It’s so hard to be home, in cold, wintry weather after 2+ weeks on Bonaire. I’ll just hit the highlights; writing a trip report is such a great way to reflect on the memories!

Getting there and back:
Air travel is definitely a challenge, no matter what your destination. We flew AA DEN-DFW-SJU-BON, overnighting in Dallas. All went well for us, all luggage arrived with us. Our friends flying from Fort Myers in Florida didn’t have as good of luck, with mechanical problems in Fort Myers, a bus trip to Miami, and finally a flight to Curacao and shuttle to Bonaire. Heading home was filled with challenges. Have you ever considered the effect of a flight attendant calling in sick at the Bonaire end of things? Ummm…the plane can’t fly with any passengers without the appropriate crew, and there are no extra crew hanging around. We arrived at the airport at 5:00a.m. for the 7:00a.m. AE flight, and were actually boarding the plane when the gate attendant called everyone back into the terminal. What they had to do was, the crew flew an empty plane to San Juan, and another fresh, full crew flew it right back to Bonaire, where we all boarded and flew to SJU. Thank goodness for the new departure lounge! We didn’t depart BON until 1:30 p.m., which meant virtually everyone had to be rebooked on other flights, many having to overnight in SJ or Miami. We got lucky, squeaked onto a Miami flight and then onto the last flight to Denver that night. By the time we got home, we had been up for 24 hours, but must complement AA for doing their best under difficult circumstances. All of our luggage even arrived with us!

Accommodations:
Once again we rented a private home, on the water, in the Hato neighborhood. We really like the peace and quiet, and enjoy shopping in the local grocery stores and doing most of our meals at home.

Dining Out:
We did venture out a few times. Dinner at Casablanca was terrific, service excellent. We also ate at another old standby, ZeeZicht, and had another delicious meal with excellent service. One evening we had early cocktails and appetizers at Salsa, and on our last (no dive) day we had lunch at La Luna. Both were fine experiences – I would definitely go back to any of these.

Diving:
Ah – that’s what we go to Bonaire for! We are content with 2 dives per day, and stay at a depth that each dive is about an hour. The water was consistently 84F – perfect as far as I am concerned. Our little foursome dubbed ourselves the geriatric dive team, as the men are 66 & 62, and the ladies both almost 60. We all agreed to stick with dive sites which have sandy or otherwise easy entry/exit points. Other than Andrea II, all of our dives were in town or south: ChaChaCha at the Dive Inn, Windsock, Aquarius, Tori’s Reef, and an unofficial but spectacular location between The Invisibles and Tori’s Reef which is labeled Espen’s Reef on a white rock. There is usually a fishing boat pulled up on shore there (unless the guys are out fishing). We also did a couple of dives at our house reef, just south of Small Wall.

We did one boat dive out to Rock Pile on Klein. Nice reef, same warm water, good visibility.

Weather:
All previous trips to Bonaire have been in March, so it surprised us a little to find out that there is a rainy season, with all vegetation lush and green. Huh – who knew? The rain squalls passed through quickly, day or night; the biggest difference I noticed was the humidity being fairly high, and more biting insects that I have ever experienced previously. Huge puddles of standing water here and there, and lots of mud!

Disappointments:
The donkey sanctuary was closed for the day when we drove out there – they had a temporary sign that they were only open 10:00-1:00. Well, that’s when we are diving, so we never got back there. Due to all of the rain, the road is in really bad shape. (Ditto the road to Lac Cai; but along that road is the only place we saw any donkeys on the loose, and lots of flamingoes fairly close up.)

The Cinnamon Art Gallery was closed on our one day of shopping – I would have enjoyed stopping in, and had checked the posted “open” hours, but somehow that didn’t work out.

We never had time to find the golf course; we are avid golfers at home and wanted to take a look at the gravel fairways.

Didn’t get to stay another week or two!

I guess it’s time to start thinking about next time…

One of the great things about Bonaire is that once you have been there, there will always be a next time!