March 13, 2020
After waking up to the beautiful Bonfire ocean this morning, we ate a delicious breakfast and traveled to one of the more famous dive spots on the island, Hilma Hooker. This is a very unique dive due to a massive drug ship that sank there long ago. When we arrived, everyone geared up and entered the water through a point that wasn’t too treacherous. Then we swam out to the wreck, and began to descend. Immediately problems began to arise.
First, a few divers were having trouble equalizing their ears as we headed down to the ship, while others were descending too fast. As our adult leaders signaled for us to go up and wait for the problems to be resolved, some were too far to notice or were not attentive to their commands. Unfortunately, due to these reasons, we had to end the dive after a few minutes and did not get to explore the wreck. From this experience, I feel like we learned a lot as a group. We realized the importance of staying close together on our dives, as well as quick response and attentiveness to our instructors for our safety. We definitely became better divers from this experience and will be able to benefit from our gained knowledge a lot in the future. After ending the dive, we packed up and headed back to Buddy Dive Resort for a little rest. After about an hour, we decided to head out for a quick dive right outside on Buddy’s Reef. While we have dived here a lot throughout the trip, I have found it extremely interesting each time and have always had a great time. On this dive, we headed the opposite direction that we usually travel to a miniature wreck a little ways down the reef. After reaching it and enjoying the trip there, we explored and observed the sunken boat for a while.
My favorite thing to do underwater is simply to seek out little caves and such that hold interesting creatures and corals. Witnessing the ever-complex world of marine life has always amazed me throughout my entire life, and now being able to see everything close up is fascinating. Seeing complex, unique animals underwater is one of my favorite things.
After the dive, we rested for a little more, and headed out to explore downtown Bonaire for a little while. The buildings, streets, cars, and shops are extremely unique and interesting. We explored the shops and main streets of the town for around an hour, and some of us got some delicious ice cream which was quite nice with the very warm weather. The area we investigated had a very cool feel that everyone enjoyed a lot. After that, we went to a downtown art gallery and talked to a local artist about her story and how the ocean (specifically diving) influenced her, as well as her career. It was very special to hear from someone with such an interesting profession that they were very passionate about. Some of us even purchased her art for loved ones back at home.
Finally, we headed back to Buddy Dive and did a watercolor activity guided by Madeline K. ‘21. We all chose something that has been meaningful to us throughout the trip and drew it using watercolor pencils. This was a lot of fun and was a great bonding time for the entire group. Personally, this day was probably my favourite out of all the great ones so far, and I greatly look forward to the concluding activities of our trip.
Click here to view all of the 2020 ECS blogs.
