current near a huge pile of conch shells and finned along 'till we were surrounded by dozens of big Tarpon at a place called, not surprisingly, the Tarpon Pit; then out through the mouth of the channel on a 180 degree compass heading and turned right and followed the reef where we saw the same fish we normally see but more of them and bigger fish and all on the same dive. In addition to the Tarpon we saw eagle rays and spotted morays and big green morays and turtles and grouper and all kinds of brightly colored tropicals along with jacks and Lobsters and angels and juveniles of every kind.

It's important to note that Berit's air consumption is very good. My time at depth on the rebreather is essentially unlimited, so we were doing the dive on Berit's air, as we say, and we knew that the swim back along the channel would be the most difficult part of the dive so planned on turning the dive with a bit more that half the volume remaining of the person whose air consumption was greatest. So, Berit's air consumption was every bit as good as our guide's and the dive was extended to the maximum point (the Sea Fan Garden) that out guide had been able to reach himself. A less experienced diver might have "blown through" his air in half the time. So, Berit gets an atta girl for exceptional gas management and diving skill! She really is quite good in the water.

The swim back along the channel was as difficult as advertised and I can still feel the sore muscles in my hips from the workout, but what a great dive. We'll be doing more East Coast Diving from now on.

Tonight is one of only two times during the year when the coral spawn, so we're waiting until 10:00 PM to dive a site called The Cliff to see this happen. It's predictable like the tide. For a few nights in the middle of September and again in October at about 10:30 PM the coral on the reef (it has something to do with the moon) explode in a shower of polyps like popcorn popping. Some polyps are very tiny and some are as big as BB's and the fish and the brittle stars and the other reef dwellers all gorge themselves in the frenzy. We hope it happens tonight as predicted.

Caribbean Note III

Happy Birthday Gary!! How does it feel to be sixteen? That was a long time ago for me in a galaxy far far away . . . clear back in the year of the famed Summer of Love. We hope you're having a great day. We'll celebrate with you too when we come home.

Speaking of another galaxy; we finished watching the last season of Battlestar on DVD and (spoiler alert) are you kidding me??? It wasn't enough of a stretch to have two separate Earths with identical continents but they had to throw in angels too?? WhatTheFrack!? And this entire group of people just agrees en mass to give up technology (when they can't seem to agree on anything else) in favor of an arduous survival level existence fraught with hardship and death because . . . why again?? . . . because 150,000 years later we're back in the same fix yet again?? What a terrible finish to the series.

So we moved on to Mad Men and after a marathon of madness just finished the second season of this series, which we like a lot; very smart and very cool. We especially like the time capsule features included on the DVD's and the care with which the writers include historical events in the plot line. Two thumbs up from Michael & Berit!

We've spent time Iguana watching and Iguana chasing too. We have a Palm Tree that has produced bright red nuts that a big Iguana comes over to eat. It's a hoot to watch him try and climb the smooth bark and then crane his neck to reach the cluster of nuts only to slide back down before he's had his fill. The other day Berit took pity on him and picked and tossed nuts to him one at a time 'till he'd had about fifteen of them. I tried to open one (a nut not an Iguana) and it took a hack saw to cut it in two. They must be able to digest scrap metal.

Our Bonairian friend was over (having an Amstel) the other day when Rexx chased a big Iguana into our house. He explained that Iguanas are like Pit Bulls and will bite and not let go even after you cut their heads off. So we chased this thing around the house with him skidding and scurrying and sliding around on the tile floors from one room to the next 'till he finally reached down and grabbed him like the Crocodile Hunter and tossed him back outside. We always have them around but this was the only time Rexx had gotten close enough to one to cause a problem. They usually keep their distance and run away when they are approached.

We've also done a good deal of cave hunting and I've attached pictures of e few I've found. #247 is a large dry cave as is #256, but #252 and #264 are both wet and divable. I still need to rope into them with the proper gear to do the underwater survey but at least I'm starting to get on the right track in finding them. I understand there a number of wet caves but only a handful are worth the effort to dive.

