Bonaire.

We arrived in Bonaire the next morning pretty late - 11am - so we were all awake and fed in time to watch our progress coming into the port.





Mom stayed on board, I think to chill out and possibly have another session with Zee, while Mark, Dad and I went on shore to see if we could find a way over to Klein Bonaire. It's a little island off the coast of Bonaire that is meant to be good for snorkeling. Mark and I had managed to finally get our hands on some snorkeling equipment, and Dad had his already, so we were all set.

Bonaire had lots and lots of excursions going on, including one on a "historic Dutch" sailboat. I think we had considered going on that one, but we were all glad we didn't when we saw everyone packed on there like sardines:


Anyway, thanks to the Canadians that Mark and I had met on Grenada - who we also ran into on Bonaire - we were able to find a place that offered a water taxi over to Klein Bonaire. It was an open air bar with a little dock in the back.




We got on the boat, which was a bit of a squeeze because of the number of people wanting to go over, but it was fine.



Our captain and first mate were originally from Holland. Since Bonaire is part of the Dutch Antilles, it's a popular place for Dutch expats.




Klein Bonaire was a big, wide, white sand beach, with bits of dead coral washed up here and there. It was pretty nice and we had good weather for a morning on the beach. Quite a few clouds, but still very warm and pleasant.



We found a spot away from the other excursions that had made it to the beach and put our snorkel gear on. There ended up not being all that many fish where we were, which could have been the bit of island we were on, or maybe Klein Bonaire isn't that good for snorkeling after all. The live coral that was still around seemed to be suffering a bit - probably from the sheer numbers of tourists like us.





One of the attractions was a pelican that was feeding around the bit of beach we were on.



Mark took this nice picture of it in flight:


Mark and Dad stayed on for a while longer, but I caught a water taxi back to the main island, in order to meet up with Mom for our afternoon excursion to Bonaire's Butterfly Farm. We were collected just off the boat, and got into a minivan to ride to the farm. There were seven people in our group, including Mom and me.




All around the interior of the island are masses and masses of cacti. It's pretty amazing. It's what I always thought Arizona looked like, based on Road Runner cartoons, but Arizona never seemed to look like that. I realize now that the Road Runner actually lived on Bonaire.





This is the Butterfly Farm, which is run by a Dutch family:



...and we did, in fact, see butterflies:





Here's a picture Mom took:



After the visit to the Butterfly Farm, we sat around a bit and then got back in the minivan and the driver took us on a little tour of a few other parts of the island, including an area with the famous mangroves:


It had some nice covered seating areas:




We also stopped a place where we got a nice view of our boat (the guide obviously knows how to cater for cruise ship people!):




Meanwhile, Dad and Mark made their way back from Klein Bonaire and headed off to their shore excursion - land sailing. They had only a short introduction and then they were off.








Mark said that Dad started out by taking it easy, but then started lapping everyone by the end. If you zoom in on this picture, you can see Dad has a big smile on his face - I think he was having a good time!! We have a short video that Mark took of Dad zooming around - I think he goes up on two wheels at one point!





Mark really enjoyed it too, and as soon as we were back in Clevedon, he found out how much it costs to get one of those land yachts (about £1500, new). There is actually a club on Brean that does it regularly - it's a big wide beach with lots of wind, so it's a good place for it. Not as ideal as Bonaire, though!

Next stop is our final one - Aruba!