Bon tardi!

That’s “good afternoon” in Papiamentu. It’s around 5 PM, and the residence hall is relatively quiet as the heat of the late afternoon sedates everyone. The almost three weeks since I last posted a blog entry have passed in a blur. I’ve quickly adjusted to life here on Bonaire, mainly because of the amazing people with whom I get to share this experience. Though the transition was easy, the days here are long. During the week we have classes, activities, or dives from 8:30 AM to 5:30 PM with an hour-long break for lunch.

After dinner we all spend time researching information for our independent research projects, which we’ll be starting soon, or completing homework assignments. Not that we don’t have time for anything else—I’ve watched more movies in three weeks here than in the three months I was home for the summer. We have ridden our bicycles four miles to Oil Slick, a popular dive site where we snorkeled after jumping off the low cliffs along the shore. And just around the corner from our residence hall is a pier that we are allowed to use. We’ve spent many nights there: conversing, stargazing, and midnight-swimming.

This past week has been quite different from the first two because it served the week for “dive bootcamp.” In the past five days I’ve learned how to perform CPR, use an AED, administer first aid, rescue an unconscious diver underwater, search for missing persons or objects underwater, and all related skills that are needed to become a proficient rescue diver and emergency first responder. It has been tiring and tedious, and our instructors got a little too much enjoyment out of turning off my air, flooding my mask, and unstrapping my tank at the bottom (all at the same time). It was early in the week that I reached 24 hours of combined time spent underwater. More than a day of my life has been spent beneath the waves. That’s pretty cool.

Breaking up the sameness of the barefoot classroom and providing a break from diving, we’ve gone on a few field trips around the island already. A week and a half ago, we drove south down the coast to the Cargill Salt Company. There we learned about the history of salt as an economic engine on Bonaire and the process by which salt is harvested here. We toured the facilities, which uses the sun to evaporate sea water, leaving behind pure sodium chloride. Cargill’s land includes a RAMSAR site—a wetland that has been recognized for its ecological significant and adequately protected—that offers shelter for thousands of flamingos that breed on Bonaire. When we were there a flock of juvenile flamingos, still colored gray in their first few years, were roaming the salt pans.

Our second field trip had us riding around the east side of the island in the backs of landrovers. We stopped first at a lighthouse and nearby abandoned lighthouse keeper’s house. The land here is comprised of fossilized corals and ancient volcanic rock that formed Bonaire as it rose out of the sea some 70 million years ago. The prevailing winds strike the east side of the island here, making the sea violent and unpredictable.

After exploring the lighthouse we rode north to a cave that was used by the Amerindians who inhabited the island before the Spaniards arrived in the early 1500s. The cave we visited is on ground level but extends a few hundred feet into the limestone. Stalactites are still dripping from the ceiling and bats whirred above our heads as we walked deeper into the cave, flashlights the only light guiding us. Inside the cave are pictographs left by the Amerindians. They depict such information as birth records and lunar cycles. In the far reaches of the cave is a small hole in the rock, which we crawled through to find ourselves in a small room, with bats that got within a foot of our faces and a temperature increase that had us dripping sweat within a minute.

The rest of my time here has been spent doing the types of things I would do were I still at home: studying, procrastinating, napping (there’s always time), and talking with friends. Last night everyone at CIEE gathered at a nearby park for a game of staff vs. student volleyball and this morning some of us woke up at 7:00 AM to take part in a beach cleanup effort on the island. It was unbelievable to witness the expanse of trash that covers the windward side of Bonaire. The household brands we know well were advertising all along the coastline—Kraft, Coca-Cola, Avon. Plastic combined with sand to make a multicolored mixture that in no way resembles the kind of beach where someone would enjoy vacationing. All together, the 15 of us who took part collected close to 550 pounds of plastic, which we brought to a collection facility to be recycled.

That just about brings us up to the present. Again, if you’re interested in receiving notifications every time I update my blog, you can sign up via email in the sidebar on the left side of this page.

Until next time!