Week two on Bonaire

After our trip up to the National Park we took it easy on Wednesday as I was feeling a bit ill. We headed up to Eden Beach, where the Wannadive dive shop is and sat on the beach and did a bit of swimming. Later on I stocked up on food at the supermarket investigating what is available and not ridiculously expensive. Predictly, that isn't much given the size of the island. Most food is imported from the States or The Netherlands with some fresh fruit from Venezuela. Trying not to think too much about the food miles.

Thursday, we investigated the diving options from Eden Beach. There is a marked dive site not too far away - Front Porch. Here there is coral reef and plenty to see. Off the beach itself is mostly sand and rubble but still quite a lot of life to see if you spend the time. There are also three wrecks, a small wooden skeleton of a ship. Our Confidence, just south of the beach at about 18m deep which was quite interesting. And also two other small but more intact wrecks, a tugboat and sailing boat at 20-25 m further north. There are many morays and snake eels which seem to swim freely more often than I've seen elsewhere. We've also seen a couple of 1.5m tarpon quite close up. We did three dives Thursday, two on the Our Confidence and one going North from the beach. The currents seem stronger in the afternoon and are usually flowing south.

Friday we did a boat dive at Keepsake on Klein Bonaire. This was a nice relaxing dive with no current and plenty of pristine coral to see. No turtles or big fish but a nice scorpion fish and good to be out on the boat. In the afternoon we stayed at the beach and did two more dives. One down to the deep sailing boat wreck, which contains a mattress growing soft coral and one much shallower on the reef. One interesting thing of note is the Sergeant Major damselfish which are nesting at the moment. The males are darker in colour and guarding dark blue patches of eggs. If you get too close they will take a nibble out of your fin tips! I guess this is a warning to keep away. Just deeper than the wrecks where the reef gives way to sandy bottom which is populated by hundreds of garden eels. These are so cute but retreat into their holes as you approach.

Saturday was another relax on the beach and snorkelling day. We were both pretty tired from the quite deep dives the previous day. Also my computer had been telling me I had 2 minutes of no deco time left at 7.5 metres on the way back from the third dive so I had pushed right to the limits and thought a day off would be useful.

We ate out Saturday night at City Cafe. One of the few restaurants/bars that seems almost reasonably priced. But the best part was the ice cream from Watta Burger afterwards! I think there will be many more of them!