Seems like I’m breaking my cardinal rule left and right on this cruise. It’s Wednesday afternoon (Day 5) and I am just now journaling yesterday. Where to start … well, we had to meet Compass Cruises (snorkel and sail on a 40′ sailboat) at 8:45 down past the pier so we were up early and in the Windjammer for breakfast. It was kind of chaotic to tell the truth. But we found them and had plenty of time to spare, as we figured we would. There was a whole string of tents with tours right by the pier (which is typical). Bob and I had talked about trying to do an afternoon island tour if we had time and could find something that wasn’t full. Our snorkel and said cruise was three hours, putting us back at the pier around 12:30-12:45. As luck would have it we did find one! Voyager Bonaire had a tour leaving at 1:00 and we reserved our spot. 

Wim (owner and captain) is a laid back guy. He seems to run his business in the same style. It was a bit unorganized and it felt like we were spending a lot of time just standing around waiting for someone else. When we checked in there were only 9 spots filled. On the website (here we go again with believing what we read on the internet …) it said he only takes 14 passengers, and we had 6 in our group. Here we were thinking we almost had a private sail on our hands when it ended up being at least 17! Initially we thought maybe he had two boats and would separate part of the group when we got to the marina. Nope, we all piled onto his 40 footer. Wasn’t quite what we had imagined but whatcha gonna do? Just go with it right? It was a beautiful day with white fluffy clouds and lots of blue sky. DE made sure he had his head covered up.

After we got out of the harbor he put the sail up and even though there was a lot of wind it felt like we were creepin’ to me. We got to know our crew a little better. It consisted of Wim, Marcel (1st mate) and Corina (2nd mate). They all came from the Netherlands. Wim used to own a restaurant in the Netherlands and is a chef. (He also does sunset dinner cruises for private parties and prepares all the food – now that would be fun!) He sold his restaurant and relocated to Bonaire and has built a successful sailing business – owns 11 boats and stays busy he says. He’s getting married in February to a teacher (also from the Netherlands) and life is good. He’s not looking back. Marcel has been in Bonaire for 6 years and Corina only 6 months, but she’s also lived in Aruba and Curacao. They were all wonderful hosts and fun people to hang around. You couldn’t take anything Wim said seriously – he loves to spin a good story.

We finally made it to our snorkeling spot and tied to another sailboat that was waiting for us. That was interesting. Some of our passengers jumped on board that boat and hung with them. Not sure what that was all about. When I got in the water (and it wasn’t as warm as I thought it would be) it became a different world, as it always does when the snorkeling is good. It was like being in an aquarium. There were fish everywhere. I didn’t see anything else (no turtles, stingrays, squids or anything like that) but there were a ton of fish. Neither the fish nor the coral had really bright colors but it was beautiful nonetheless. We had a good hour or so in the water before getting back on board. They handed out some simple sandwiches and drinks before heading back to the marina. Here’s the local beer we partook of:


By the time we got back to the pier and tent where we signed up for the island tour it was almost 1:00. We had told the girl who took our reservation that we didn’t have enough cash on hand and would need to run back to the ship before we could pay her. When we got back later than we thought, she told us to just go on the tour and we could bring her the money when we got back. Alrighty then.