This week is the annual Sailboat Regatta with the coming week full of boat races and activities. The town is all spiffed up for this event and started off this morning with a mile long swim to Klein Bonaire (a small island offshore) and back again to Eden Beach. Berit took a few pictures of the swimmers (zip file) and here's a link to the Eden Beach web cam.

http://www.bonairewebcams.com/BeachCamNorth.php

We have scouted the East Coast (wild side) dive sites and will begin diving them with a dive outside Lac Bay called Cai. We're going with a local guide who will lead us through the channel into the ocean outside the reef. I'll let you know how that turns out next week.

Caribbean Note II

This week went by so quickly I’m a bit late with this note, but all has been well here in our tropical paradise. I’ll give you a day in the life plot line retelling and go through a single day in week two.

As always we woke to our alarm at 6:00 and had coffee and orange juice on the patio while the sun rose and the mosquitoes buzzed around our ears. We cover up good during this period to fend off the attack of the irritating critters who are not out at 6:00 when it’s still dark and are also not out at 7:00 when it’s full day, but during the half hour of sunrise from 6:20 ‘till 6:50 they are insanely abundant! At around 7:00 we take an hour long walk down to the waterfront and north to a dive site called Something Special then back again south to The Divi Flamingo Resort, then back North along the same route to our favorite BBQ joint Bobby-Jans at the end of our street and home again. If we’re in the mood for a good workout we leave the dog at home but often we take him along (he slows us down) and since there are very few=2 0small dogs on the island Rexx has become something of a celebrity and we’ve come to be known as the couple that have the little dog. Even when we meet people for the first time some remark on this. Today the Scientology Training Ship FreeWinds was in port with its current group of Thetans for their OT8 (operating thetan level 8) training. Google it if you want to know more.

Often Berit will buy papaya or other fresh fruits at the open air Venezuelan fruit stand set up every day and supplied by a small boat that makes the 50 mile crossing from the mainland. Our breakfast is usually lunch as well since we’re out and about ‘till suppertime most days. Berit puts her heart into these meals and since we have a one butt sized kitchen and I’m not much good unless there’s a can opener involved she does everything except set the table on the patio when the cooking is done. This day we had scrambled eggs with sautéed mushrooms, peppers and onions along with made from scratch refried beans, potato pancakes and toast and a variety of fresh fruit including grapes and a yellow watermelon that was really sweet.

After breakfast, most days, it’s time to dive. We don’t go everyday (cave hunting, yard work and the like) but we don’t go less often than every other day. Today was a site called Candyland up north beyond the Venezuelan oil transshipment facility called BOPEC. It was our first time diving this site and it’s our current favorite. The reef drops off to the abyss and the blue water is loaded with schools of small fish with bigger fish chasing through the schools and huge lobster and groupers amid spectacular stands of hard and soft corals with angelfish and tangs and grunts and all the usual suspects in abundance. Fabulous.

After an hour or so we surface and stumble out of the surf and up the coral rubble beach to our truck and chatter like school children about the new things we saw while we get out of our gear and rinse the salt off with milk jugs of water brought from home. We have to remember to put the bottles in the cab while we dive so the water will cool down from scalding to just hot. Bonaire is just twelve degrees off the equator and the sun will literally boil or broil anything left out in it. One of the facts of life here is that it is always HOT!!

After diving our routine is to stop off at The Yellow Submarine Dive Shop to fill our tanks; then return to our house to clean up the gear, shower and put everything away for the next time. When we bought the house we wondered how it would be to have no hot water heater. I can tell you for true we haven’t missed it a bit. It’s not that you learn to live with cold showers; it’s that you’re surprised to discover that the water from the tap is already always warm! If you want a cool drink of water you get it from the pitcher in the refrigerator.

Anyway, the Yellow Submarine is back to the south, and the northern dive sites like Candyland are on a one-way section of road heading north, so to get back south to Kralendijk you have to take the roundabout route on “good” paved road through the small central island town of Rincon (there are only the two towns on the island) or take the dirt road “shortcut” back over the hill (maximum elevation on the island is 700 feet) but the tradeoff is it’s r ough going, but hey, that’s why we bought a truck.

