Cayo De Agua to Bonaire

Wednesday 21st July

Location: On route from Cayo De Agua, Los Roques, to Bonaire

Daisy at anchor

Picnic in the park

Friday 19th September

Niki stayed on board, while Bob drove me to the supermarket. I shopped while he went to immigration to check himself and Nicolette out, as they both fly back to the States on Sunday. He called back for me and we loaded the truck and I took the groceries back to the boat in the pouring rain while Bob returned the car. Later that afternoon we moved Daisy back to the Village Harbor Marina, and came alongside with ease. We managed to get tied off just before the rain poured again.


Saturday 20th September

Bob had arranged for another car today, and we left early to get to the park. I packed a small picnic, and we still had loads of drinks in the cooler. We took the short route through, which was bumpier (if that was possible) than the long route we had taken on Thursday.

We drove out stopping first at Wayaka, where we climbed down to the beach with our snorkel gear. The water didn’t look as inviting as it was a small lagoon and it was quite shallow, so we decided to go on to Slagbaai. When we got back to the car we met two Danish people on mountain bikes, I admired their stamina and fitness, cycling through this park they have to be fit. They asked Bob for directions and then we drove on to Slagbaai.

There were a couple of other cars and families there, so we went to the far end of the beach where it was quiet. Niki and I collected shells for a while before swimming. The snorkeling was wonderful, and we saw so many fabulous fish, particularly parrotfish, we spotted some large spectacular species, also a lovely spotted filefish. We ate our picnic lunch at one of the tables in the shade, before packing up and returning to Daisy for a shower and change.

We drove through town and out past the airport to look at the houses along the sea front. We walked around and looked at a new construction that was amazing, it had the most incredible views over the ocean, and a massive patio, the start of a small pool was being installed, this would truly be a dream house when finished, I tried to talk Bob into finding out if it was for sale, but nice as it was he wasn't interested, OH well, I can dream!

We drove back into town and had a cocktail at Salsa. We had planned to take Nicolette to Mona Lisa for dinner, but unknown own to us they close on weekends, so we went instead to La Gurelana on the front, and had a really lovely dinner watching the sunset. We returned to the boat after dinner so Niki and Bob could pack.

Sunday 21st September

I got up at 4am to take Nicolette to the airport, and then drove Bob at 6:30am. I returned to the boat to spend the day doing laundry and cleaning. I’m alone here again until Bob returns on October 8th.

Andreas 2 Dive site, swimming with the Turtles!

Monday 8th September
After an early rise, and a light breakfast, Bob and Niki set about cleaning and polishing the stainless, while I did the dishes and cleaned inside the boat. We were finished by 10:30 then went into town to do some shopping and look for a new snorkeling mask for Bob. We stopped for lunch and a cocktail at the City Café on the front, before walking to the supermarket to do some shopping.

After we had taken everything back to the boat, we took the dinghy around to the dive site of the Andreas 2. We tied up to a buoy and snorkeled off the dinghy, another first for me, in deep water at least. The water was clear and the sea bed spectacular, like a garden, with an array of anemones and coral life, hundreds of different species of fish, and best of all a young turtle, who was not at all shy and very curious, we swam with him for a while and I took some great photographs.

The Andreas 2 is a novice dive site with only slight currents. It’s reachable from boat or shore. The maximum depth is 30m and average visibility 20 m. If you’re lucky you may spot sea horses here, unfortunately we didn’t manage to see any.

We had cocktails at the pier bar, and dinner at one of the seafront restaurants before returning to Daisy to watch a movie. Niki put Harry Potter on again for me, this time I watched without falling asleep.

Kralendijk, Bonaire

Tuesday 26th August
This morning I cleaned out the fridge; in our haste to get away from Los Roques a bowl of soup that I had carelessly placed in the fridge upturned and caused a horrible mess. This made a good excuse to clean and sterilize ready for re-provisioning later.

We took the dinghy across to the marina late-morning, Bob wanted to check the slip he’d booked. Unfortunately the office was closed, everywhere shuts here between 12 & 1:30 - 2:00pm, so we walked around the marina and sat at the bar on the front of the resort. There were some huge iguana’s moving around between the tables, one of them was very large and Daniela took some photographs.
We ordered margaritas and Daniela and I shared a dish of nachos. After we had eaten we returned to the office to discover that no slip had been reserved for us, as they had promised, the marina manager, who had made our reservation six weeks before was away on vacation and they had nothing reserved for us, despite having taken Bob’s credit card details over the phone when he had booked the slip… They promised to find room for us and that we could definitely move onto a slip on Friday;
We took the dinghy over to the airport later, to arrange a rental car for tomorrow. Once the car was organized we went into town and walked around to do some sightseeing, we arrived at the Mona Lisa restaurant, reputed to be the best restaurant in Kralendijk. They were able to allocate a table for us, and we had a lovely meal; Daniela was in high spirits, the food was good and we were all having a fun evening.
The people from the boat moored next to us in the bay were also in the restaurant, and asked us to join them for a drink later at one of the local bars, they left the restaurant before us, and after dinner we walked all around the town looking for the bar they had mentioned, but couldn't find it, so eventually we gave up and went back to Daisy, for coffee and an episode of CSI …

After a couple of hours of failed attempts at sleep, we both got up to check outside, the boat was rolling quite violently and the dinghy, which we had unusually left down due to it having been such a calm quiet night, was now crashing and banging against the stern, Unfortunately the wind had once again switched to a south westerly and we were stern in to the sea wall, the boat alongside us had swung 180 degrees on it’s mooring, and was swinging dangerously close. We watched for a while, as the lightening continued to flash spectacularly all around, the waves built and the dinghy bounced and crashed about on the stern. Bob decided to bring the dinghy up on the davits before it got damaged. I ran around putting fenders out and Daniela came up on deck to help Bob with the dinghy. It was quite a difficult operation, the dinghy was bouncing wildly about and it was very hard for Bob to maintain his balance while he attached the davits. Eventually they managed to get it up safely.
Daniela returned to bed, but Bob and I stayed up on watch for a while longer.

Once we did return to bed, I couldn't’ sleep as the boat was still rocking and rolling violently pulling hard on the morning lines, and my ever imaginative mind was hard at work mentally creating every possible disaster waiting to befall us.