Our driver, didn’t get his name (which should give you a little clue as to how the rest of this adventure unfolds) was a great guy. I’ll call him “Barry” just to give him a name. The vehicle (I use that word loosely) was open seating in the back and room for 4 people in the cab. There was an entire group (mostly) filling up the back. They all had matching shirts on too -Thing 1 – Thing 9 from Dr. Suess. (Why oh why did I not get a picture of this?) I kid you not – can’t make this stuff up. So “Barry” was our driver and there was another guy in the back with the rest of the group holding a microphone who was to be the narrator. We didn’t get a block down the road and “Barry” was already pulling over and getting out to go talk to the group. There was a problem. (While we were sitting there waiting for that little problem to be solved we see a flamingo poke its head from from the yard right next to the truck! There were several more behind the house – pretty cool huh?) Thing 9 (apparently leader/bitch/tour planner) was having a hissy fit because she was told they would have a Spanish speaking guide. The guy on this trip didn’t speak Spanish. Houston we have a problem. “Barry” ended up being driver and narrator/guide. He mumbled under his breath but loud enough for us to hear that his job was driving, he wasn’t getting paid to deal with all this. But plow on “Barry” did. Keep in mind that sitting next to us is a young couple from Puerto Rico and an American in the front seat with him. All of us speak English. In fact Thing 9 was bitching to “Barry” about a Spanish speaking tour guide all while speaking English. ??? We heard them all speaking English here and there. So for the entire three hours of this tour “Barry” spoke 90% in Spanish placating this “Thing” group. He’d look at us and give us an abbreviated version (at least that’s what I have to assume since he talked to them for 3-5 minutes on the same thing he said to us in 30 seconds). Every once in a while we could figure out part of what he was saying because some of the words are similar. Like Baracuda. At some point we passed a beach and he was telling them in Spanish what kind of fish were in there. Baracudas … I piped up and said, “Oh I got that word! Guess they sound the same in both languages.” He laughed. I wasn’t being funny, I didn’t think. Apparently he didn’t get my point. Other times I would just have to ask questions. It was a long three hours.

There were a number of things to see on this tour: the salt flats, wild island donkeys, the flamingos was a big one. Our first stop was the salt flats. I gotta say, that was pretty amazing. The water surrounding them is pink. Seriously. Pink water. Sounds really pretty doesn’t it? Looks really pretty too. Until you smell it and learn that it’s pink from bacteria. Bacteria that could kill you. LOLOL Can’t make it up! “Barry” said it’s called Death Water. Alrighty then. So (I’ve really got to do some research on this) they dam up sea water to let it ferment so to speak and then sort of harvest the salt and process the hell out of it so that it can be consumed and not kill you. I don’t know if this is the typical Morton’s table salt or what. I thought I wanted to bring some home with me as a souvenir from the island. Now I’m thinking “not.” Still it was cool. Little did I know this would end up being the highlight of the trip. (ETA: Not sea salt for sprinkling over foods, but icy roads. Now I know why 75% of it is shipped to Minnesota! Bonaire Sea Salt)


“Barry” turns around and we had back through town toward the other side of the island. He narrates different things about the island as he passes them, mostly in Spanish of course. But seriously, when he pulls the truck over for us to “make a picture” of a donkey crossing sign … I mean really, how much can we be missing? He got out and talked to the group in the back for a good 3 minutes about this donkey crossing sign. I got nothin’. About half way through he pulls over in this parking lot informing us that we are welcome to go into the grocery story and buy something if we want and use the bathroom in the bar next door to it. Wait for it, no really, wait for it … the name of the place was Zong Wong. I passed. Bob said it wasn’t pretty.

Finally we’re back on the road again – after all the Things go to the bathroom. Bonaire isn’t one of the prettier islands we’ve seen. This very narrow (yup, two lanes – “Barry” was honking his horn around all the corners in case there was an oncoming car that we couldn’t see or they couldn’t see us) winding road followed the coastline. “Barry” told us he thinks the guys who built it were drunk. And of course there are no road rules here. No speed limits, no stoplights (well there is one – we’ll get to that), “you can do whatever you want,” he says. Again, can’t make it up. Eventually we come to the lake where the flamingos are. Okay, looking forward to that. Until we saw them. We stopped again. So we could “make a picture.” It’s hard to say how many there were. I can say they were pink – we could tell that much. I made a picture. Here it is:


And here they are zoomed in all the way:


They had to be every bit of half a mile away according to Bob. As the road continued to wind around, I had some hope (for a little while) that we’d work our way closer to them and get a better look. Nope. That was it. You gotta be shitting me! I bloody well should’ve “made a picture” of the one in that yard before we left town!! OMG.


