Saturday, November 23, 2025
Last night we had dinner at a restaurant across the street from our hotel. It was supposed to be a relaxed, casual atmosphere. Before they seated us, they asked us if we had a reservation. Now listen, I can hardly be bothered to make a reservation when I’m at home, and somehow, you think I went on vacation, and got my wits about me to know where I wanted to eat before today!?
So, of course, the answer was no, but they were able to accommodate just fine. Why ask if you can seat me anyway? That’s my gripe at home too, so now that that ugliness is out of the way, I will say we had a lovely, yummy dinner served by a very fun local waitress.
I’m not sure we caught her name, but she taught us a few Papiamento phrases, and at the end of our meal she wanted us to walk to the bridge and get our gelato “pole pole” meaning slowly. Italian passeggiata style.
So that is what we did. Slow stroll to get gelato and then on to the Queen Emma bridge before heading back to go to bed.
Today we woke up to discover our terrace was quite wet. It rained really hard last night, and I heard the noise, but I didn’t know if it was wind or rain. Rain.
Today we have a date with the Pietermaai Dive Center, and we’re expected to show up at 8:30. Seems so late in comparison to the last few years, but I suppose it helps that they’re just across the street. We showed up at the appointed time, got our gear ready, and hopped on board the bus.
I wasn’t counting, but there were approximately 10 divers, with two divemasters and one divemaster-in-training. They split us up into two groups, and Nathan and I went with Divemaster Tim and divemaster-in-training Daan.
First things first, we set up our gear, only to discover they use bar to measure the pressure or air in the tank, and we only know psi. A quick lesson in the difference, and how to communicate our air, and we were good to go.
The first dive site was La Palapa, and we saw tons of turtles, two Ocean triggerfish, parrotfish, Sargent Majors, and Nathan saw a green morey eel, or at least his very long tail.
We stayed down for 65 minutes, surfaced, got back on the bus, and drove to Marie Pampoen.
Once we were all geared up, we got in the water, and started to descend. I had a few issues trying to equalize at about 30 feet, but worked through it, and we had a great dive. We saw a seahorse, pufferfish, flounder, scorpion fish, small white and grey eel, and so much more. We were down for another ~65 minutes.
As we were coming up to the surface towards the beach, we saw a man in the water, with an octopus on the end of his spear, and the octopus was clearly still alive, and mad, because it was inking. I saw it ink at least 3 times before we passed them and came up to the surface.
Once on the surface, Tim apologized that we had to see that, and he was quite irritated about what he’d seen. We got back on board the bus, cleaned all our gear at the dive shop, and spent the remainder of the afternoon on our terrace and in the pool reading.
It’s Sunday, and Sunday night’s Pizza Night, so that is where we are headed.
