A shore thing in Bonaire

A shore thing
My days slipped away quickly between joining the Florida Barracudas as they ticked off almost all of Klein Bonaire’s dives and my so-far-unsuccessful evening search for sex on the reef.

Nights became my favorite time to dive.  It wasn’t just the chance at witnessing the coral spawn. It was the sheer abundance of life. I was certain that given enough time, I could probably tick off every last one of Bonaire’s 355 fish species right there a few fin kicks from the dock in less than 10 meters of water.

There was the Caribbean octopus, which hung out near her hole beside the mooring. She flushed and pulsed and retreated into her fortress when I came to greet her. But when I settled down on the sand and played with her shell pile, invariably a slender leg unfurled, and she poked at a stray piece as if to say “checkmate.” There were the thigh-thick green morays that slid like loose Hulk muscles among the coral rubble, and the yellowline arrow crabs peeking back at me with their silver eyes from the midnight folds of a sponge.

And then there was Charlie.

Charlie was a hefty tarpon who took enormous pleasure in sneaking up behind me on midnight dives when my mind wandered to thoughts of bored tiger sharks coming in for a shallow look-see even though I hadn’t seen as much as a nurse shark on all my dives. And suddenly there was Charlie in a bangled tin explosion that left me hyperventilating.

I got off easy. Usually when the sand cleared, some poor fish I’d caught in my flashlight beam and was preparing to identify was nothing more than a glittery rain of scales. The only ID I could give them was ‘edible.’

Jad Davenport / Sport Diver Vibrant sponges off Klein Bonaire.

It took effort to break away from the gravity of the easy Klein Bonaire boat dives. I had to remind myself that I had a tough set of wheels and a nifty book titled Bonaire Shore Diving Made Easy, by Susan Porter.

With the two most famous dives — the Salt Pier and the Town Pier — closed to diving for the duration of my visit (ships were docked at both), I hit the drive-through and struck south along the windswept southern wing of the island with a pair of Brits who had invited me to tag along. A quarter hour after passing Kralendijk, they pulled off the shoulder and into a small stony parking lot beside a highway-stripe-yellow stone with an arrow and “Alice in Wonderland” painted on it.

Booties on and fins in hand — this is not an island for full-foot fins — we waded over the coral rubble and sand pockets into the rippled surf until it was deep enough to snorkel out to the mooring. Passing over a sandy meadow full of swaying garden eels and knobbed with the odd queen conch, we dropped along the outside edge of the double reef to 140 feet where stony plate corals were basking in sunlight so bright I needed a pair of Ray-Bans. Farther out off the sloped wall, hatchet-thin horse-eye jacks whirled, and the ghost of a turtle faded away.

Our nitrox tanks seemed to last forever because we barely moved, preferring to drift in a whisper of a current and watch the denizens of paradise at play. When we finally slogged out and rolled our tanks into the pickups, I asked my companions how many times they’d dived Wonderland.

“Oh, we’ve done Alice at least six times,” they replied, nodding in agreement.

“Over how many trips?”

“That’s just this trip,” and then they started counting up how many times they dived it on previous trips.

In Bonaire, apparently, there’s no such thing as too much of a good time. 

After toweling off, I said goodbye and ventured farther south along the flat barren land to marvel at a perfect range of snowy hills. The southern tip of Bonaire still produces white gold in evaporative ponds run by Cargill Salt. Nearby was a row of restored slave huts built in 1850 to give shelter to the unfortunate souls working the briny pans. I wedged myself into one to see what the flip side of paradise looked like. The scalding wind moaned and the friendly, easy Bonaire I knew evaporated in the heat.

Slide show   A Mermaid’s Playground Presented by Sport Diver Magazine. more photos

Where the road reached its southernmost point and began to climb up the wilder east coast, I stopped to admire the Willemstoren Lighthouse and the creaking Wind Trykes — contemporary windmills that pump water around the vast solar works. A handful of pink flamingos that overslept their daily flights to feed in Venezuela were skimming the waters of the Flamingo Sanctuary with scooped bills. On the roadside facing the open sea, tourists had created their own Bonaire versions of the The Blair Witch Project, eerie driftwood scarecrows that seemed to howl in the wind.

My diving was done for the afternoon, so instead of returning the way I came, I decided to make a circuit of the south and take the long way home. I rumbled along narrow E.E.G. Boulevard farther north and east where the windy, open salt pans hastily retreated to an army of gnarled mangroves marching like wooden spiders to the very edge of the road. The land was wetter here, and I passed a red triangular warning sign: “Drijfzand” (quicksand).

The road eventually wound along Lac Bay, a tranquil bite of a lagoon on the otherwise wave-thundered coast. Windsurfers took advantage of the sanctuary and skimmed the glassy water. Nearby, children had turned the Lac Bay harbor into the best swimming pool I’d ever seen; the high-dive was the roof of a fiberglass fishing boat. In the parking lot a party was underway and I was drawn in by happy shouts of “Bon tarde!” All too soon the sentimental evening light faded and stars crept above the mangroves, and it was time for me to make my way back.

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