Well bubblebrain, I see you're back. How was your trip?
Fan-freaking-tastic.
Where did you go?
I went to Bonaire for a week of SCUBA diving and I stayed here. This resort is fully accessable. It has handicapped rooms with roll in showers. There are wheelchair ramps everywhere. I was amazed at what an incredible job they have done.
How was your flight?
We went via Air Jamaica. We stopped in Montego Bay going down and coming back. Unlike our trip to Roatan last year, we didn't have a long layover. From Atlanta to Jamaica is about 2.5 hours and from Jamaica to Bonaire is about 2 hours.
Where is Bonaire?
Bonaire is an island in the Netherlands Antilles and is in the Caribbean just north of Venezuela. What amazed me, besides the resort's setup for cripples was how well the town was set up. There were curb cuts galore for wheelchairs to get on and off the sidewalks. Most of the restaurants had ramps. The resort was about a quarter of a mile from town and there were lots of restaurants with good food. More about that later. Also since this was the Netherlands Antilles there were a lot of Dutch tourists. Lots of blondes.
How was the diving?
Ah! The diving! It was great. We got to the resort on Saturday and in the afternoon we met with the guy in charge of the dive operation who gave us an orientation.
On Sunday we did an orientation dive off the pier to check out our equipment and get our buoyancy straight. This was my first dive in saltwater with my new BCD (buoyancy control device for you non-divers). Since this BCD has an integrated weight system, I no longer have to wear a weight belt, but I do have to determine how much weight I need and where to position it in the BCD. I wound up needing 14 pounds.
Sunday afternoon we went on a one tank boat dive. For the rest of the week the schedule would be a two tank boat dive in the morning and a one tank boat dive in the afternoon. Anyone who read about my trip to Roatan last year may remember I did not get my buoyancy straight until almost the end of my trip. This time I had it from day 1.
You called this a crip trip. How many gimps were there?
Counting myself, there were four paraplegics:
Nick - A young man from West Virginia. He was on the Roatan trip and also went skiing on the Shepherd Center Ski Crip Trip. His father and brother came along.
Jerry - A guy about my age from outside of Atlanta. His wife came along. She was the only non-diver on the trip.
Parnell - A big black dude from Atlanta. He is a world class weight lifter.
Me - Y'all know about me; a grouchy asshole from Atlanta. Of the paras I'm the only one that is incomplete (that means I am not totally paralyzed below my level of injury)
We also had Ray, who is brain damaged. He injured himself skydiving. He hit the ground at 60 mph and lived to tell about it. His father came along.
The rest of the crew was Bert Quist, who owns Divers@Sea, the diveshop that sets up these trips; Angie Rowe, the recreational therapist at Shepherd Center who goes along to make sure nothing happens to us crips; her husband Jason;
Bert's friend Graham; Charlie, my roommate on the Roatan trip; and Jeffrey, a newly certified rescue diver.
All the able bodied people were just fantastic to dive with. They think nothing of helping out on the boat and in the water. Getting crips in and out of the water takes an extra effort and lots of patience.
How many dives did you do?
I did a total of 17 dives. One of them was a night dive. It was my first time diving at night. Some of you may want to know some of the sites I dove at. I should have written them down so I could add comments when I download the dives from my dive computer to my PC, but I didn't. Suffice it to say that all the sites were excellent. At all the sites but one, we were the only dive boat there. The visibility was great. There were more fish on this reef than were at Roatan. Roatan was mainly a wall. Bonaire is a sloping reef. Most of the dives were a lot shallower. I never went deeper than 65 feet and most of the time I didn't go any deeper than 45 feet. That meant a much longer bottom time.
This was very enjoyable diving since my buoyancy control is becoming second nature and since I'm more relaxed, my air consumption is dropping.
Any pictures?
I didn't take any, but Bert and Graham did, and I imagine Bert will post them on the OFOTO site like he did last year. I will probably either download some or link to them when he gets them up. Both Bert and Graham are excellent underwater photographers.
On our last night in Bonaire, we went to an Italian restaurant named Capriccio. I had asked to see the wine list and it was huge. As the owner was taking my order I complimented her on her wine list, especially her selection of Barolo's and Barbaresco's. She told me she had spent a year in the piedmont region of Italy. I eventually ordered a chianti to go with my lasagna.
All week Bert had been talking about all the grappa's this restaurant had. For those of you who don't know, grappa is Italian white lightning. The Italians take the leftovers from the wine pressing and distill them to make grappa. Some grappa tastes like kerosene. A fine example of that is Grappa Giulia, which seems to be the most common grappa you find in liquor stores. I don't drink that shit.
I told the owner that I had heard that they had really good grappa and asked to see her grappa list. She asked me to trust her and she would bring me sumpin' that I would like. She brought out her favorite and poured me a glass. After tasting it and remarking on its quality, I watched her top off my glass. When the bill came, it was not on it. She had given me the grappa for free! What a nice lady. The lasagna, by the way, was excellent. It was northern Italian lasagna. It had a white sauce. To my sister: It was the same white sauce we use on our canneloni.
So, that's my trip. Look for photos and stuff at a later date.
Posted by denny at October 6, 2003 09:14 PM