Harbour Village Marina
Kralendijk,
Bonaire
12.09.849N
68.17.088W

What a miserable night. We are facing away from the wind, so all night waves slapped again our transom and dock pilings and the wind generators in the area seemed to buzz right in my ear. I finally got up to sleep in the salon but it was hotter in there. I’m going to have to be careful not to be cranky all day.

First thing this morning, Nicky and I took our laundry over to the marina office for the laundry service, while the guys attacked boat projects. The remainder of the morning, I spent going back over my old blog posts and adding pictures while, bless his heart, Dale defrosted the refrigerator and freezer for me.

About noon, Gerry went into town and rented a little Suzuki car. He and Nicky had lunch in town and then returned to see if we wanted to take a tour of the island.

The car was small and although all four of us could sit comfortably, whenever we saw a photo op, it was a pain to get in and out of. So we did the next best thing. The top consisted of two rag tops. One over the front two seats and one over the back two. We lowered the back one and then maneuvered the car so that Nicky and I could stand on the seat and shoot over the top whenever we wanted to take a picture. Of course, there were times when we still needed to crawl out of the car but Gerry did his best to keep us in and pointed the car at least in the vicinity of where we were interested.

It was a whirlwind tour. We started by going through the main part of town to figure out where the large grocery stores were. Then we headed south towards the airport. Past the airport to where the salt flats and the colored obelisks that directed ships to the proper loading facility were. Here and there old slave quarters were restored for historical interest.

We followed the coast looking for the famous pink flamingos that were supposed to be abundant on this island. At last we found one area that had a hundred or so. Nicky and I tried to get close enough for pictures but they are evidently shy birds and kept just our of picture range.
We continued along the east coast and found a lake that had windsurfers darting here and there but again, not close enough for pictures.

We headed back to town and started along the northern route. This side seemed to be predominately cactus covered. In fact, it reminded us of Mexico, except that Bonaire has more cactus per square foot than our memories of Mexico. We traveled past clever junk yards lined with corrugated tin painted to resemble the flags of the nations and continued north through hillsides of rock and more cactus.

What had appeared on our map to be a highway that circled around the north half of the island, ended up being more of a dead-end as it stopped being a narrow paved highway and continued to be a dirt path we would be hard pressed to get the little car down. So we doubled back and backtracked until we once again found the main town.

We dropped by one of the grocery stores we had sought out earlier and made a couple of quick purchases to get us through until it was closer to our time of departure. We couldn’t purchase much as there was no room in the little car but we did manage diet cokes for me and a couple of yogurts for Dale.

We headed back to the marina to deposit our purchases, cleaned up and then headed back out in search of dinner. Nicky had read about a place called “Richards” which was created by a cruiser who decided to linger longer when he found Bonaire. It was a wonderful restaurant with excellent food. We all ordered steak and were impressed with the quality.

We made our way back to the marina and waddled down to our respective boats at the end of the dock. We’re trying to get as much done on the boats as we can while we’re dockside and take advantage of having a car handy. Today work and fun was balanced rather nicely. Tomorrow, we’ll try to do it again.

For now, I’ll try to work for as long as I can on the internet before it disappears.

Photo 1: Our view out of our cockpit at Harbour Village Marina.

Photo 2: A new way of looking at corrigated tin.

Photo 3: Dinner at Richard's.