On a vacation it often seems like you have lots of days left and then all of sudden it is the last day. This is sort of the last day because a chunk of it will be spent on the first leg of travel home. Since we flew into Curacao, we must fly out of Curacao. When we were there a week ago we scouted out hotels and since it was just for the night, we were looking at the one hotel near the airport. But after reading the reviews on line, we decided to splurge on something nicer that required a longer cab drive. We booked the Marriott. A nice hotel will stretch that vacation feeling just a bit farther.
Dutch Antilles Express had bumped our flight to 4:00p.m. So we really had the possibility for an excursion on Bonaire before leaving. The problem was that checkout from our apartment was 11 a.m., The scooter was due back at 10a.m. and it is hard to have an excursion with no transportation and a pile of luggage.
I had this fantasy that we could still pull off going to Klein Bonaire; an uninhibited island a few kilometers out in the bay that offered some of the best snorkeling available from shore. A water taxi takes you there and picks you up. There is no shade and you must take plenty of water. We could almost pull it off... the first trip there is at 9:30a.m. and the first return is 1:00p.m. But I could only negotiate a 1:30 late checkout and I was just not enough time to walk back from the water taxi, take a shower and be ready for the airport two hours before flight time. So we resigned ourselves to checking out some spots that were close by.
I gassed up the scooter to a full tank (about 4 dollars) before we squeezed in our first snorkel plunge before we had to return Our ride. I then scooped up Mary and we rode to the very first beach, Eden Beach, we had tried when we first got to Bonaire and this time we went deeper and farther from our towels. It was again, very pleasant.
With wet suits, we made it back to the scooter rental place at the exact scheduled return time. From there, we walked a block back down to the ocean and surveyed our walkable options. We could plunge in anywhere but there were lots of moored boats so we chose to stroll to the end of the beach walkway and snorkel around the adjacent property.
I buried my wallet under some coral gravel, marking it with a pink stone although throughout our trip we discovered that no one really messes with your stuff and there are never that many people around anyway. Snorkeling again, we saw some new species and all of the old ones. The was the added bonus of some man-made wreckage on the bottom and also a bunch of scuba divers (I counted nine) swimming along the drop off. Quite surreal to spot humanoid shapes through the depths.
I'd left my watch back at the apartment so we had to guess about the time and our goal of getting back by 12:30. We hit it pretty much right on and I microwaved leftovers from yesterday's "Thai" dinner while Mary showered. We were mostly packed already so after I rinsed off, we double-checked for loose items and lugged our baggage down to the Dive Hut. We met Irene, the co-proprietor, there and paid for our incidentals and chatted about Island life while we waited for Broertje to pick us up in his taxi.
He arrived on time and ten minutes later we were in the airport. Check in was easy and in no time we were back in the mostly empty prop plane ready for takeoff. Once in the air, I was able to to see through the propeller to Loc Bay and then a minute later, the north end of the island where we had scootered past the flamingo reserve to Rincon and later returned the wrong way.
Landing in Curacao for the second time was reassuringly familiar and we breezed through customs after waiting an uncomfortably long time for our checked bagged to come through. We found a cab immediately and the driver quoted the amount that we were expecting via our Internet research. Ten minutes later we were in the lobby of the Marriott.
The Marriott is definitely one of the nicer hotels on the island. It is clearly an American comfort pod in an otherwise foreign land. Our bags were handled for us and iced lemonade served to us while checking in. The room was awesome and we had sliding doors that opened into a shady courtyard that led to a remarkable pool and beach with thatched shade huts scattered about.
Mary napped while I typed up yesterday's blog entry.
When Mary awoke and I finished uploading, we referred to our Marriott guide to see there was a sunset drink special at the beach bar. We thought we better check it out. It was OK but we were annoyed by some gabby Americans at the bar who were talking loud enough for us to hear all their boring details. We decided to check out dinner options from one of the hotel's four restaurants and settled on a casual outdoor seafood venue. We split an order of coconut shrimp, an order of ceviche and a slice of key lime pie.
Back in the room, I had a case of the hiccups so I wend back out the sliding doors and listened to the Curacao night sounds while a veiled, almost full moon looked down on me.
We knew that our 4:00am wake up call would come too early so we got our bags ready, hopped into bed and turned on TV to HBO until we fell asleep.
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We got our wake up call, made coffee, checked out and got into the cab that was waiting for us. We probably could have slept another hour. Why do they always say, "Be at the airport two hours early"? There was hardly anyone there and none of the check in desks were manned.
But all went smoothly and I am writing this from 38,000 feet above the Caribbean. I watched Curacao disappear from my window and wondered if I'd ever see it again. I have all my own snorkeling gear now so why not?
See you in Grand Rapids this evening.
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