Bonaire. Our first vacation as certified divers. We arrived via jet from Denver and Panama City, to find ourselves on the tiniest little plane from Willemstad, Curacao. Wait, whaat? The copilot’s seat was empty, so just stay positive about the pilot and his health for the 24-minute flight. On the ground, he drove it like he stole it, squealing tires and banking corners. But we made it, and so did everyone else.
Grabbed our bags from baggage claim, er, the fellow who pulled them out of the plane, and headed for immigration, one friendly Dutch fellow who asked no questions and just stamped away. Outside the airport, we were expecting a cab driver with Anika’s name on a sign. Instead, we found a few cabbies hanging out who’d like our business. We opted to wait a few minutes before we took them up on their offer and our assigned cabbie drove up, deposited the Bonaire/Curacao doctor who was late for catching the plane we got off of, and away we went.
Our cabbie dropped us off at our lodging, BNBBonaire, and Jarl gave us the tour of the grounds and led us up to our room. We have the uppermost floor of a gable-roofed, 3 story building. The orange stairs/ladder to get up to our room is quite steep and Jarl carries my bag up it for me.
Our room is quite large and includes an outdoor kitchenette, hammocks, and lounge chairs on our third-floor deck.
Once settled in, we hustled over to the dive shop to arrange for a 2 tank dive on Saturday and walked around town to find groceries for breakfast and lunch.
The big grocery store is a solid 40 minutes from our room by foot and is quite like an American Whole Foods. Except that it is Dutch and has a whole wall of different types of Gouda! We stocked up on items for breakfast and lunch and trekked back to our room to find dinner at Bistro De Paris, which is close by.