Day 7, Friday, October 9, 2009.
We got up and had some breakfast and headed down to the hotel pier to do our final dive of the trip. As usual there were lots of shrimp and eels to photograph and we also got some good photos and video of some squid as we were headed back in at the end of our dive. After the dive we took all our gear up to the room and got it cleaned up as best we could so it could start drying out before we had to pack it up for the flight home.
After we got cleaned up, we headed down to Dive Friends to return our tanks and weights and settle our bill there. Then we headed downtown to have our final lunch at “Mandy's Place.” By now you can probably guess what Eric and I both had to eat there. After lunch we did a little souvenir shopping. Then we headed to the north end of the island to get some wildlife photos. Our little jaunt to photograph the parrots became quite frustrating.
As we were driving along the coast we managed to spot our first pair of parrots. Eric was able to get out and take some photos of them before they flew away. Little did we know these would probably be the best parrot photos we would get on our entire little “safari.” Then we headed to lake Gotomeer, which is a flamingo sanctuary. On the road to the lake we actually got some good photos of a fairly large iguana before he ran off. Unfortunately, almost all of the flamingos were too far away to get any good photos. I told Eric the ones we did get pictures of looked like pink swans as they were standing in water clear up to their bodies.
We continued on around the rest of the north end of the island in our search for more parrots. Every time we actually managed to spot any that were fairly close to the road they would fly off just as Eric got ready to take a picture. We was getting very frustrated with them. After several hours of chasing down parrots we made it back to our hotel room and began the task of packing everything up for our early morning flight back home.
Day 8, Saturday, October 10, 2009.
We got up about 4:30 a.m. (1:30 a.m. Phoenix time) and started getting ready to head to the airport. About the time we decided to start taking all our luggage down to the car, it started to rain. We decided to wait a few minutes and see if it would let up. Unfortunately, it was no caribbean shower, it was a steady downpour that did not appear to have any end in sight. We had no choice but to head out into the rain.
We loaded our luggage into the car and headed to the car rental return. Of course that is all out in the open also. Since I was driving the “microcar,” I managed to find a place to park in a lake that had formed at the back of the packed parking lot. We unloaded all of our luggage into the rain and parked it in front of the return counter. The rental car building had a tiny overhang to get out of the rain. Unfortunately, that overhang turned out to be the hangout spot for every mosquito on the island that wanted to get out of the rain too. I decided I would rather stand in the downpour than get chewed up any more than I already was.
After we finally got the paperwork taken care of for our rental car, we each grabbed two pieces of luggage and started our run across the airport parking lot to check in for our flight. Once we made it across the parking lot, we encountered the very long check-in line for our flight. The Bonaire airport check-in counter area is all open air, so even though we managed to keep out of the rain, we still had to deal with more mosquitos. Many people in line decided to change and put on some dry clothes. We all looked like drown rats. The people who decided to change into dry clothes only stayed dry for a short time.
After a short wait in the terminal, they started to load passengers onto the plane. After the ticket agent took our boarding pass, we exited the building and went out onto the tarmac to make a mad dash to the airplane which was parked quite a ways out. Then we proceed up the stairs and into the plane. By this time everyone was sufficiently soaked again. Fortunately, almost every seat had a blanket and a pillow so everyone used their blanket to bundle up in to keep warm.
The rest of our trip home was thankfully uneventful. By the time we made it home we had finally dried out, but it was a different story for our luggage. When we got home and opened up our luggage everything was wet. Fortunately, we did not have anything that would be ruined by the water.
All in all, it was an excellent trip and of course it went by way too fast.
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