We took the shortcut and about two miles along in the middle of nowhere saw a dive bag along the side of the road. Of course we stopped and picked it up and went through it looking for identification and found (along with a wet suit and other dive gear) a complete dive log with all the dives “Kostas” had ever done. He is Greek and has dived the Red Sea among other places and had all his certification cards and personal information there in his log, so when we got home I called the number in the log and had a very short conversation with some woman who spoke Greek and hung up on me. That’s when I realized it had to be around 3:00 AM in Greece and probably not a good time to call.

Kostas had also included an email address, so after we were all cleaned up and ready to go out to dinner, Berit emailed him, and before we even arrived at a decision on which restaurant, he called from his hotel (The Kon Tiki out at Lac Bay) and we drove over and gave him his stuff. He was pretty happy as he was leaving the next day and=2 0the only thing that was missing was his camera. He explained that the bag had been stolen from his vehicle at the dive site Karpata, and offered to buy us dinner, but we declined and wished him well on his trip and drove off into the night like the Lone Ranger and Tonto.

The thing about the theft of the dive bag is weird. There’s a lot of petty theft on Bonaire but it’s thought of as normal and preventable by not making your belongings available to the thieves; like it’s your fault if someone steals from you. It never happens in person. There is very little crime or violence on the island and I’ve never been afraid here; everyone goes out of their way to be friendly and nice. But, if you leave something of minor value in your car it will be taken. On Bonaire you are instructed to leave your car windows rolled down and your car doors unlocked, otherwise your windows will be broken in an attempt to see if you’ve left any valuables in your car. The dive sites are targeted ‘cause the tourists like Kostas don’t know any better.

It’s not like this at your house. People know there are valuables in your house so the houses are all locked up like Fort Knox with bars on the windows and lighted up at night like a football stadium. When you’re home it’s no problem, when gone you have a service (and your neighbors) watch your place. So it turns out that Kostas was lucky to have lost only a camera and even if he files a police report he will find a sympathetic officer but there will be no action taken beyond that.

We don’t eat dinner out a lot, but after leaving Kostas, we decided to try a restaurant we’d never been to called The Chibi Chibi. It’s in The Divi Flamingo Resort which we see every day on our walk. Wow, was it a great place! We were seated at a table overlooking the water and the lights from the restaurant attracted tons of fish which schooled below waiting for diners to toss bread into the water which would start a feeding frenzy. Of course we were much too refined and gentile to engage in this gauche activity. . . . at least while anyone was looking. Berit had the Seafood Mixed Grill and I had the (all meat) Mixed Grill and everything was very good. As a dessert offering we chose to have Mudslides. Turns out they are pretty darn good too! Wonderful place; one of the best we’ve been to on the island!!

After dinner we took what was left of our bottle of wine and wandered down the waterfront to the Divi Casino. It is the only casino on Bonaire and nothing like Las Vegas. They try, but it is more like a small room with a bar and a few slot machines than a casino. When we arrived the man at the door took our bottle of wine an explained he would keep it for us at the bar. We took a quick look around (we were almost alone there) walked up to the Roulette Table and explained that we’d like to make one bet, and laid a Fifty Guilder note on the table. The man exchanged the note for chips; I placed all of them on black; he spun the wheel and dropped the ball into the wheel, and when it stopped bouncing around it had landed in=2 0black.

He paid me in chips; I traded them for money at the cashier’s window; picked up our bottle of wine at the bar; tipped the man at the Roulette Table and we left the casino. It’s nice to be able to say we checked out the casino without it costing us anything. Now we don’t have to go back. I won’t have to bother with reporting the winnings to the IRS though, ‘cause this little trick doesn’t always work and I’m not yet even in my gambling experiences. Still it was fun to win.

And so to home and bed after one more in a long string of wonderful days.

There was a lot more to tell that happened last week from cave hunting to Survivor/Battlestar evenings to Iguana stories and more. But enough for now.

