(Before we get into our discussion about life under the sea, the Captain made an announcement in our cabin this morning. 11:30 am to be precise. When that happens, you know he is trying to reach out to everyone on the ship even if you happen to be in the shower. His talk is about the adverse weather we are currently experiencing and will be as well. I stand corrected, we are not sailing at 19 knots. It’s more like 17 knots. The winds are 45 knots. Really rough swells. As I type this, we just hit a huge swell and felt a huge shudder. Hubby said that might have been a 15 foot swell we hit. I am sitting on the floor in front our glass balcony door with the curtains wide open. The sun is out on our side of the balcony, port side. I tried to go out on our balcony, but my hair starts flying into knots that I have a difficult time combing out later. So I safely sit inside working on my tan and passing along important information to you on our blog.
Oh yes, back to the Captain’s announcement. Adverse weather, right. The current condition does not allow us to go faster than 17 knots. We will be experiencing this for the next 10 hours. So much for Formal Night tonight and no high heels. I have a funny feeling that it will get a bit worse before it gets better. As we are traveling in slow mode, this will affect our day in port tomorrow. We are suppose to be in Costa Maya from 7am-5pm. Looks like the really nice Captain will adjust our time. Arrive late and leave late. Wahoooo!
The Captain stressed that when moving about the ship to hold onto railings. Be careful when opening and shutting doors. Enjoy our day!
I wanted to add as I am sitting on our cabin floor, my rear end can feel the tenders below us banging against the railings. Our cabin is creaking and the curtains are swaying back and forth. Got to love this and we didn’t have to pay extra for this! )
Okie dokie, back to my post on Bonaire.
I’ve already mentioned that Bonaire is a National Marine Park. That includes the entire coast of Bonaire including Klein Bonaire and Lac. That’s about 6,700 acres. It is home to endangered sea turtles, conch, and sharks as well as coral reef, sea grass, and mangroves. They are part of a system that protects the marine environment while maximizing appropriate levels of recreation and commercial use. Marine park staff maintain around 100 public moorings, conduct scientific research, provide information to users, monitor human and natural impact and enforce the park’s laws and regulations.
Bonaire and Klein Bonaire are surrounded by an almost continuous fringing reef. A shallow and narrow terrace slopes down gently from the shoreline to a depth of 30 feet and then drops, typically at an angle of 45 degrees, to depths of 130 feet. There are also some vertical walls and double reef formations.
With GoPro in hand, we head out into the clear blue water. Here I find a big fish:
I suppose this constitutes a gentle 45 degree slope into the dark depths of the ocean:
I truly love my big fish! He’s such an adventurer and my personal lifeguard:
Blue Tang, Parrot fish, and Grunts. It was cool watching the Parrot fish eat the coral. They have some really big teeth:
More Blue Tang:
Can you find the Bluehead Wrasse?
I pop my head out of the water to see how far we’ve snorkeled. We’ve cover quite a bit of distance:
The fish were everywhere. I figured out a trick here. If I stay quiet and in one place, the fish would eventually come closer and swim by me.
I was following this Damselfish. It is quite small and very quick:
Beautiful beach area at Plaza Resort:
Hubby and I spent a total of 2 hours snorkeling. We even had a kayak encounter. I took a video of kayakers who were heading in our direction. It was like the parting of the sea only it was parting of the kayakers.
All of the underwater pictures were taken with a GoPro Hero 3+. I still need to make some adjustments while in camera mode. Hubby was using his new GoPro Hero 5 and took lots of videos both in and out of the water.
Here we are leaving Bonaire and sailing past Plaza Resort Bonaire:
No comments:
Post a Comment