Bonaire

Two weeks of shore diving on Bonaire, staying at Buddy Dive, where you load the truck with tanks, drive to a yellow-painted stone at the roadside and walk in. Thirty-three dives, up to four a day, in 27–30 °C water. The longest ran to 102 minutes, the longest dive I’ve done.

The reefs start right at the shore and drop away down a gentle slope. Caribbean reef squid were the stars: hovering over the reef in pairs and threes, watching us as closely as we watched them. Down on the bottom there were peacock flounders with their blue-ringed spots, garden eels standing up out of the sand, a spiny lobster, an arrow crab, a seahorse among the sponges and a scorpionfish all but invisible on the rock. On the coral heads were blennies peering out of their holes, juvenile trunkfish and a French angelfish, and Christmas tree worms everywhere.

There was more than reef, too. A coral nursery hung coral fragments from its branches to grow on for replanting. We dived among the pilings of the Salt Pier, every one covered in life, and the Hilma Hooker, a cargo ship that sank in 1984 after being impounded with a hold full of marijuana. She now lies on her side in 30 m, her propeller encrusted with coral. After a night dive the sky was clear enough for the Milky Way.