I have one more flamingo in my passport and one more plastic medallion on my BCD. Another trip to Bonaire is over. I have now logger 75 dives on the reefs surrounding Bonaire and Klein Bonaire. I made 28 dives on this trip and spent 26 hours and 21 minutes in the crystal clear waters. (I would have had 30 dives but we got a little lazy after dinner and skipped the night dives two nights we were there.

This was my first trip to Bonaire since the storm, Lenny, sent huge waves that hit the island from the northwest and damaged many of the coral reefs and seaside structures. I was anxious to see if my favorite place to dive had been changed dramatically.

Our first day dives were at Windsock and Alice in Wonderland. I experienced two emotions pulling me in opposite directions. At times I wanted to cry when I saw the damage Lenny had done to the reef but that sadness would quickly be overwhelmed by the awesome underwater seascapes of massive gardens of coral filled with abundant fish and sea creatures.

The flat shallows that we swam over going to and returning from the wall were the first changes that were evident. I remembered how the areas of white sand used to be scattered with fire coral, staghorn, elkhorn, and brain coral with various soft types of soft coral and sea urchins sprinkled in for visual effect. Small fish life was plentiful. It made the swim out and back and safety stops very entertaining.

Now the area was a flat, barren, white sandy bottom with areas of broken, dead staghorn coral.

Once we dropped down over the wall, the still healthy reef was littered with lumber, tires, metal posts and other debris from seaside structures that had been destroyed and drug into the sea by the crashing waves. To think that this protected marine park was once a healthy pristine underwater paradise and now parts of it were littered with debris and leveled, was a very depressing feeling that made me want to cry.

As I swam along the wall, I was overwhelmed by the beauty, diversity and abundance of the coral that remained on the wall. Plentiful fish and sea creatures kept pulling my eyes from one spot to another. I was never able to watch one as long as I would like because my attention would quickly be distracted by something even more appealing or mystifying. There was so much to see that my senses could only take in a small amount of it. Eels, shrimp, sponges, lobster, squid as well as almost every type and color of fish and coral that were so thick, it was hard to see any sand between them. Then I looked to my left and the garden eels over 70 feet below me as they poked their little heads up out of the sandy bottom to eat.