Sailing Letter June 2016
We have now been at Bonaire for 5 weeks and will likely spend another couple of weeks here. We like it, it is easy to access supermarkets and restaurants, and the snorkeling and diving is magnificent. Peter is jogging regularly and we are also using the new semi long diving suites to do 45 minutes swimming training. We find new muscles every time J
Among the approx. 20 boats moored here we also have a number of social activities:
- Burger / Happy hour evening every Wednesday
- Sundowners with fellow sailors to exchange plans and information
- We did a dinghy drift with 7 dinghies tied together the other day. Very interesting since we did not know where we should end up. After an hour of nice talks and drinks we were almost at Klein Bonaire (the small sand-island 1 Nm west of the anchorage) and had to turn back due to choppy waves. Fun activity.
- Last week we spent half a day doing a refresh course in diving. Both of us haven’t dived since the 80´s so we felt we needed some reminders both in theory and practice.
- We rented a car for 2 days and traveled south and north on almost all existing roads with pavement. We saw a lot of flamingos in the salt lakes to the south and also in a sanctuary lake to the north. Close to the salt lakes we inspected the old slave houses. They are really more like small huts. Terrible to imagine that families have lived there under such conditions.
Of course we are following the European football games. Starting with Sweden and then Iceland (Good old Vikings!). For the rest of the game we have to just enjoy good football, independent of who is playing.
Nature
We are starting to figure out the different types of lizards, iguanas and geckos that are crawling around here on Bonaire. Reading Wikipedia, we learned that they are mostly herbivores, eating vegetables and fruit, some you can even hand feed with a lettuce leaf. On Bonaire it is also supposed to live (including transit) approx. 250 different types of birds. A good site on the web, (what would you do without it), gives the names of the more frequent of them, parrot and parakeets, lot of different small yellow birds, humming birds and big brown pelicans. Under water the coral reefs are everywhere, with easy access from the sea shore. We snorkeled north of the harbor on a place called “1000 steps” and the site was magnificent, with vast areas of fresh corals of different types and forms.
We are truly enjoying ourselves!
Until next time,
BR, Eva & Peter
S/Y Tina Princess 