A Day in Bonaire

Our second stop was the island of Bonaire.  It's a small, quiet island.  We met up with our excursion group at the port and hoppped on a bus to our excursion location.  The buildings in Bonaire are very colorful and we enjoyed seeing the donkeys munching on grass on the sides of the roads. We admired familar car brands and models of their cars that we had never seen before.  We got dropped off at a beautiful resort to meet our sail boat captains for the day.

We were in a group of 14 or so people all from our cruise ship.  The captains escorted us to our sailboat where we took off our shoes and boarded the boat.  One of our darling children accidentally flipped his Croc straight into the ocean instead of straight into the shoe box.  Luckily, our captain saved the Croc and we went on our way.

The water was calmer than Aruba and everywhere we looked was lovely.  None of us had ever been on a sail boat before.  We sailed for an hour, waving hello to our Cruise ship, put our anchor down and snorkled for about 30 minutes and sailed back for another hour.  Yummy drinks and snacks were flowing.  The crew than ran the sailboat were so nice to the kids.  They answered all of their questions and explained everything that was happening on the boat.  We sat inside the boat with the kids and had a great time.  It would have been really hard for everyone to hang on and be safe if the kids would have had to sit on the outside edges of the boat.

The rum punch was unlimited.  I'm thrilled to say that a lot of punch was consumed and we didn't spill a drop of it.

Leo asked a million questions about fish, sail boats, steering wheels, the wind, the boats we passed and more.  Our captain spoke Dutch to his crew mates and English to answer all of the kid's questions.  They were fascinated by all of it.

This excursion had no age requirements to participate, but Kevin would be the first to tell you that this was an advanced excursion.  It was a challenge for our great swimmers and they all came back to the boat exhausted.  It was more challenging than we expected.  They had fun, but the highlight of our excursion was the sailing.

Gorgeous homes.  Gorgeous views.

We loved sailing here!  If you wanted to snorkle at your own pace, relax and walk on a beach, we'd recommend finding a local beach and directing your own adventure. The kids didn't get to snorkle as much or on their own timeline like they would have wanted to.  However, the gorgeous, very nice sail boat was such a fun experience.  Bonaire was definitely the smallest, quietest island we visited.