Other stops he made were to “make a picture” of the coral that lined the coast. It was pretty, don’t get me wrong, but we were so over it by the tenth time he told us the different colors were lava, coral and limestone. Just move on dude. At some point Bob showed me his watch and said, “the good news is that we only have 40 minutes left.” LOL. For real. On the way back to the ship we saw maybe five wild donkeys (insert finger into inside of cheek and made popping sound) and the flip flop tree (tourists tie a flip flop to this particular tree leaving a momento of their visit) and the one and only traffic light on Bonaire. Here it is:


The donkeys … here they are!!


No lie. That’s it!! You’d think this adventure is done by now, right? Almost. We get back to the pier and go to pay the girl who signed us up for the tour (Bob ended up having more cash on him than he thought) and would you believe they place is cleared out? Nada, nothing left. So Bob, wanting to leave with a clean conscience, ran back to catch “Barry” and gave it to him explaining what happened. Now chances are she’ll never see that money. But our conscience is clear. Oh. My. Word. What a day.

By the time we got back to our cabin it was going on 4:30 and we were so done. Our dinner reservations were for 6:15 (the latest we could get) which meant we only had an hour or so before we needed to start getting ready. Oh and it was formal night too. Ugh. It is what it is. It was Italian night and we were looking forward to that. Antonio continues to amaze us. He walked by the table and saw Jeff and Jesse’s empty chairs and asked, “where are Jeff and Jesse tonight?” They said he saw Jesse somewhere else on the ship and greeted him by name. As many people as they see and serve week in and week out that just blows my mind. Makes a body feel special it does. Sarah and I both got the garlic shrimp. They were butterflied and grilled. Mmmmmm. My first bite had a little glitch though. I knew I had to cut the tail off, which I did. Then I popped the rest of that thing in my mouth prepared to make obnoxious yummy noises. I did make obnoxious noises but they weren’t yummy ones. I didn’t know Sarah was watching this whole scene go down. One crunch is all it took to realize the tail wasn’t the only thing on that shrimp I needed to take off. The damn thing wasn’t peeled at all!!! Whiskey. Tango! Sarah’s eyes flew open, she elbowed DE and the whole table was watching me try to gracefully peel this shrimp while in my mouth in a formal dining room on formal night on a cruise ship. JHC. They were laughing so hard I ended up having to spit the damn thing out – it was a lost cause. What. Ever. Bob said that’s why he didn’t get them, because Antonio told him they weren’t peeled. Well, I didn’t get that memo. Fast forward from that fiasco – I chose Tiramasu for dessert and it was yummy too.

By now DE’s head, face, back and everything else was still on fire. His skin was tight and he was miserable. He said some lady in the elevator said he must’ve touched the sun. Hahahaha. It isn’t funny I know. But we were still laughing about it. The thing is there was no sun for him to even touch that day! I’ve heard you get a worse burn on cloudy days than sunny days. Apparently there’s some truth to that.

Antonio and Marlon make such a good team. Antonio had another trick for us tonight. He asked Bob to choose a suit and card in his head then tell him what it was. Bob chose a queen of spades. Antonio gave him a chance to change it or keep it. Bob kept it. Then he pulls out a little case with four cards, three face down and one face up. When he fanned them out the queen of spades was face up. Wow. Now we know Bob wasn’t a plant so how’d he do that?

After we came back to the cabin and changed clothes we went back up to the putt putt green and practiced for our champion match. We managed to get an entire practice round in and played around on the ping pong table too before meeting up with the Williams’. We redeemed ourselves with a more respectable score but still didn’t win. Jesse and Jeff pulled out the win. Friday is another sea day. I still have hope.

We enjoyed the warm breeze up by the pool bar and hung out for a while before calling it a night.

Beach day in Aruba tomorrow!

(Links to videos coming soon.)