Thursday, October 5, 1995 - Bonaire

I typed up the story of our bus trip and copied it to diskette. We planned on dropping it off at George's house this afternoon, but by luck, Laura came by the marina, so I gave it to her. We went over to the office after breakfast to straighten out the situation in regard to staying here or getting a refund. The weather forecast had predicted 15 to 20 knot winds this weekend, so we need to stay until that dies down. The bookkeeper came out and was arguing that we had paid the correct amount, but she made our case for us when she said we were paid until noon on the eighth. That was exactly what I had been saying. The upshot of the whole thing was that they're going to put an engineless sailboat called La Tortuga in the corner of the dock near the office, and then they'll raft us to it. We can stay there until Sunday, and they won't charge us anything extra. They're going to move us tomorrow afternoon. Roy spent the rest of the morning working on the bilge-pump problem (a hot, messy, unpleasant job.) He concluded that the pump itself is ok; the problem is in the switch. He has a spare switch that he bought at West Marine several years ago for $60, but now he has two more problems: the switch case is cracked, and the old switch is well-nigh inaccessible, being behind the engine and the transmission. As usual, I contributed my part by staying out of his hair. Rode my bike to a place shown on the map as an Observation Point. It was outstanding! Far better than I had hoped for. It was about 300 feet above sea level, so it was quite a climb, but it was worth it. I could see the entire southern portion of the island and much of the east coast. Could see the salt flats and the big piles of salt. Had a terrific view of Klein Bonaire. We should have gone around the southern point instead of the northern. I spent about an hour up there, enjoying the view. There were even nice benches to sit on in the shade. I kept wishing Roy could have come up there, too. Got back to the boat at one o'clock. Roy was still down in the engine compartment, all hot and greasy. I talked him into knocking off for the rest of the day. We ate lunch and then went on the bike ride we had planned. Rode along the coast on a narrow, scenic, little-traveled road. There were a lot of dive sites with parking areas, and we saw a number of people getting ready to dive or just finishing. Came to what had originally been a Landhuis (plantation house). In 1980, it had been restored and put to use as a marine-research lab. Unfortunately, they had apparently run out of funds, and it's now vacant and deteriorating again. The road was one-way, so we were going to have to return by way of Rincon, which was ok, because it was shorter. We had traveled more than 20 kilometers by the time we reached Goto Meer, a large, lovely lake that's a flamingo sanctuary. Flamingos fly over here from Venezuela to feed on the brine shrimp. We saw seven flamingos on the other side of the lake, so we looked at them for a while through our binoculars. Then we rode on to a fairly high observation point. From there, we could see hundreds of flamingos. It was breathtaking. Up until then, it had been an absolutely perfect ride. Unfortu- nately, my rear tire developed a slow leak. What a place for that to happen! We had 17 kilometers to go, and it was late in the day. I had to stop every couple of miles to air up the tire. We knew it would be dark before we got back, and we don't have lights on our bikes, because we never ride at night, heh, heh, heh. To make matters worse, I missed the turn for the shortcut that would have saved about five kilometers, so we ended up coming back the long way on the highway with all the traffic. As long as it was daylight, we enjoyed it, because we were going along the east coast, and it was scenic. We even saw four wild donkeys, who seemed to be as much interested in watching us as we were in watching them. They ran along parallel to us for a mile or so. Maybe they'd never seen bicycles before. I kept wishing I could grab two of the donkeys and load my bicycle on one of them. Then I'd get on the other and ride back to the marina. But soon the sun went down, the moon was obscured by clouds, it was pitchy dark, and we could scarcely see the road. On the positive side, the tire did stay up for two or three miles between fillings, and Roy had brought a small flashlight with him. Without that light, we wouldn't have made it. If my tire had gone completely flat, we wouldn't have made it. We were still a good five miles from the marina when it got totally dark. That was the worst stretch. There was no shoulder to speak of, and approaching cars kept shining their bright lights in our eyes, nearly blinding us. What a relief when we finally reached Noord di Sali¤a! It's a good thing I had gone there this morning so I knew where to turn. As soon as we reached the traffic circle near the marina, we made a bee-line to an ice cream parlor. Drank ten gallons of water and ate dishes of delicious ice cream. How good to be safe and comfortable and only a block from the marina!