26 September 2011 Bonaire
We had a dreadful night. The wind dropped off completely, there was still some rolling from the swell and the mosquitos attacked us. I woke at three o’clock, sweating and itching like mad. I turned on the light and found that I had ten bites in a line down my side and numerous others scattered around my body. After rubbing in some antihistamine cream, I used the insect zapper to sweep the bedroom, before falling into a fitful sleep, sweating beneath the sheet, which I pulled over me as protection against the beasts.
We went for a dive on the north side of Klein Bonaire, which was good. When we returned to the boat, I checked the mooring and found that both lines were badly frayed - one being cut more than a third through. I went to the marina and they gave me some new lines which I fitted by snorkelling down.
After lunch, we walked into town to check out hiring scooters, we’re going to be tourists tomorrow.
27 September 2011 Bonaire
We were tourists today, hiring a scooter and touring the island. It was good fun driving a motorbike for the first time for ten years.
We went north went to the Washington Slagbaai National Park. Unfortunately, one is only allowed in with a car, so we could only walk to the top of a small hill nearby – absolutely boiling because the place is like a desert. We ended up in Lac Bay for lunch, which is a beautiful shallow lagoon, where there are some wind surfing centres. Then we circumnavigated the south of the island to look at the salt flats and slave huts.
The tourist map has a list of 41 points of interest for the island, but they are really scraping the barrel to have this many. It was interesting to see flamingos and the salt flats are fascinating with vividly coloured water. The colours range from pale green to purple caused by micro-organisms which change their colour as the salinity of the pond increases. In low- to mid-salinity ponds, green algae are predominant and as the salinity increases the colour shifts to red.
We handed the scooter back in at four o’clock and returned back to the boat exhausted.
28 September 2011 Bonaire
We didn’t have any mosquitos last night. Unfortunately, I’ve become so paranoid that I spent most of the night wrapped up in a sheet sweating away.
We decided to go to Curacao tomorrow because we’ve been here a week and apart from the diving there isn’t that much to do. We went for a dive which was not the best that we’ve done.
After lunch, I went to clear out and had to go back two hours later to wait for the immigration guy to arrive from the office at the airport. I ran the dive compressor and filled our air tanks, bought some petrol, put the dinghy on deck and prepared for sea.
29 September 2011 Bonaire to Spanish Water, Curacao
I was up at one o’clock with another mosquito attack. God knows how they’re getting in. We sprayed the bedroom with Insect killer before we went to bed, so I know that there weren’t any in the cabin. The bedroom door was closed, so they must be getting in somewhere. I zapped a few and they’re quite small insects, so they might be squeezing through the mosquito netting in the hatch. In any event, we had another restless night.
We dropped the mooring at half past seven and sailed close to Klein Bonaire, where we caught a nice three pound barracuda. Glenys had found a flying fish on the deck this morning, so I rigged it up as bait for our fishing line, but unfortunately, we didn’t catch anything else.
The sail was a superb broad reach in calm seas and sunny skies. The south side of Curacao is very steep-to, so we were able to sail very close to the shore, which was lovely. We spotted couple of dive moorings just outside Fuik Bay which is only a few miles from Spanish Water, so hopefully we’ll be able to do a couple of dives there.
The entrance into Spanish Water is only 20 metres wide over a 6 metres deep bar with coral on one side and sand on the other. However, it is easy to see in good light and calm conditions. There’s a huge hotel with a beach on the south east side of the channel – it’s very odd to be motoring past scantily clad ladies under beach umbrellas only 30 metres away.
Spanish water is lovely, with small yacht clubs, marinas and posh looking houses. There are many branches to the lagoon, but there are only four designated anchoring areas for yachts, which are vigorously enforced by the Coast Guard. There are a hundred or so yachts anchored here, but we managed to find a reasonable spot in six metres of water in zone B.
I went over to see Dick on “Isis”, paid for an Internet connection and obtained some local knowledge, before collapsing with a beer.
30 September 2011 Spanish Water, Curacao
We had a wonderful night’s sleep, there’s a constant breeze here and no mosquitos – hurrah!
We had to go into the main city, Willemstad, to clear in. We caught a bus from the roundabout next to the fishing dock. The buses only run every 90 minutes, so we made sure that we arrived at the bus stop in plenty of time. The bus was late (of course) and we ended up waiting for about an hour. We met Jim and Frank from “Pipe Dream” at the bus stop, which passed the time.
It’s a laborious process clearing in and out because customs and immigration are in different parts of town, ¾ of a mile apart. The customs were very friendly and the immigration people were nice, but the lady in the Harbour Masters office was miserable. All anchoring around Curacao is controlled by the Harbour Master. We’d heard that we have to get permission to anchor anywhere other than Spanish Water, but getting information from the surly woman was like getting blood out of a stone. Eventually, we found out that we’ll have to go back to ask permission for each anchorage that we want to visit and pay $10US fee for the permission. She had no knowledge about the dive moorings that we’d seen yesterday. I’m starting to understand why no one anchors anywhere other than Spanish Water.
We had a sandwich in a “Deli France” in a nice shaded street, then walked towards the bus station where we found the old market building which had stalls selling food. There were loads of locals sitting at tables with piles of food. One stall was cooking fish dinners that looked and smelled fantastic, so we’ll be eating there next time we come into town.
We arrived at the bus stop twenty minutes before it was due to leave. It left thirty minutes late, so again, we were waiting in the beating sun for nearly an hour. It’s a rubbish service, so I don’t think that we’ll be going into town very often. It makes me appreciate the brilliant public transport system provided by the mini buses in Grenada and Trinidad. We hardly had to wait any more than a couple of minutes there.
Back in Spanish Water, we called into “Flawless D” and said hello to Jim and Kath who come from Blackburn. They’ve been here a couple of weeks, so we gleaned a bit more local knowledge. There’s no cruising guide for Curacao, so it’s difficult to find out where everything is. We need to fill our cooking gas bottle, get laundry done, go to a supermarket, maybe hire a car, etc. We went to happy hour at Norman’s bar and met a few more cruisers .
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