We’ll see how the rest of the week goes, but the first day in Bonaire was a damn good one, even if the airline left our luggage in Curacao.
The reason people fly nearly to Venezuela in order to spend time on a speck of an island is that you can walk into the ocean, swim out a hundred feet from the shore, and be diving in some of the most pristine reef in the world. Today Audrey and I put that proposition to the test, and it’s true – we strapped on tanks, waded out a bit, and then dropped down to a reef that was more interesting than almost anywhere I’ve ever dived before. Well played, Bonaire.
In addition to the underwater adventures, above ground we discovered that our super-fancy lodging is a great spot for finding hermit crabs and iguanas. Two of the latter showed up to breakfast, both of them big but one of them jumbo-sized and apparently unafraid of people – he would lounge under someone’s table, probably looking for scraps, until the resort owner would chase him off with a stick. Parrots were hanging out in the trees in front of the resort, flamingos were doing their thing in the salt flats on the south side of the island, and after stopping for a drink at a place with a sign out front asking people to shut the doors so that the donkeys wouldn’t walk in and eat the plants, we passed about five of the big guys trudging down the road after the sun went down.
The big camera hasn’t left the bag very often on this trip, but like Hugh Hefner I’m under no illusion that this journal’s audience is here for the articles, so hopefully there should be a few photos attached to the upcoming journal entries. This island is a pretty awesome place.