Today after breakfast we piled our gear in the pickup, went to the drive thru for tanks and then off to the site we wanted to visit first the 235' wreck of the Hilma Hooker, The ships final journey was smuggling 25,000# of marijuana and once seized she sank before being reclaimed by its owner. We found the dive site easily enough thanks to the free maps available all over Bonaire and the bright yellow rock by the road that marks dive sites all over the island. We geared up and waded thru the shallows of coral rubble and drop offs which can be a bit tricky. we both had brought our gloves on this, the only site in Bonaire that they are allowed on, all other sites prohibit gloves to discourage contact with the coral.

We took a bearing on the buoy and started to swim out, we dropped down to the reef before reaching the buoy marking the wreck and started down the drop off, I was trying to figure out where the wreck was, it was supposed to be right in front of us when I realized that the dark area in front of me wasn't deep water, it was the hull of the ship! we turned toward the stern looking for the propeller and found it quickly. I had decided not to bring my camera rig until I figured out the entries and exits but Dan had his $14.95 35mm camera and got a few snaps of the Hilma.

Meet Larry
For our next dive we chose Larry's Lair just to the South of the Hilma Hooker. We waded in and donned our fins and started to swim out to the reef. Within 60 seconds I saw a large Barracuda headed directly towards us. He came right up to me and checked me out. This was the biggest Barracuda I have ever seen, at this point I was guessing 5' or so. He swam around me a few times and then took up trailing just behind me. I kept and eye on him and after a few minutes he was swimming only inches behind my fin tips. I rolled on to my back to look at him and he moved up and nudged one of my fin tips with his nose. I didn't like that so I kicked at him and he backed off for a minute or so and then came right back up to my fins and bumped them a little harder. after 2-3 more repetitions each time using more of the top of his head I had, had enough and I turned back towards him and he swam off and past me to Dan. Once he got up to Dan he swam beside him for a minute and I was able to see how big he was, swimming only 6-8 feet in front of me and just below, pacing Dan just arms length or less to his left I was able to see he was every bit as long as Dan was tall (6'). Then the fish dropped back behind Dan and started the same routine with his fins. At this point in 20' of water and about 10 minutes in to the dive  we stopped and the Barracuda began to circle us and continue to bump our fins. We agreed to end the dive and started back to shore, we never even made it to the reef. The big fish stayed right with us all the way to the shore. I was literally in water so shallow that face down my belly was touching sand and my head almost out of the water the fish stayed right with us. Dan had his fins off and was on shore a few feet away and I just didn't want to loose track of the fish when I stood up so I scrambled up on to the low shelf with only about 6" or water. I turned and looked at the water just a foot deep, just beyond my fins and could see that fish just hanging there. I removed my fins and got to my feet and walked back to the truck along the shelf, with the fish we had now dubbed Larry following us until we turned our attention to the truck and lost track of him.