A shore thing in Bonaire

Getting lucky
My new schedule of roaming around the island in a pickup truck freed up the entire west coast to me, and soon I was ticking off dive sites until they began to blend together. I needed a break. I needed an evening to clear my head and off-gas. It was Friday, so I headed to town, the seemingly unpronounceable, unspellable and completely delightful burg of Kralendijk.

For the island’s largest town, Kralendijk still leans easy on the quaint side. The West Indies meets Holland along the waterfront where pink and gold buildings trimmed in white peak in high Dutch gables. I wandered along the pier at sunset where the happy murmur of open-air bars and the mournful cry of a mariachi band mingled in the evening air. While dinghies from the nearby yachts puttered in for happy hour and the guitar-strumming bandits sang “Bésame Mucho,” I grabbed a stool at Karel’s Beach Bar and ordered the house special — a green-bottle Heine-ken. Together with a young Elvis gazing down from a black-and-white photograph above the bar, I watched Bonaire unwind for the weekend.

A wind had picked up the next morning, and the sandy south-side dive sites were getting hazy with surge, so I headed to the north end of the island. There, the ironshore coast drops straight into the sea; with no sand to get stirred up, I could still count on great visibility.

I wasn’t disappointed. When I hopped off the 4-foot-high limestone rim at Oil Slick Leap and the bubbles cleared, I was back in the sparkling blue. This time, I’d brought along my laminated Reef Fish In-A-Pocket and Reef Creature In-A-Pocket guidebooks with the hopes of putting some of my knowledge gained at Linda’s REEF fish-ID course into use.

Chubs and mojarras, grunts and snappers, chromis and groupers were duly sorted into species. Parrotfish and soldierfish, basslets and wrasse were cataloged with confidence. I hung suspended at 45 feet barely moving, thumbing through the pages. I ran out of air long before I ran out of species. 

Later that night back at the resort’s dive shop, I saw the familiar, hopeful crowd outside the equipment-rental office, huddled over the spawning chart. I was tired, but the water was right there. My gear was right there. The schedule was right there. It was all so easy. I headed out for one last night dive. And this time, I decided, instead of using the shotgun approach, I was going to find a single star coral head and stake it out.

Charlie showed up and rattled me, but quickly departed for a nearby couple. I saw the explosion of bubbles from their regulators a second later in the glow of their flashlights. I could almost hear their screams and Charlie’s wicked snicker.

I found a promising star coral and settled down to wait. Ten minutes ticked by. Then 15. And then it happened. First one pale little polyp erupted and then another tickled out of the wavy folds and floated away.

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

Suddenly, it looked like what happened when Baffin, my black lab, decided to dissect my bean bag chair — the coral head was bursting with white pellets. Out of nowhere, the normally reclusive brittle stars arrived, feathered tentacles lashing this way and that, scooping up egg packets like they were dollar bills in a wind tunnel on some late-night game show. The brittle stars were overwhelmed with gluttony and I watched one forget he still needed to hang on with at least one tentacle. He tumbled off the coral, arms tightly wrapped around his treasures. But I bet he was happy.

I had the show all to myself and lay there on the sand for a half hour until deep within the spent coral head the spigot turned and the next generation was left to the fate of the currents.

Back at the dock, divers emerged like wet seals, abuzz. Did you see it? Did you miss it? I was one of the lucky ones. But I shouldn’t have been too surprised. After all, I’m in a diver’s paradise. And in paradise, even a guy like me gets lucky once in a lifetime.

Special thanks to Buddy Dive Resort (buddydive.com), Budget Car Rental (bonaire-budgetcar.com), Capture Photo (capturecaribbean.com), Caribbean Club Bonaire (caribbeanclubbonaire.com), Chile & Linda Ridley of REEF (reef.org), Dan Blodget at Sub Aquatic Camera (subaquaticcamera.com), Divi Flamingo Beach Resort & Casino (diviresorts.com), Rolando Martin of Tourism Corporation Bonaire (infobonaire.com), Sarah Biggerstaff of Adams Unlimited Public Relations and Marketing (adamspr.com) and Tourism Corporation Bonaire (infobonaire.com).

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