Day 7: Friday Jan 28, 2011 Bonaire

Friday 1/28: Torie's Reef and (Red Slave)

I woke up with a scratchy throat this morning, and discovered by afternoon I was definitely getting Jim's cold. Good timing at the end of the trip though! Jim was sick for much of the trip with a cold. Just kind of miserable, but nothing that kept him from diving.

We decided to go back to Torie's Reef again since we didn't get to do a real long dive the first time there, and everyone liked it. Randy and Shawn decided to dive the Hilma Hooker instead. It was interesting diving this again at the end of the week after we had other sites to compare it to. The coral seemed much more beat up than the other sites we dove, but the amount of fish is just incredible. I read that this site is in the top 3 or something in the Caribbean for fish diversity. It's a really fun site. We saw a stingray this time and squids too!

My ears and sinuses were making weird popping and cracking noises the whole dive and I was feeling kind of sick, so I decided to skip the second dive today. (Frankly I needed a break anyway). We went south to Red Slave to see the huts there, and talked to some divers, who said the dive was pretty good today. So everyone else decided to do Red Slave instead of the dive they had originally planned. This site can be tricky. It's at the very southern tip of the island, so the currant can be pretty bad there. But they said it was nice today.

 While they were diving, I got in the pickup and did a little landside tour. I went to a lighthouse that was nearby and got some nice pictures. Watched the ocean there at the start of the eastern side of Bonaire. It's MUCH rougher there! Then went back and basked in the sun while they were diving. Very enjoyable! We didn't have any “relax and hang out at the pool” time on this trip, and I was missing that.