Bonaire

This morning we woke up early to slightly overcast skies and a bit of liquid sunshine. We were still @sea most of the morning. Today's forecast was partly cloudy with a high of 85 degrees. Perfect weather for snorkeling.

Around 11am we approached Bonaire. Here we are passing the uninhabited island of Klein Bonaire (our excursion):

We arrived into Bonaire well before 12 noon and docked at the north pier in Kralendijk, the capital of Bonaire. Bonaire is approximately 112 square miles with a population of 14,000. The main languages are Papiamento and Dutch. Bonaire is known as a diver's paradise, attracting thousands of underwater aficionados each year (including us snorkelers).

Here we can see the markets, restaurants, scooter rentals, and bars open and ready for us:

This island is just Beautiful!!!!!

Today, we took a simple Princess excursion – a water taxi – to No Name Beach in Klein Bonaire. Klein Bonaire is a small island…nature preserve/ marine park. Here we “drift snorkeled” for about 2 hours. We walked to the farthest edge of the beach and entered the water. We let the calm current carry us along the coral and basically “drift”. We got out of the water and walked back to the starting point and drift snorkel again. We spent a lot of time in the water here. Sometimes, we wouldn't drift, but started swimming back to see more fish or coral that caught our eye. A great workout for us to swim against the current.

I have to say the current this afternoon is a bit rough. I had to be careful that the current didn't slam me into the coral while I was taking underwater pictures. Here, I'm taking a snorkeling break to capture an above water view of the current:

Looking towards where the water taxi dropped us off:



It was interesting to see how different it was to snorkel at No Name Beach in Klein Bonaire. There was a difference between snorkeling in the early morning hours (two years ago) versus snorkeling in the afternoon. The water is much more calm in the morning, but has enough current to drift.

After the water taxi brought us back to the main pier, we decided to head south and walk along the edge of the public beach to do some research. We collected some diving information as well as some resort information. We do plan on coming back and making this an island vacation. That’s how beautiful and special this island is to us.

We were all aboard by 6:30pm and set sail at 7pm. Tomorrow, we head to Aruba.