If you have children or grandchildren, you’re familiar with this Disney song from the movie The Little Mermaid:

Under the sea, under the sea

Darling its better down where its wetter

Take it from me.

Up on the shore they work all day

Out in the sun they slave away

While we’re devoting full time to floating

Under the sea.

That’s how we felt on Friday, our final full day in Bonaire. We again rented a boat from Palm Boats – the same one, in fact, the “Mahi Mahi” – in order to go diving around Klein (ie., small) Bonaire, the uninhabited little island due west of Kralendijk.

The waters surrounding Bonaire and Klein Bonaire, from the high tide mark to a depth of 200 feet, are managed by STINAPA and protected as the Bonaire National Marine Park. And just like at Washington-Slagbaai N.P., there is a fee to enter the park for diving of any kind, but one fee covers both Washington-Slagbaai and the National Marine Park.

Anchoring is prohibited and all boats are required to tie up to the mooring buoys scattered around the perimeter of the islands. The moorings are first come, first served, with commercial dive boats having priority.

So, if you’re on a buoy and a dive boat comes along, they can make you leave. To avoid this happening to us, we headed straight for the main beach on Klein Bonaire in order to get in a little snorkeling there before anyone else arrived (bottom photo, above).

It was relatively shallow here with a sandy bottom, as you can see, below, as we first swam away from the boat.

[All of the following photos were taken with my iPhone Air which I was happy to discover is waterproof to at least a depth of 18 feet.]

It was a pleasant little reef, but not many fish here, probably because it’s heavily trafficked, being the main landing site for the water taxi from Kralendijk that brings cruise ship tourists to the little island.

Here’s Dale, surfacing to see if there any dive boats on the horizon.

These three fish – a Bar Jack (blue), a Spanish Hogfish (yellow) and an Atlantic Trumpetfish (vertical) – were engaged in a little dance. I watched them circle each other for about 5 minutes.

Water taxis and dive boats are arriving! Time to move! All aboard.

We continued around the island to the west, stopping at the outer limits of where we were allowed to go with the boat at Carl’s Hill dive site. Here’s an aerial view of the reef:

We slipped over the side of the boat into deeper water. Carl’s Hill has a sheer wall on its outer edge, starting at about 60 feet from shore and dropping rapidly from the reef in 20 feet of water.

We snorkeled back and forth and around the reef enjoying the hard corals. I wish I knew what kind this one was:

Dale spotted a garden of Elkhorn coral…

… and here’s a good example of a couple:

As we were swimming over this section of reef, she waved and pointed.

She had spotted a Hawksbill Turtle swimming along the bottom. I dove down to take a photo,…

…and followed the turtle back up to the surface where it took a breath and dove back down into deeper water.

Bonaire is deservedly famous for its shore diving. We enjoyed every minute in the water.

Before leaving Bonaire, we did stop in Kralendijk for an hour to stroll around and have a coffee (best iced coffee ever, by the way; the secret was using ice cream instead of milk). It’s a sleepy and typically touristy Caribbean town. Mainly appreciated by cruise ship tourists.

I’ve always loved the pastels of the Caribbean.

Apparently Von does too. That’s the resident cat at our rental house, come by begging for another handout.

We had an all-around great time. Bonaire has a little of everything for everybody. And it was nice to be back in the islands. Which reminds me of another song, this one by the Doobie Brothers and the url of my blog, Mamaloi:

Caribbean current, please take me,

I hear you callin’ me home!

Same time, different island, next year? We have the rest of the alphabet to get through.