Caribbean Note I

It's the end of our first week here (already) and we wanted to keep in touch, so decided to keep the ball rolling with these updates. Hope you don't mind getting this little weekly blog. We arrived in Bonaire to find our car washed and waiting for us at the airport and the house still in the condition we left it; except for the collection of Iguana poos outside the front door. We spent the first couple of days cleaning (an all pervasive red dust) and getting groceries in and activating our island cell phones and paying our bills. The new thing this week was having our septic tank pumped (the previous owners had never done it) just so we could say we knew when it was last done. Not eventful in any way. We've spent the rest of the week diving (sometimes with our neighbor and walking around in the kunuku (cactus choked countryside) looking for wet caves. The diving has been wonderful; the cave hunting not so much.

I have gotten "directions" from cavers I've contacted and locals too, but they say things like "follow the coast road 'till it makes a sharp bend then turn onto the dirt road there and follow the power line to the fifth pole and walk out into the kunuku heading west for several hundred yards and it's entrance is a small hole behind a Wiacaw tree." I've found several dry caves but no luck with a divable cave yet. The kunuku is impenetrable without boots, jeans, leather chaps and a machete and is so thick you couldn't see ten yards through it even if you were on the right track. So, I'm still searching, but have a GPS unit with me and can navigate without getting turned around and if I ever find what I'm looking for I can mark its position to be able to return to it with the gear to dive it.

All in all we're having a much more relaxed time this trip and Rexx seems happy to be back too.

Caribbean note VI

Wow! Six weeks gone and we'll be leaving for home on Saturday. This should be the last of these little blogs 'till we see you at Rose Festival next Sunday to watch Amber's team win in the Dragon Boat Races.

All the loose ends have been coming together nicely this past week and things like repairs and accounts and gas suppliers have all resolved as if to make sure our list of "must do's before we leave" won't be an excuse to stay longer.

 We've been diving more these days. Berit and a girl we met on Bonaire Talk, buddied up yesterday at a site called Karpata while I did a solo dive to 378 feet. (Nice to finally have a reliable source of Helium.) The edge of the reef is a nearly vertical wall with sand ledges and Gorgonians all the way down. After 400 feet it just keeps on going. I saw a bit of everything from big lobsters and turtles to Queen Angels and schools of Blue Tangs and Jacks.

The entry/exit at Karpata is a bit tricky with wave action and surge, especially with (3) extra sling bottles, but they worked together to drag the cylinders in and out again. The big Iguanas have become quite tame from people giving them snacks at the site; they all begged for handouts as we sorted our gear in the hot sun. After diving we stopped by one of the local restaurants for snacks,cold drinks and chit chat. It was the kind of day we had in mind when we decided to buy our little house.

Caribbean Note V

This week was a tough one for us. My friend Paul died on Monday while diving off the coast of New Jersey. Paul was the guy I dove the Submarine Spikefish with on my east coast trip last summer. We also dove the caves together in Mexico and hung out at various times as well. I won't belabor the issue, but there’s an article from his hometown paper if you care.

Other than sweating out the search for a couple of days we really haven't done much new. Berit has had a stuffed up head and sore throat, so we've stayed out of the water. She also sat on our glass top coffee table and crashed through into a pile of glass. It was pretty dramatic but she was lucky and only had a small stab would to her hip. (No stiches.) The list of all we've accomplished in the last five weeks is pretty impressive, but we've still got a ways to go before we're ready to come home in two weeks

Caribbean Note IV

This is the end of our fourth week on the island and we've been busier than ever trying to get all our ducks in a row so we can enjoy our vacation paradise. We've accomplished a lot here, but there are more loose ends than ever and every few days a new problem to add to the list. The latest was installing the gear table I built in it's proper place beside the hose bib on the dive locker side of the house. As I was digging to set the concrete blocks under the table legs, I discovered that the drain pipe from the washing machine was smashed and full of rocks. I dug all around the broken section of pipe and called a plumber to replace it. After sawing through to achieve clean ends to wok with he tried to snake out the remaining rocks only to find the pipe was truly full of them . . . so we dug until we found the end which drains into a kind of rock filled french drain system and determined the solution was to dig a big hole at the far end and push all the rocks out into the new hole.

