We headed to the casino, where we immediately lost $20.00 in the Wheel of Fortune Slot Machine. We didn't stay long, needless to say. We then found the Internet Cafe, where we checked email and logged on to hiphounds.com to see the pups play. Sebastian and Delilah appeared to be having a fine time so no worries there! We discovered an art gallery, where they had a small selection of original Dalis, Picassos, and Rembrants to name a few. We then found the shops and mosied around until the started shutting things down due to the pending docking of the ship.
We went to our room and went to the balcony to watch the Island come into our line of sight.
Bonaire's shoreline is colorful and appears to be more economically sound than some of the other locations that we've been to. The buildings are quite picturesque, and the water is so clear that when docked you can see the bottom of the ocean. We de-boarded and were excited to see incredible colors displayed in the marine life, just off the boat. Evidently Bonaire doesn't have the best beaches, but it's known for the snorkeling... so when in Rome...
A number of us headed down to Bongo Beach, where we were able to rent snorkling gear. Immediately we saw a large number of people in the water snorkeling and I figured that there was no way we'd see many fish with all those people out there. How wrong I was! Blue fish, yellow fish, orange fish... big, small, long, short, puffers... crabs... all were hanging out with the swimmers. It was as if looking at an artist's pallet with all the colors. And then... I learned about FIRE CORAL.
This is something that if you touch it, a pain hits you out of the clear blue. You don't even realize that you've irritated it... I thought that maybe I cut myself on it... but nope, miss accident prone of the cruise had royally pissed off this fire coral, so I had a pretty red welt on my leg. Once I did this I officially became known as the accident prone person for the duration of the trip. Nice! Since the Bonaire beaches were pretty crowded and Bret (Lindsay's boyfriend) wasn't feeling well, we headed back into town to grab a bit to eat. Only one issue... we could not find ANY restaurants that were open to serve food!!! I think Bonaire has an unofficial required siesta or something. I mean, Seriously. Finally one restaurant owner was kind enough to recommend that we went to Papagallo's... they would be open. YAY!!! We wandered around Bonaire and after searching for around 15 minutes or so we spotted it... finding this restaurant brought a feeling to the surface akin to crossing a finish line... or reaching the top of that blasted net in Dominica! We sat, laughed, we're happy and laughing and excited for food... and then the waitress comes to the table.
"I'm so sorry, we have to close the restaurant. They've shut off our water!" AHHHHHHHHHHHHH
I was NOT a happy camper at this point. I wanted food. We finally gave in and just returned to the ship. Bret returned to his room and Lindsay, Ben and I hit one of the ship's restaurants. We hung out until more people headed back in at which time we joined them at the back of the ship. We were all just telling stories and relaxing when all of a sudden Ben says, "Hey! Look at the dolphin!" We focused in on the water and sure enough there was not just one dolphin, but an enter school (is that the right term) of them... there were at least 2 or 3 dozen dolphins that were jumping up out our the water. It was something that I've never seen and it just blew me away. (if you look closely you can kind of see the dolphin in this picture)
After the dolphin show we headed to dinner... it was relaxing and it took a long time so most everyone went to bed right afterwards, including us. I was asleep immediately. Then, in the middle of my dream, about 1:30am... I was woken up by a fast knocking on the door... knockknockknockknockknockknockknock BEN! knockknockknockknockknockknockknock BEN! knockknockknockknockknockknockknockknock BEN! Over and over and OVER. Ben was in sweet slumber so I gladly woke him up... he stumbled to the door and there are Jeff, Jen and Ashley. "Ben!" Jeff says, "I lost my key to my room!" Ben, who is anything but nice when you wake him up prematurely empathetically (HA) says, "Well, what do you want ME to do about it??" Next thing I know, Jeff, Jenn and Ashley rush at Ben and dogpiled him and me on the bed, laughing hysterically. Upon dogpile conclusion and giving me a near heart attack, they went on their merry way. (Let's just say Jen was in a wee bit pf pain the next morning...)
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