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         The life and times of Mark and Paula Persons		        Member of the
      Pavek Museum
 Gilbert lake Association
 
Sunday, February 10, 2019:  Deep Diver Paula returned from a week in Bonaire, an island off the coast of Venezuela.
Just twelve degrees above the equator, Bonaire is in the tropical zone.  She enjoyed great weather there for a week.
 
This is an anchor on the reef just off the front of Captain Don's Habitat where we stayed. Leslie was doing reef surveys throughout the week of diving.
 

Longnose Seahorse.
 

             A spotted scorpionfish hiding on the ocean floor.
 

A Porcupinefish
 

                          School of Yellowtail Snappers
 

An octopus actually moving during the day.
 

                                A French Angelfish.
 

The two dive masters of the week, Geertje and Roberto.

 

 Morning guests, iguanas joined the divers each morning
at breakfast.
 

A barred hamlet
 

                                          A giant anenomie
 
A pod of dolphins came through.  They counted 35.  The dive masters mentioned this happens in the shallows of
Bonaire about once a year.
 

A Lionfish
 

                                          A Yellow Trumpetfish
 

Note the fish checking out the sharptail eel.
 

                          The only turtle seen all week.
 
Back on dry land, there was this donkey that decided to visit with Paula through a car window.
 
The divers Paula took the trip with from Minneapolis.
 
Then it was was time to bid farewell to warm balmy weather and return to a cold Minnesota winter.
 
Email messages from Paula while she was on the trip:

February 2, 2019:  Arrived and just finished dinner.  Had a nice smoked salmon pasta.  Great flight, good group of people.  Nice room.  Orientation at 9 in the morning and then hopefully at least two dives.  Headed for bed.  Been a long day.

February 3, 2019: Completed two great dives today.  Seeing very unusual, fish I have not seen before.  Leg works just fine. Dive sites today were Knife and Small Wall.  This morning didn't take my camera because it was check out diving.  Trumpetfish are very plentiful here.  Saw a rather rare burr fish.  Afternoon dive may have gotten a good picture of a spotted moray.  Saw some rally unusual eels and worms.  Missed the seahorse.  Having a great time.

Feb 5, 2019:  Two dives down.  Having lunch and doing a shore dive this afternoon.  Will go right outside our resort.  Did that yesterday and had an excellent dive.  Will go the opposite way on today's dive.  Just taking a short rest to off gas and will head out about 3:00.  Had a barbeque buffet last evening at the resort.  Service here is island style, couple hours for dinner.  The 89 degree weather has been nice.  Forgot how much fun ocean diving is.  Good diving but nothing spectacular yet.  Did see two lobsters this morning both on the second dive.  Lots of trumpet fish.

February 6, 2019:  Just returned from dinner.  Went to a Thai Indonesian place.  Food I have never had before and it was very good.  Other than the extremely hot red pepper.  Cleaned out my sinuses right off the bat.  But had ice cream later on the way back to the car.  Had great afternoon dive saw a couple eels swimming in the water.

February 8, 2019:  Got up for a 6:00 AM dive this morning.  Great seeing how the reef fish wake up.  Had breakfast and went out for an 82 minute dive.  Only did one shore dive away from the resort.  Did the rest of the shore dives in the afternoon and today's right off from our room.  Beautiful reef.  Today after our two dives went out and checked out a flamingo sanctuary, then off to the salt mines where they have the slave huts, then onto the donkey sanctuary.  Did all that in four hours.  We made tracks.  Took lots of photos today and plan to get a group shot tomorrow.  Heading out for a group dinner this evening.  Had Wahoo for dinner last night.  Great group of divers.  Deep Diver Paula.
Quote of the day:    Paula is amazing.   Mark    < Back to previous story Ahead to next story >

Questions, Comments?  Email Mark Persons  teki@mwpersons.com

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page last edited 02/25/2019