Have you ever dreamt you were flying and sensed an exhilarating feeling of freedom and weightlessness? For millions of scuba divers, floating Through the world that lies underwater is as close to flying and weightlessness as we'll ever get. And That's only part of the attraction of scuba diving.
As a total scuba novice, I recently took the plunge and, with my diver-husband, journeyed to an island that draws divers the way Las Vegas draws blackjack players.
There was certainly some trepidation that I would be way out of my league on an island whose official nickname is "Diver's Paradise," and that my first scuba adventure would be more work than fun since I still had to complete four open water dives to get certified. But after devoting some cold winter nights to scuba classes and pool sessions at home in Annapolis, MD, I decided why not go where the divers go to complete my PADI certification: Bonaire.
This tropical island in the Netherlands Antilles off the coast of Venezuela -- onethird of the 'ABC" islands of Aruba and Curacao -- has become the number one dive destination in the Caribbean, and now we know why. Not only are the diving conditions ideal, with pristine reefs running parallel to the island's western - -- and southern coastline and within an easy snorkel swim from the beach, but all of the waters of Bonaire are a protected marine preserve.
The island government had the foresight to place strict rules on its coastal waters in the 1970s and create the Bonaire National Marine Park in 1979. Consequently, the coral reefs of Bonaire remain intact and healthy, 'unlike many other islands where the fragile reefs have been largely ruined by overuse, anchors, poaching and other negative forces. We did not mind, for example, paying $10 each for an entry fee to the Bonaire National Marine Park (actually a plastic tag) to dive for a week. The tags are good for a year and the money goes toward continued protection of the reefs.
Standing in line at the open-air car rental counter after arriving at Bonaire's Flamingo Airport, where billy goats scampered around the parking lot, I knew we'd made a good choice when the man ahead of us said this was his seventh trip to Bonaire to dive. With over 80 marked dive sites to explore, multiple trips started making more sense.
About the size of Bermuda, 24 miles long and three to seven miles across, Bonaire caters to divers even as it guards its natural resources. To make diving easy, Bonaire's resorts virtually all offer dive packages. These usually include your room, plus a twin-cab pickup truck (with a rack in back for tanks) weights and unlimited air, and a week's worth of boat dive trips or a week's worth of shore diving, or both. Divers bring their own regulators (the breathing apparatus) and BCDs (buoyancy compensating devices, the flotation vests that everything attaches to) or rent them. (A certification card is needed to rent scuba equipment.) And the only "drive-through" on Bonaire is not a fast food restaurant but a resort that features a drive-through air refill station for your tanks.
The Endless Reef
Bonaire, similar to the Florida Keys, is coral rock and lined with a fringing type reef, practically one continuous reef not separated from the shore by wide lagoons, but often starting right at the shoreline. The reef terrace just off the beach slopes gently down to about 30 feet, then begins a sharper drop-off down to 130 feet or more. The submerged landscape also features a double reef where, at about 100 feet, there is a channel of empty sand and beyond it, another fringing reef that begins at 130 feet.
Dive operators on Bonaire offer an enticing menu of specialty dive classes for those who want advanced training -- everything from wreck diving and night diving to underwater photography. Resorts host evening slide shows of the day's best underwater photos. One evening, while dining at a waterfront pub, we noticed the harbor waters were lit eerily from below by moving, alien-looking lights; it was a regular outing of night divers at a favorite local spot, Town Pier, right off the busy main drag in the capital Kralendijk.
The chance to swim with and observe up close the exotic creatures, plants and corals that live in the ocean always had tremendous appeal to me, but I put off getting certified to dive because I feared brain-numbing technical knowledge was required, including dreaded math. Note to fellow math illiterates: It's not that hard, Yes, there are numbers involved, but if I can understand the general concepts of buoyancy, air pressure and water depths, just about anyone can. Plus, the equipment has gotten so good, the sport is safer and small wristband dive computers practically do the thinking for you. PADI (Professional Association of Diving Instructors) is one of the organizations that offers training and certifies divers as competent to rent scuba equipment.
At Bonaire's Toucan Diving, I spent two days reviewing skills and diving on the reef that was within a stone's throw of our hotel room with PADI instructor Monique Reichert. Two years on Bonaire, hailing from Holland, Monique learned to dive in the cold waters of the North Sea and inland lakes. In four dives over two days I in the pool back repeated the skills and then was rewarded with a lovely dive along our local reef. As we glided underwater, she used a small writing board to point out five squid hovering before us like little submarines, a moray eel hiding between some rocks, a chameleon-like, color-changing peacock flounder fish that disappeared into his surroundings and an alien-looking sea cucumber.
Once one can get past the illogical notion of strapping weights to your body and stepping into water well over your head so you will sink ... well, the butterflies give way to different sort of excitement, one that comes from leaving behind what is familiar and entering a truly alien world filled with gorgeous creatures you will not see anywhere else. Fish painted like rainbows, or neon blue to brilliant yellow, do not dart away but are so tame on Bonaire they will swim in schools all around you, perhaps because spear fishing has been banned for decades. No dive was long enough to really take in the richness of colors and shadows that change with the light of day, soft corals that sway continually in the currents and look like purple feathers or formations of hard coral that looked like everything from chimneys to beehives.
Scuba classes teach divers to achieve neutral buoyancy and this is where the sense of flying lies. By adjusting your weights and the air in the BCD, the goal is to neither sink nor float upwards but be able to hover without effort a safe distance above a reef and glide along slowly to conserve energy. The freedom that comes with this temporary weightlessness makes you wish you could stay underwater for hours.
By Land or By Sea
Many of the named dive sites in Bonaire are a half-mile away on a flat, 1,500-acre deserted island called Klein Bonaire which is only accessible by boat. The other way to take in the amazing variety of underwater sites that line the leeward side of Bonaire is by shore diving. Dive sites are marked along the roadways with colored rocks painted with the name of the site. Find one you like, pull your pickup off the road and drive right up on the beach. Their names are as colorful as the fish: The Invisibles, White Slave, Old Blue, Hilma looker, 1,000 Steps, Witches Hut, and Bon Bini na Cas, to name only a few.
Another thrill of diving is that you never know what you might see on any given trip underwater and it's over too soon. From watching movies and TV shows, one would conclude that divers just stay down here all day. Not so. I was surprised to find hat, like a carnival ride, it's over all too fast and you're already thinking about the next 'ride." My average dive was about 40 minutes, going to no more than about 60 feet.
On a shore dive to see the wreck of the 35-foot fishing ship Hilma Hooker, we saw livers below at 80 feet looking into the innards of the wreck which lies on her starboard side against the slope of the first reef of the double reef. Beyond the wreck and a sandy stretch of bottom we could see the beginnings of the second fringe of coral reef. Wreck diving requires advanced scuba training so we merely hovered well above the ship.)
The Hilma Hooker, sunk intentionally in 1984, is a favorite sire for both shore dives and dive boats. (Seized by authorities with a load of marijuana on board back in the 1980s, she has a bit of a checkered past and the guidebooks simply say to ask a local dive operator for the full story.) Three mooring buoys at her bow and stern make it easy to find your way up and down. Hiding in the ship's shadows we spotted a silvery bonito, about a yard long.