At the same time Berit was asking why the white clothes were getting yellow stains on them and the answer was because our water was not filtered and the old iron pipes on the island were rusty inside so the first water from the pipes when you open the tap was rusty. So . . . we decided to dig up the water pipe too and install a water filter system where the city water enters our property. After digging here, there and everywhere it seemed logical to dig and finding nothing, we gave up and called for a local laborer to come the next day and "find the pipe." Which he did; about four feet down through the rockiest "soil" you can imagine. By the time he was done there was no time left in the day to dig out the hole to solve the problem with our drainage so the digger agreed to come back the next day and keep digging.
Meanwhile our plumber came back and replaced the broken section of drain pipe and installed our water filter on the water pipe and went home too. The next day no laborer showed up by late morning so I started digging and filling holes and making new ones until I was all done at 5:30. Man, what a workout!! In the new batch of pictures you'll see our problem and the solution.

Also in the new batch of pictures is the method (we were shown) for replacing missing cactus in the cactus fence. Dig a hole and put in dirt; find a cactus arm and chop it off with a machete; put the arm in the hold and voila! it will grow. We only tried one to see if it works. Maybe next trip we'll work on the cactus fence.
Anyway, we still have lots to do and only three more weeks to get it done. Berit has had an ear infection for the past week. We spent a couple hours last Monday at the clinic where she was examined and prescribed ear drops and told to stay out of the water for a week, so tomorrow will be the first time we've been in the water for awhile.

Caribbean Note III

Well it's been three weeks and this weeks Caribbean note comes from my fellow islander who is making life here really easy for me. She's doing all the girl stuff like cooking and shopping and washing clothes, while I get to do all the boy stuff like pounding nails in wood and playing with dive gear. I'm really glad we're in this together. She's a great dive buddy too!!

Caribbean Note II

We're at the end of our second week and have been diving everyday after breakfast and taking care of business and exploring the island in the afternoon. We've seen reefs covered with coral gardens and schools of brightly colored tropical fish along with big groupers and barracuda. The leeward side of the island is calm and the beaches allow easy entry into the ocean. But I want to dive the windward side where there has been so little diving done. We've scouted this other side of the island and have seen some of the roughest coastline ever with sharp jagged rock sculpted by the wind driven breakers. The shoreline looks deadly. Where there is an occasional break the rollers roar through with huge waves that crash and surge onto the rocky beach. 

I haven't found a way to get into the water, or more to the point, a way to get back out. We met a group of people who are friends of our dive buddies and went to dinner with them a couple of times. They are from Vancouver Island and dive the same sites we do in the Pacific Northwest. Two of the couples are buying property here so we'll soon have a local contingent of Puget Sound divers on Bonaire. Small world. We've purchased a dive truck and I'm building an outdoor workbench to better manage rinsing and assembling our gear.

Caribbean Note I

We're at the end of our first week and have gotten a bunch of things done, but all associated with being new homeowners in a new town. We're putting the house in order which means buying tools and building storage and moving furniture and getting electronics hooked up and finding local services and adjusting to the lack of availability of everything. We were told if you find something good, get it now 'cause if you wait 'till you need it you'll no longer be able to find it on the island. We're becoming believers. We have to wait six weeks for a delivery of propane from Curacao 'cause there is no propane on Bonaire at present. Same with the Helium I need for blending my deep gases. 

Just opening a bank account requires Two letters of reference from the States and copies won't do. The letters must be originals and mailed to Bonaire which sometimes can take weeks. But we're loving life. It's beautiful here and all is right with the world. We get up at six and take an hour or so long walk along the waterfront and then have a swim and are back in time to have breakfast and start our day while it's still relatively cool. Today I'm finishing my blending and transfill room at the house so tomorrow we may actually get to dive.

We’re here!

Our internet sevice leaves a lot to be desired and we have no TV yet, but we have purchased a new fridge (the old one was dead on arrival) and a new washing machine. Have no Helium for Tri-Mix (none on the island right now) but I have O2, so we can ditch the snorkel and drop down onto the reef!!! 

Lot's to do but we're having fun doing it.