As I was trying to stay focused during finals week last semester, I was busy thinking about the trip I was about to embark on. The day after I finished my last test, my parents and I left Omaha early in the morning to escape the cold and our normal lives to go to Bonaire, a tiny island in the Caribbean (look it up).

We didn’t go to end hunger or save orphans; we went purely for enjoyment in the form of scuba diving. My dad has been scuba diving for 40 years, I have been at it for eight and my mom just got certified this summer. Our trip was to celebrate her getting her certification and my approaching graduation.

Scuba diving is one of the coolest, most relaxing things to do. When I’m in the water, I forget everything. Except for my air bubbles, it is completely silent under the water. Once in a while I stop breathing so I can listen to the sea. Most of the fish swim away when I get close to them, but others look right at you as if they’re saying, “What kind of fish are you?” or something along those lines.

Everything is absolutely beautiful underwater. Not one coral is the same, and there are more fish swimming around than there are cows in Nebraska. We usually stayed within 60 feet deep, but since the water is so clear, it felt as though we were only in 20 feet.

The coral mountains eventually sloped into the deep blue. The bottom didn’t look far down, but I knew it was more than 100 feet. The underwater tour guide (aka the divemaster) always said to look out across the deep water to see dolphins, which I never did, but I often saw sea turtles.

When we weren’t scuba diving, we were exploring the island. It was very safe, so we were able to travel anywhere we wanted to in our rented jeep. We had a few minor mishaps where we found ourselves in the middle of nowhere, but that just gave us a chance to see the island even more.

We visited a small village called Rincon. This was where Spanish immigrants first built their settlement in the 1500s. It was very small and rundown, and its main attraction was a whiskey brewery. We just drove through, but of course we got lost inside the village. We drove around in circles a few times, until I suggested we stop so my dad could look at the map I was trying to make sense of.

As we were stopped, an old man carrying a sack of groceries came over to our truck. My mom said I should roll up the window, and my dad was about to drive away, but he looked harmless. He had kind, watery eyes and he was approaching us with a toothless smile.

I smiled back at the old man and asked him how to get back to the village we were staying at. There was an obvious language barrier, but we had one word in common, Kralendijk, which is where we were headed. He pointed us in the right direction, and said a few more things, to which I could only reply with a smile.

I will never forget the old man, the other divers and their family members and the waiters and bartenders that I made friends with while we were there. I think one of the best things about traveling is the people you meet. Traveling makes me realize there is so much I don’t know and there is so much more to see. I gain a new perspective of the world every new adventure.