We spent today in Bonaire, which I knew only as a scuba destination, because a friend of mine spent something like three weeks here over the summer. We arrived in the afternoon as planned, but we didn’t tender as expected. The cruise director made an announcement saying that we had actually docked, and we should all thank the captain for securing us a berth. I’m sure right after that announcement was made, 95% of the people on board forgot about thanking him, so he never got thanked - oh well.

We went outside when we were ready, which was well before our tour at 2:30. We did a little shopping, and I found a bookstore that sold stamps so I stamped four postcards and sent them out from Bonaire. A said I could have just sent them from Puerto Rico with U.S. stamps, but I wanted them to have at least a slight chance of getting to their recipients before we got home! So we shopped around, donated $5 to the Aruba Animal Shelter’s spay-and-neuter project, and shopped some more. Our daily newsletter on the ship had mentioned that not every vendor in Bonaire sold the same thing, as they do in other ports; I was pleasantly surprised to find that there were indeed many unique handcrafted items available. There was, however, a donkey sanctuary booth - yes, they have a donkey sanctuary in Bonaire - that was selling plush dolls of the donkey from Shrek. Oh well, so much for creativity. They also sold plush flamingo dolls, because there are more flamingos on the island than humans!

At 2:30 we went on our scheduled tour, kayaking through the mangroves with the Mangrove Center. As usual, I sat in back to do the paddling, and A sat up front and looked pretty. That’s how we always kayak, because I have lots more paddling experience - unlike others on our tour, I could actually make the boat go where I wanted it to! It was a little difficult getting through the mangrove channels, because at times it was too narrow and low for a high-reaching stroke close to the boat. We made it through, of course, and I pronounced it “too easy” with just A on board - I said I needed a couple extra passengers so I could have a workout! Well, I got my workout when we left the protected waters of the mangrove area and headed across the bay to a little beach. I had a rather difficult time staying in one spot along the beach because the current was so strong, and it wanted to carry us into the shallows where we would have damaged the sea grass which is the primary food for the endangered green turtles there. (We didn’t want to get out onto the beach because we would have gotten MORE SAND on us…I am still finding sand from Sunday!) On the way back across the bay, I got really tired out and I asked A to paddle a little bit. We made it back into the more protected areas and back to shore with no problem.

A was a little grumpy after the excursion, though, so we had room service delivered instead of going to dinner. (Room service is free on cruise ships, though you do have to tip.) I had wanted to go to dinner because I love Celebrity’s vegetarian menus, but oh well - we had veggie burgers and dessert delivered instead. I did run down to the dining room at our dinner time so I could ask the Pied Piper leader about our tour in the morning in Aruba - it’s scheduled for 8:30am!