Bonaire is a desert island with cacti similar to Curacao. There are a couple huge white mountains of salt which we passed on our way into the anchorage at Bonaire. These salt mountains attest to Bonaire's lively industry in salt mining. There is a flamingo sanctuary near the salt flats but these birds kept their distance when I tried to photograph them.

The capital, Kralendijk, has an array of Dutch architecture stretching along the waterfront facing onto the anchorage. A lot of the town reminded me of Willemstad in Curacao, but much smaller. Just outside Kralendijk there tiny houses on the waterfront which had once been slave quarters. We toured the island and stopped at the donkey farm where they take care of some of the stray donkeys on the island. We also had some great barbecue chicken and pork at a small restaurant that was only open on weekends.

Bonaire is known for its diving and we took advantage of the opportunity. Since we had originally planned to do dive charters, our boat was (and still is) equipped with a gasoline powered air compressor and 10 dive tanks. We still have the compressor but gave a couple tanks away and lost 1 to rough seas. One day we dove at a site called the Small Wall. What you want to do when diving a wall is descend, swim against the current for a distance then end by drifting back with the current to your starting point. Charlie, my life partner and intrepid dive instructor, determined the direction of the current. We left our dinghy on a dive buoy at a suitable point and proceeded to drift dive the wall, admiring the incredible selection of fish and coral as we went along.

We then turned to drift back to the dinghy and found ourselves swimming against the current. Finally we surfaced only to find that we were near shore, not near the dinghy, because the current was actually going in the opposite direction. Taking off our fins, we walked quite a distance still carrying our tanks on our back, over to a dock near the dinghy. Charlie then snorkeled over, retrieved the dinghy from the mooring, and brought it to the dock so we could load it with our dive equipment and return to the marina. A very long afternoon.

We dove again several more times, mainly at Klein Bonaire, a small island just off the coast which provides protection for the main anchorage located between Klein Bonaire and Bonaire itself. We made some of the dives with other couples.

After the usual round of dinners and parties, we left Bonaire on October 31, headed for the westernmost group of offshore islands belonging to Venezuela, Las Aves.

To be continued.