We made it to the island.... finally.

For those not following us on Facebook here is the saga: Bonaire is a divers paradise if you can get there. Planes leave from the United States to Bonaire on Saturdays. Yep you read that correctly.

We were scheduled to fly from St. Louis to Houston to make a connection on Saturday June 27th.

The pilot ended up calling in for a repair on the plane that was to get us to Houston ... First delay ... not even out of our home city yet :) Long and short --- we were going to miss our connection. This meant that we were not getting to Bonaire today - and if we did't find a way around it- we were staring down a full week delay. And potentially our two month stay was in jeopardy.


The nice ticket lady at United worked with us to find a plane that could get us to Miami and then to Curacao on Sunday the 28th. If we could then get ourselves to Bonaire we were in business and just a little delayed.

Logo stolen from DAN EUROPE site

Let me start by saying here publicly that my wife Michele is brilliant and better than I deserve. Before we even booked out trip she decided that we should pick up insurance and travel insurance from the Divers Alert Network (DAN). As she sat in the airport talking to them, she ended up getting an agent on the phone who started walking through the process of getting everything in place for the flight from Curacao to Bonaire. They truly were our heroes right there on the spot.

Sunday morning comes around and we make it to the airport to find that it is packed. Again with her brilliance, for anyone who travels a lot and is not on the TSA Trusted Traveler program - it is worth it. Even with literally hundreds of people in line, we simply took the express lane directly to the security checkpoint and walked right through.... shoes on, computers still in bags not those little grey trays.

Scoot off to Miami- eat a Cuban Sandwich there in the airport and jump our plane to Curacao where we are greeted by warm climates and palm trees.

Curacao is a lovely island - we have vacationed here before. The diving is beautiful. But is is not where we are headed --- our elusive isle of Bonaire is a mere 50miles away but alas --- too far for me to swim and we came in late enough that the other plane had alreayd left. Michele being brilliant as noted above had already booked us into a hotel - so we did an overnight in Curacao with plan for Bonaire in the morning.

Below are a couple of Curacao shots as we decided to make the most of our time here and headed to the beach. 

Of course I could not resist getting right to the water and risking a little splash even though my underwater housing was not yet unpacked.



As we walked the beach just trying to unwind from a crazy last couple of days we kept our eye open for anything interesting to take pictures of other than the grandure of the ocean (I have about a million shots of waves and horizon).


We found some small snail and a crab head perched on top of a piece of broken coral. Odd as it may be, seeing the crab head there elegantly perched on the coral as if it were a dining table made me smile. Nature is awesome and fun and interesting. Airport hassles and travel delays just washed away.

We finished our walk had an early diner and early bedtime, knowing that we had and early flight to Bonaire in the morning.

Looking out to boat docks from the dive center in Bonaire