Saturday, September 30, 1995 - Bonaire

Talk about serendipity! Two or three months ago, when Roy was in California and I was in Aruba, I tuned in the Breakfast Club on short- wave just to see if it would come in. To my amazement, it came in loud and clear. Of course, it was freak reception; I haven't been able to get it since. I talked with people in San Blas and Belize. A man named Bill on the Mad Hatter asked me to say "Hi!" to Don on the Maruba. Bill thought the Maruba was in Aruba, but I didn't see it. Yesterday evening, I just happened to notice her, tied to a slip not far from ours! This morning, I saw the skipper getting off her, so I walked over to him and said, "Hi, Maruba!" He looked a little puzzled until I explained the situation. He remembered Bill and the Mad Hatter and was glad to hear from him. Don has lived on his boat here in Bonaire for two years, so he really knows the area and was able to give us a lot of really valuable information. He told us that Customs is open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, but they've moved to a new building. I had gone to the old building, which of course was closed. He also told us that when Immigration is closed, we can clear in at the Police station. So now we'll be able to get cleared in today instead of having to wait until Monday morning. Roy talked with Don about his pictures of the supposed drug bust we witnessed on Klein Cura‡ao. Roy still hopes to sell them to a newspaper or magazine. Don advised Roy to contact George of Oscarina on VHF channel 77. George publishes and distributes a free weekly newspaper called "Port Call", so he might have contacts that would be interested. Roy and I put my bicycle together. It's been months and months since we've been able to use them. Roy hadn't been able to unzip his bag and had had to cut it open, but mine unzipped right away. This island is going to be a great place to ride our bikes. There's very little traffic, the land is flat, and the drivers don't zoom around like maniacs, the way they did in Cura‡ao and Aruba. I was scared to cross the street in those places. We went over to the office and convinced them they had overcharged us by one day. Just as they were about to refund our $22, Roy piped up and said we could stay another day if space is available. They want us to check back Tuesday or Wednesday, when they'll have a better idea what the regatta situation is. They might be able to let us stay one more day. If not, they'll refund our money. I hope they don't have a place for us; I want to get out of here before the regatta starts. We'd have to spend half that extra day moving to another slip anyway, so why bother? Roy and his big mouth! We rode downtown, and Roy left a roll of film at a one-hour developing place. Then we rode out to the new Customs building. It was all locked up, but as I was peering through the glass door, a Customs officer opened it. He was as courteous and nice as could be. Took us upstairs and cleared us in. There's a law here that you have to leave your spearguns with Customs all the time you're in Bonaire, but he never even asked if we had any spearguns, and of course we didn't bring it up. Next, we went to the Police station and cleared in there, so now we're all legal and can go wherever we want to. The Police officer was very pleasant and courteous, also. Wished us a pleasant stay. Got another $300 from the ATM. Then we returned to the photo place to get Roy's pictures. The shots of the drug bust came out good, so now he wants to finish the other roll and get it developed. He's hoping he can sell the pictures to a newspaper or TV station. There's no McDonald's or Burger King here, but there is a Kentucky Fried, so that's where we ate lunch. Then we returned to the boat, so Roy could get his camera and finish the roll. I took down the quarantine flag and raised the Bonaire courtesy flag. Roy took a couple of snaps of my doing that. He also took some pictures of the boat and the bicycles. Then we rode out in the country a little ways, and he took a few more pictures. He'll finish the roll downtown. We saw an ice cream shop, so we had desert. Roy went downtown to get his film developed, and I returned to the boat. Had a few bad moments when I thought the refrigerator had quit. It wasn't running, and was up to 70 degrees. Roy had turned on both the AC and DC circuit breakers for the refrigerator, because the AC had blown twice yesterday afternoon, and he wanted to be sure the DC would take over if the AC went off again. Neither the DC nor the AC ammeter showed any juice being used. I turned up the temperature control, but nothing happened. Then, as an experiment, I turned off the AC circuit breaker. Immediately, the refrigerator came on! What a relief! When Roy got back, he figured out that the refrigerator wouldn't run on AC, because it was plugged into the timer, and the electricity here is 50 Hertz instead of 60, so the timer is messed up like the electric clocks. He plugged it in without the timer and got it to work on either AC or DC.