Bonaire

Bonaire is a dive paradise for people that are independent. The recipe for fun is pretty simple: choose a dive resort, rent a pickup truck and pick your shore dives. At any time (day or night), load your gear into the pickup truck, get air tanks from the drive though and then go start exploring. Please remember to bring nothing else and leave all the windows open when parking. Just to be clear: We had never anything stolen and we felt absolutely safe.

The diversity of sea life is amazing. Those who seek, will find.

Spotted Moray Eel

Curious Cuttlefish 

Anemone Shrimp

Spotted Eagle Ray

Large Barracuda

Coral Crab

Each dive site is nicely marked and easy to spot. Park you car and leave all the windows open. After getting ready, just walk down to the beach and enjoy your dive. We found a portable shower to but on the roof of the car, so that when we came out we could rinse off the salt water. The water was nice and warm.

The island has a history of slaves working here under very primitive conditions. The red as well as the  white slave huts would tell you all about it. They can be found at the Southern end of the island where the salt is still being mined.

Instead of eating at the Buddy Dive Resort, we ventured out to Kralendijk and found plenty of great restaurants.

Before flying back home, I can highly recommend visiting Washington-Slagbaai National Park. There is plenty of beaches and cacti to explore. The East Side has blow holes to offer and is pretty wild and it looks like you're on a different planet.

Fiji

We are very excited to go back to Fiji and spend a week on the Nai'a, Since there is a direct flight from LAX, it's not really a big deal. It makes up for one of the best diving locations on this planet.

Even though the visibility was not as great as it was last year we got some good shots, such as from the lion fish. Looking up from the view finder after taking the image, I realized that it was right in front of me, starring back at me and not retreating even one inch.

One dive that I missed last time was Kansas and this time I paid attention and took the right turn and it was absolutely great. Now, I even know why this dive is called Kansas.

Live on board was great and there was even video photographer Nick Hope on board, who documented all the dives. This video from BubbleVision has footage from our trip.

It is one of the many traditions of Fiji, as a welcome of other important occasions to partake in a traditional kava ceremony and who would refuse such an invitation, where the entire crew sings local folklore and we all drank freshly made Kava, a brownish liquid - the kava gold.

Fiji

It's not Fuji apples or Mt. Fuji in Japan. No, Fiji is an island country and part of Oceania in the South Pacific. 

We read all about Fiji being the soft coral capital of the world and this time we wanted to go all out and stay on a live-aboard to get the most out of the day. The ship we chose is the Nai'a, which means dolphin in Fijian.

Staying on a boat means that you can dive up to 5 times a day and between eating and sleeping it's the only activity. We took full advantage of that, since diving was the main reason why we picked a live-aboard. The crew operated two skiffs that dropped us off on the dive spot and picked us up when we were done. It is such a convenient way.

We were fortunate enough to have the owner Rob Barrel among the other guests. The crew was very accommodating and we felt at home right away. They did a fantastic job making us feel welcomed and comfortable.

The soft coral are just fantastic when they are open.

Since Fiji is in a different part of the world (at least for us) we saw creatures that were new to us, like this Blue Ribbon Eel.

This Anemone fish was "defending" its anemone or was it hiding in there.

The water is deep blue with fantastic visibility and provides a sense of mystery, since the depthless is lost and you just don't know what is hiding in the unknown.

On kava night, the crew invites everyone to participate in a Fijian Kava ceremony an the dive deck. The bowl with freshly made kava is passed to each person. When the kava comes to you, it's etiquette to follow these steps:

1. Clap your hands once with a cupped hand making a hollow sound
2. Yell: Bula!
3. Drink in one gulp
4. Clap three times with hands cupped to make that hollow sound again

One night we went out and visited a local village where we were we dropped off some needed school material such as pens, notepads etc.

The village also invited us to their kava ceremony. 

We had a great time and on the way back to the US, I was able to celebrate my birthday twice, after we crossed the dateline and my birthday started all over again. Did that just make me one year older?

Yap

Yap has quite a history and it's not just from WWII. This island group located in the Western Pacific is also know for its stone money, most of which came from Palau, which is almost 300 miles away with no landmarks. Indigenous people took on this treacherous journey on canoes and brought over those carved disks of stone The local traditions are strong compared to other states in Micronesia. 

For an entire week we stayed at the Traders Ridge Resort and we were the only guests. The staff was absolutely phenomenal and they told us that most of the local builders were actually still working here in an obviously different capacity. 

On one of our dive trips we anchored at the sea floor and waited to see 2 magnificent manta rays swim right over us. What a sight, and I didn't realize how huge they were.

One day, the dive master asked us if we were up to a night dive to check out Mandarin fish. We missed them on our trip to Palau and we excitedly got ready. We took the boat to a shallow reef with mostly staghorn coral still within sight of the shoreline. It turns out that the Mandarin fish were mating at dusk and we were invited to witness this extraordinary "ceremony".

It was not easy to take pictures since there finger-sized fish were moving from one branch to another and were never still. The colors were so bright that it almost looks unreal.

To explore the culture and sites above water, we hooked up with a local tour guide, who was familiar with local customs, e.g. that you need to carry a branch when walking from one village to another as a sign of peace. He organized for us a visit to a men's house.

In another village the chief and his son (who had a cell phone) showed us how they build a canoe. The son payed a lot of attention to what his father had to say about his culture. This is the only way customs will survive from one to the next generation. The chief allowed us the get a citrus fruit from a tree Ging-Gong. This was the perfect opportunity to part from my original Swiss Army knife that I handed over to a stunned chief.