Dancing down memory lane...

Yesterday my son Paul, his lady Sarah and my webmaster Patty drove Bonaire's northern road. We found the overlook to which I used to drive the Hotel Volkswagen (my camper van) after finishing the day's dives and putting the divers into the hotel. When I used to wake up in the mornings (1969-72) I would be surrounded by foraging goats, who watched attentively as I made my coffee. Here's the view:

After the drive, I went with them and Leslie Leaney of the Historical Diving Society to the cemetery. Leslie had tracked down the resting place of one of Hans Hass's divers:

The grave was untended, so Leslie cleaned it up as best he good and we took another picture:

Today he is going out to the small island of Klein Bonaire, looking for the camp site Hass used in 1939.

Between dives, there are always Iggy, Ziggy and the other professional beggars looking for handouts. The little guys are everywhere, and they love melon and watermelon!

I have to go South and see the sea-salt evaporation ponds with their flamingos, to see if they have changed at all. I suspect not. There is a quarter-million tons of salt down there in huge hills, gleaming in the sun. I may go home and dig out the photos from the old days for comparison.

More to come as the adventure continues!

How about some sharks?...

I was putting some great white footage on my Facebook page and realized that the clips would make a change of pace from the many parks I've photographed lately. In these short sequences, my buddy Andrew Fox was shooting over my shoulder with his video camera.

That clip above is how we get those nice facial portraits of the sharks. Just open the door and offer them your body. Their ccuriosity will bring them clise, and your strobe lights them up. Easy.

Sometimes, offering them your body has unexpected results. Curly here, a curious shark, followed me practically right in through the cage door. That wouldn't be smart, because with no reverse gear, Curly would go berserk trying to escape. So, I helped her miss the opening.