Beginning first with where I left off on my last post - my sickliness. Fortunately, I have recovered! That was quite the terrible week in bed but just like a rainy day, it has been replaced with the ample sunshine of life on this island. Yeah, I tried to be clever and poetic there...not sure if it worked exactly but moving along now...
Rather than going in super chronological order like usual, I'm just gonna mention some highlights from the past couple-a weeks for you dears. It's another novel, so get ready for lotsa reading!
Firstly, A MANTA RAY SWAM 1.5 FEET UNDER ME. Yes, you heard me, a manta. Now, that's not what killed Steve Irwin, let me just clarify. That was a sting ray. Mantas are much cooler and aren't really stingy - at least I don't think so, but I'm no expert. So here's the story of that adventure, kids: one casual afternoon during our two-hour lunch period (yes, we have those) several of us were just chillin' on our favorite local dock (it's literally a 1-min walk from our house) when everyone from the dive shop comes out and looks to the south. Here I am thinking that they have a missing diver and we need to rescue them, so I ask them what's up. They apparently heard word that a manta was on the way. That's all we needed to hear before Abbey and I full-on sprinted into Yellow Sub (the dive shop), acquired masks and snorkels, and jumped into the water. Before I knew it, Abbey pointed to my left and the manta was making its majestic way toward me! I swear we locked eyes as it turned. Staying as still as possible and not even breathing, I floated motionless on the surface while the manta swam right under me. It was by far one of the most sublime moments of my life (that and the ostracods make the top of da list). After that amazingness, I tried to follow it from the surface but it was just too fast! And it was probably trying to get away from all of us humans on the surface surrounding it. Minor detail...
Just imagine this baby swimming under you. Yep.
Another fun thing that happened was our field trip to the Washington Slagbaai National Park. The national park takes up like the entire northern part of the island and is hilly (or mountainous as I like to call it), has tons of cacti, donkeys, lizzahds (how my Mom likes to pronounce it hehehe) and flamingos, and also lots of rocky coastline that is made up of old coral reefs. You can actually see the old corals embedded into the earth. Pretty cool indeed. We spent almost an entire day cruising along the rough terrain for a while then would turn up at a little spot near the shoreline, get out, take pictures, look over the edge of the cliff we were on, and then continue on our adventure. One scary thing we did was climb up to this thing called Seru Bentana, which means "Window to the sea" in Papiamentu. I was pretty frightened (shoutout to ma sis: Sticky, you know how to pronounce that one) when we got to the top and did not want to touch ANYONE for fear of losing my balance and tumbling to my doom. The view was incredible, though. On one side we could see the ocean and on the other the mountains and cacti of the national park. We also stopped at a beach to have lunch and jump off a 30-ft cliff. Casual. Except that was probably the scariest thing I have ever done. But I just HAD to, you know?
Entrance to the national park.
At Playa Chikitu. This isn't the beach where we had lunch, however. Check out the wind turbines in the background, too!
Driving through the park. I took this picture from the back of the divemobile, pictured below.
Our mode of transportation. Just imagine sitting in the back of that going over rocky terrain. Needless to say we went flying a couple of times and may have ran into some thorny acacias.
Another one of the places we stopped along our journey to take pictures.
"Window to the Sea" - From this angle, it doesn't look too high up, but it was. And we went and stood on top of that. Scary scary.
Looking out the window with Shelby and Jul.
A blau blau (it means "blue blue" in Papiamentu). I just love all of the different colors of this lizard.
Being a daredevil, no big deal. Pretty sure my heart stopped during that drop, though... (Photo credit: Devon Chalfant)
Last weekend (not like two days ago weekend but the weekend prior) I was able to go on a recreational dive on the eastern side of the island, just north of Lac Bay. A bunch of us piled into the dive van and headed over for an adventure. Some of the people we went with weren't too sure of the dive site but we went in anyway. I was kinda expecting to see like sharks and rays and lots of turtles (that's what I was told was near Lac), but I only saw one turtle. I was a little disappointed, but I did see lots of black durgons, a queen triggerfish, and tons of pretty corals. The corals were more diverse than at our usual dive site of Yellow Sub, and they were a combination of massive corals and soft gorgonians, making for a pretty dive. One of our friends we dove with caught 12 lionfish and was filleting them while we were on shore. That was pretty cool to watch - we were all just sitting watching him cut fish after fish.
Now, this past weekend was one full of earth love on behalf of Earth Day - Saturday we picked up trash from the sea and Sunday we picked it up from the shore. Saturday we did a clean-up dive with Dive Friends and Yellow Sub (our trusty dive shop). It was kinda tricky to dive searching for trash considering a lot of it was already incorporated into the benthos. Sponges and corals were chillin' on pieces of metal and glass so we obviously left those babies there. It was a little like a scavenger hunt and was kinda fun. That evening we went to a pot-luck BBQ at Yellow Sub. Shelby and I contributed fruit salad (yummy yummy) while other CIEE contributions included rice krispie treats and pasta salad (Mom, they put in feta cheese into theirs; I highly recommend it!). Sunday was our CIEE-organized Earth Day beach clean-up. Most of us wanted to organize a beach clean-up because there was so much trash on the southern and eastern shore of Bonaire. We did a lot of PR (Amelie and I were actually on the radio a couple of times!) and got about 20 people (I know, kind of a small number, but whatever) to come other than us from CIEE. We filled two dumpsters (yay!) but there was still an entire shoreline of trash. It was just an eyeopening experience because most of the trash was plastic bottles, plastic caps, and shoes. Yikes.
Everyone before the clean-up dive. Six of us from CIEE joined in the fun. This is the dock we always hang out on, too.
Aside from all those lovely adventures, we've gone on a couple of dives for our classes, but none were too exciting. We actually went on our last academic dive of the semester last Tuesday (sad times, my brother). Things are really finishing up around here. We finished our Independent Research papers, gave our final presentations to the public last week, and are all working to put our papers together into a student-designed journal. The journal is kept printed out all fancy at the research station and also available online so it's kind of a big deal. This week we have no classes really and are only working on putting together Physis (which is the title for the journal and Greek for allowing nature to heal itself). It takes a lot of work and patience to put it together and I know that after all of our hard work it's going to be really great! Mom, I put on my Patience Hat today and probably won't take it off until Friday.
Aw, look at us, all cleaned up and adult-looking. This is the gang before the second half of our presentations. It was a little weird to wear normal clothes, fancy shoes and actually put make-up on. (Photo credit: CIEE)
Anyway, with only two more weeks left here on this incredible island I've been trying to spend as much of my free time enjoying all Bonaire has to offer. I've been working on laying on the dock like all the time (that's actually what I've been doing with my time, not writing papers or presentations; I just made up all that stuff so you guys would think I'm busy) and having fun with all of my wonderful new friends. I would be lying if I said I wasn't looking forward to coming home (I had a dream last night about my mom, sister and dog sooo yeah), but I know I am going to miss it here. We've all shared so many pivotal experiences and grown as individuals that it'll be weird not seeing everyone 24/7.
Ok, that's it for dis post y'all. I'll probably have a final reflection post in two weeks, so stay tuned for that little ditty!
Until next time, sending lots and lots of love from the Caribbean,
Catalina
