Bonaire

Bad Luck

I am not sure what was going on but everything was not going well. We showed up after a great sail, minus one day where the kids threw up one after the other all day long. I went to customs and immigration, the process was easy and fast (for the Caribbean) and it all seemed right.

Then, I went to get new valves and fittings to replace our swim shower that has been leaking for a while. I got everything put back together and it leaked like crazy. Took it all back apart, added more plumber’s tape, still leaked. We walked to the hardware store and I bought a tube of plumbing joint compound. I started to take the valves apart and there was still a little bit of pressure in the hot water line. So, water sprayed all over me, which I don’t care about, but also right on top of our battery charger/inverter. It proceeded to make a strange noise, buzzing and clicking, then the overload light came on. I immediately switched the unit off. Luckily, after wiping up standing water inside the unit and a few hours with the front panel off and a fan blowing inside, we were able to turn it back on. It was a freaky few hours since without an inverter to turn our DC (battery) into AC (wall socket), we cannot power many of the systems onboard.

Grete was doing a few loads of laundry one day and the third load was taking a really long time. The timer kept resetting and after a while we turned the machine off since it was using a lot of water. After several attempts at getting the machine to drain and finish the cycle, and wasting probably 50 gallons of fresh water or more, we couldn’t get it to finish. As I write this, about 9 days later, we have still not been able to get the machine open so our clothes inside must stink really badly. Hopefully we get the machine apart in the next day or two and can figure out the issue.

So, after two full days of fighting maintenance issues that just wouldn’t go well, the shower still leaks even with joint compound, we rented a car so that we could get off the boat and do something enjoyable. The rental car place is at the airport, which is a few miles from the anchorage so I walked on over to get the car at the time Grete booked. I arrived and there wasn’t anyone working in the booth. The strip of rental car desks look like bedraggled hot dog vendors at a little league game and most were vacant since it was around lunch time. I called the number taped to the inside of the window and the woman said that they did not have a reservation for me. I texted Grete and we ended up figuring out that she booked the car for the following week :( So, she went back online and booked another car at Avis, who is apparently king here since unlike the row of shanties, they had a massive building with hanging sculptures, etc.

So, we were able to salvage the situation and I drove back to get everyone for some exploring ashore. After picking them up from the boat and getting back to shore, I handed Grete the keys for the dinghy lock. I then patted my pocket and noticed that the rental car key wasn’t there. I assumed it was snagged on the dinghy key so I asked Grete to hand me the other keys. She said there weren’t any so I snatched the keys out of her hand. At that point, the key that gave us access to the dinghy dock fell from the keychain and right into the water. So now, I had apparently lost that key as well as the rental car key in a matter of a few minutes. After retracing my steps ashore and checking with all of the businesses along the route I walked to see if anyone had found the keys, I accepted that I must have dropped the car keys in the water while dinghying back to get Grete and the kids. I took them all back to the boat and grabbed my mask and snorkel. I was able to quickly grab the key for the dinghy dock since I had seen it go in, but after diving all underneath the pier and then some more back at our boat, I never did find the car keys. So I had to pay $300 and take another trip back to the airport to swap out for a different rental car. At that point, the whole day was shot. So after three days in Bonaire, we hadn’t done anything.

Finally doing stuff…but the luck remains

A couple of months back, Grete and I decided that the kids are big enough and we have started doing a date night 1-2 times a month. There was a beautiful restaurant out over the water right next to the dinghy dock that had been calling to me, so we went there.

The restaurant, however, is brand new and not yet fully open. That meant a very reduced menu, etc. But the prices weren’t completely ridiculous and the ambiance was amazing. The place should not be open at all though. The waitress seemed like it was her first night waiting tables, but no one was helping her along. The really tiny menu was basically a list of the things that they don’t actually have. Red wine? Nope. White wine? Nope. In the end, we ordered a steak and two salads. The salads turned out to actually be a pile of couscous with some small amounts of actual food on top. Since couscous is wheat, Grete ended up having to eat both “salads” and I ate the steak. She had some of the steak too, but ultimately our night out fell right in line with how things had gone so far on Bonaire.

Since we had a rental car, and a key, we spent the next couple of days driving all over the island. The first day we went to Washington Slagbaai National Park, which pretty much makes up the top half of the island. We saw a blowhole, and several bokas, small mouth bays along the route which was pretty smooth despite the warnings that the road was horrible.

