It's Christmas Time in Bonaire!

Last this Blog saw Liz and I, we were in London.  Now, at the end of 2011 it finds me and my father in Bonaire.  We arrived this morning on a redeye out of Houston.  It wasn't miserable, but there isn't much fun about a 23 hour trip, door to door.

The good new is we have arrived on the lovely Island of Bonaire.  Atypically, it's a bit overcast and not as windy as normal.  It has rained twice in our first 8 hours here.  But that is also kind of a blessing really, freeing us from a feeling of guilt for the 4 hour nap we took post arriving.  Then we headed out to the new "Supermarket" on the island that everyone has been raving about.  This market really helps sum up the island for me.  It's the size of a large corner grocery back home.  If you have an IGA in your town, think that.  But for Bonaire, its the newest, best stocked, coolest thing on the island.  It was described to us with glee by someone who said, "now when we have guests, we don't have to make excuses and just eat what the market has in stock, if we want chicken and pasta, we can get chicken and pasta.  If we want beef, we know they will always have beef."  That's what I love about island life, its the small things that make you happy.

Dad and I ate at Bobby Jan's for lunch.  It's good BBQ, and only open on the weekends, so we had to get our fix now.  We then tried the local package store to get some good scotch, but alas, it was closed.  On to Lover's Ice Cream, home of some of the finest ice cream in the world for a take home quart.  While there we noticed that the electronic store next door happened to have free wi-fi, always a plus and good to know.  The house has internet, but not wireless, so with iPhones and an iPod, that's a handy thing to know.

I'll leave you for now with three more pictures.  Pardon the bluriness of the first two, they were taken at some distance with about 35X and my hand isn't the steadiest after 4 hours sleep over the last 36 hours.  While the location of the house if very quite from man made noises, it sounds like hundreds of these parrots surround us.  They are not unpleasant sounding, but they are darn loud!

The Brown-Throated, or Caribbean Parakeet

A Troupial

The view off our balcony to the south.  For those who have been here, those little white dots in the center of the top piece of land are the salt piles for the salt flats.  That's Klein Bonaire to the right.  This view is just as bold and huge to the  right of the picture, I just can't do a full panorama right now.  The view is a full 220 degrees, including the entire south of Bonaire, all of Klien Bonaire, and all the way up to the national park in the north.  On a clear day supposedly we can see Curacao.