The plan was to sleep in, but, as three of the four people in our room were up before 7am, things got started pretty early for day one of legitimate vacation. Up and at’em we were!

We headed to breakfast at the Tipsy Seagull and enjoyed our first morning in beautiful Bonaire. There’s just something entirely relaxing about eating breakfast with the sound of waves crashing just over the breakwall…

Top priority of the morning was getting weights from the dive shop so that we’d be ready for two weeks of diving.  We headed to the house reef (18th Palm – Dive Site #35) to do a quick weight check and then our first dive since returning to Bonaire.

The water was 80* and despite some surge and wave action impairing visibility, it was a great dive!  We saw a ton of parrotfish, a sharptail eel and a sand diver during our first dive.

After the dive, and of course, some fucking around, we headed back to the Tipsy Seagull for some lunch.  After lunch, the guys decided to do another dive at the house reef while the girls went for a snorkel on the house reef to check out some ear issues.

The snorkel was good and it’s still incredible to me how much sealife there is in 2 – 4 feet of water, just a few feet from where we sit to eat our meals at the resort.  During our snorkel, we saw some needlefish and a school of blue tang.  I am really happy to say that I snorkeled, in January, in only a rashguard and leggings!  I LOVE IT!  The guys headed back in for another dive while the girls took the rental truck and headed to the grocery store for a few necessities, including gummy bears and gummy crocodiles.  I’m still not sure what the rental car company was thinking giving us a brand new rental truck (not even 15,000 miles on it) with leather seats, but, we’ll do our best not to ruin the thing before we return it.  (I heard there’s a $250 fee if they have to clean sand out of the rental truck.  I’m OBVIOUSLY in the wrong business!)  The guys got back from their dive in perfect time to watch a perfectly unobstructed sunset on the point and it was BEAUTIFUL! We watched intently for the green flash, but, no such luck today.

After some dinner, the guys headed back in the water for their first night dive of the year while we headed back to wash off all the salt.

Our first full day one in Bonaire was everything we needed it to be – relaxing with plenty of opportunities for adventure.