There were cool mesas and stone outcroppings all over this barren landscape.

Additionally, a couple of lighthouses and some old ruins lined the north coast of the island.

Then, our luck struck again. Fira had to use the potty. There is no potty. She had to #2. Oh geez. Luckily, we’re not new to this traveling with kids stuff, so I keep plastic bags and napkins in my backpack. However, when Fira took off her purse and handed it to Grete who was actively holding Fira up while she went, Grete set the purse on the rock next to them. The astute reader knows how this ends. We drove off when all was done and went hiking. Halfway up the peak Fira blurts out that she’s missing her purse. We knew exactly where it was. Here is the issue. The road around the park takes about 2.5 hours to drive and is one-way. So, we finished up our hike, which was basically a simple walk followed by a quarter mile of scrambling up rocks, and tried to decide what to do with regards to the purse.

After some discussion, we decided we would drive around the entire park again :( So, we hurried around the last bit of lap number 1 and checked back in at the front desk to let them know we would be going again. At this point, our luck changed a bit. The ranger informed us that we were starting the trail at the very end of when they allow cars on the road. So, he said we could drive to get the purse and come back the wrong way, which ended up cutting off more than 90 minutes of driving :) We got to the spot, and there was the purse. Fira had a huge smile as she walked back to the truck with her treasures slung over her shoulders.

The next day, we drove around the south side of the island where the huts for the slaves who were brought to the island to work the salt mines were. These tiny little huts are where they slept and kept any personal belongings they might have had.

Also on the southern route, is a massive donkey sanctuary which was kind of ridiculous. There are around 2,000 donkeys on Bonaire and over a thousand are doing fairly well in the wild. Some parts of the population were not doing as well, getting hit by cars, etc. so this sanctuary houses over 800 donkeys that were brought in to be cared for. They live in a massive desert field where tourists drive through feeding them all the time, and driving through went exactly how you would expect.

They stood in front of the truck, blocking the path, which allowed me to use my favorite Crockodile Dundee line a lot of times.

When I finally could manage to push through, they stuck their noses in the truck.

And once we managed to get past, they chased after us, sometimes shooting out in front of the truck to make us stop. It was pretty amusing.

The kids loved petting them, and we all had a great time.

After the donkey sanctuary, we continued along the coast past the salt flats. The salt flats were really cool, with huge pink ponds and massive piles of mined salt. The ponds also sparkled like diamonds but I don’t think it showed up well in our pictures at all.

When boats would come in to load up on salt in the olden days, they were told to anchor at one of the colored pyramids. Here is a picture of me and the kids at the orange one.

We kept going along the coast checking out windmills, driftwood art, and lighthouses and ultimately got back to off-roading. The off-roading on the eastern side of Bonaire was pretty intense. The paths are on private property, not mapped in Google, and quite rough. I loved it, but after a couple of hours Grete was over it and ready to hit the beach. We did make it out to a couple of bokas, a blowhole and a lighthouse before she threw in the towel though.

So, we headed over to a snorkeling spot called 1000 steps on the east side, just north of town. The snorkeling was pretty interesting. Bonaire has lots of fish as well as lots of different varieties of coral. It makes the snorkeling quite interesting (the snorkeling was good in the anchorage too) but for some reason everything is pretty much just yellow, so it’s not something I’d say was as good as Scrub Island, BVIs.

We ended the day with some gluten free pizza at a very schwag place near 1000 steps. They saw us coming and tried to not let us in but we just acted like we owned the place. The food, wine, views and company were a fantastic end to a fantastic day.

Our last day in town we wanted to take Dublin to see some stuff underwater. Like many kids, Dublin doesn’t like the feeling of water in his mask/snorkel and as a result, he never comes with us when we go snorkeling. They have a cheesy yellow submarine-esque tourist boat in Bonaire so we took a ride over to Klein Bonaire to look at the reef through the big glass windows so he could have a chance to see what he’s missing. He didn’t seem too impressed.

It was fun anyway and I got to knock the cobwebs off of my dolphins ;)

All in all, it was a beautiful little town on a very different desert island with beautiful water and we had a great time. It was time to keep moving though, so we headed west to the next island.