This would be our second dive out of the community truck. What’s a “community truck”, you ask? Some generous soul has agreed to rent an old truck, affectionately “the rust bucket”, to the cruising community at large. So, every so often, a lucky few cruisers get access to a set of wheels and a flat bed with only a few holes in it, which is about the perfect setup for the Island of the Accessible Shore Dive.
Salt Pier is so named because it’s the site where salt, Bonaire’s major export, is loaded onto massive ships. (The site is closed when a ship is present, for safety). It’s one of the most visited sites on Bonaire, likely because it’s unlike most other dives on the island. This is the place to come to see frogfish (though, as in Frederiksted, we were not so lucky). We did see big schools congregating around the pillars, a number of scorpion fish, and a very active white spotted eel.
Maybe it was the comparison with Frederiksted, but we were nonplussed by this dive. This is the only site on the island where we’ve found garbage. The pillars are neat, but the coral isn’t as healthy as we’ve seen in other sites. Still a good dive; we haven’t had a bad dive yet. But our verdict was that it’s overrated; the reefs are better.
I ran across that black and white snake in Thailand.