Dive West Trip to BonaireOctober 12-19, 2002
Dive West Trip to BonaireI'm not sure when it was that it dawned on me that something had gone terribly awry. I think I was still blissfully ignorant when I stepped on the escalator going down to the American Eagle gates in San Juan. I might have had a tingle as they started routing us from line to line in the subterranean holding pens. I remember the denial I felt as they told us the plane had boarded and the doors were closed. You know the rest -- anger, bargaining, depression, etc. We didn't get on the plane. The next flight was 24 hours away. And it wound up taking longer than that to get to acceptance, our rooms, or into the blue water that all of us craved.
That story just gets too long. The short version is: American Eagle is Evil. (For more proof that American Eagle is Evil, click here.)
We wound up arriving 29 hours late, found our luggage that had been clever enough to arrive on time, crammed into a van like cirus clowns, awakened the night staff, and staggered into our rooms around 1:30am to fall face first into our beds.
It wasn't until the next morning that we actually looked at the room, a junior suite, and thought, "Hey, this is pretty nice!" The main room had two queen sized beds, a dinette, sofa, large dresser, and enough room left over for another couple of beds. The bath was larger than some hotel rooms I've been in, with a large double sink counter and still enough floor space for a queen sized bed. They also hid the refidgerator in the large closet which helped heep the room very quiet.
As we strolled over to breakfast through the landscaped grounds I was again thinking, "Hey, this is pretty nice." Breakfast is a buffet at the Carribean Point and you are charged before you enter. When the cashier handed me the charge slip for NAF45.00 I suddenly thought, "Hey, THEY think this is pretty nice!" As I woke up, I realized that the exchange rate was in my favor and that they were only charging US$12 for what should have been US$8, I calmed down. The buffet was a pretty basic breakfast buffet with an omlette station.
Upon arrival, we had been told to meet up with Erika at the Toucan Diving shop at the resort. There we paid our US$10 for our marine preserve tokens (good for a year) and watched a video that primarily said "don't touch" and "control your buoyancy". We checked out weights and lockers and wrangled our gear over to our boat, the Green Flash. We met Luis, went over the boat rules, and headed out for Captain Don's Reef on the south side of Klein Bonaire.
It was somewhere on this boat ride that I realized that I'd left the sunscreen in the room. I don't know if being that much closer to the equator really affects the intensity of the rays, or if it's the reflection off the water. I do know that in a few minutes I was starting to feel crispy and was wondering if I'd packed the aloe gel with lanocaine in it.
The first dive was a real joy after all the travel. It felt good to be finally weightless, hearing nothing but the rhythm of the regulators, and surrounded by the coral Eden of Bonaire. We took an hour's surface interval scarfing up the melon slices and pineapple juice, then headed over to Divi Tree a short hop away on Klein. Here we were a little surprised by the current. It would have been a lovely drift dive -- you could kick against it, but it was much easier riding it on the return.
Cheryl and Deanne had sat out this boat trip and met Lynn and me as we returned. We took a dip in the pool, decided we were frying in the sun and decided to get lunch at the Banana Tree restaurant that was poolside. The menu was amusing. Nothing could be described simply, every item had an elaborate explanation like the soup whose recipe was "locked in a Swiss vault". The food was pretty good with items like a crab-burger and a salad with walnuts and blue cheese crumbles. Again, it was a little pricey and the service was slow by even Carribean standards.
We "married couples" decided that the travel had us too fatigued and that the five hours of sleep wasn't enough. A nap was in order before we met the rest of the group to go to town for dinner.
We gathered the whole group in the parking lot and tried to all pile into Thad's truck. Even with four of us in the bed, it took two trips to get all of us the four or five miles to the seawall in Kralendijk. Thad had picked an open air restaurant called "It Rains Fishes" at the north end of the walk. They had a special on mango daqueries that most of us decided to try. I have to recommend them, while made from a packaged mango juice, they were very light and fresh tasting -- just what a sunburned and travel lagged vacationer would want in the tropics.
When I got change the bartender took time to tutor me in the currency. While it's listed as Netherland Antilles Florins (NAF) they call it guilders (it says "gulden" on the bills). The smallest note I saw was ten guilders, common coins were a half guilder that looked like about like a dime, and the guilder that was bronze and was thicker than a nickle and a bit smaller than a quarter. I was told there as a two guilder coin but I don't remember seeing one.
The special of choice was a wahoo fillet in with a dijon sauce, though a few picked the pesto sauce. Deanne had a caprese appetizer that filled a dinner plate, it made a good appetizer.
After dinner we strolled down the seawall towards a bar on a pier and what is known as "the mall". This came in handy as it is a common reference point for anything near the seawall. But as we were waiting for Thad to come back for the second shuttle run in his truck, we decided that we too needed one. The rental vehicle of choice is a four door pickup. Four divers and gear will pretty much fill the cab and the bed.
There may have been a couple of people who wanted to stay up and party. Not us. It was back to the room and a dive for the pillows. Oil Slick Leap Andrea I
Croccantino's - wahoo in saffron lemon caper sauce, lobster soup.
Our second dive of the day was Town Pier. This was the dive where Cheryl was the hero. She was snorkling while the rest of us were taking our time at 15-30 feet. As it closed on lunchtime she jumped out and walked a block up the seawall to the mall and asked Cozzoli's how long it would take for a pizza. When they said 7 minutes, she jumped on it. So when we got back on the boat, there was Cheryl grinning and holding a hot ham and pineapple pizza. It didn't last very long.
Cozzoli's tropical pizza with ham, pineapple, bananas and gorgonzola.
Swiss Chalet - stroganoff, flegli soup, pork chop in creamy mushrooms, smoked marlin, roesti.
Touring the island. Safari, flamingo preserve, feral pigs, parakeets, goats, petroglyphs, Boca Onima.
Zeezicht - Iguana Soup (Sopi di Yuwana)
