Cuts and bruises, no excuses!

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Coming to an end… Our stay in Bonaire is drawing to an end, and today (Friday) we head out to Miami to meet up and stay with Eriks brother Inigo and his wife Marian, we are really looking forward to see them. (Lucky for Mille and me, Marian enjoys shopping like we do and has set up Saturday like a real shopping spree!)

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This 3rd and last week has, like the previous 2, flown by so fast. Mille and I had surf lessons with surfpro Danielle and its really given results. Jibing, tacking, harness, planing, smaller board, larger sail – its such an amazing experience, this is going to be really expensive for Erik when we get home! Not only will he have to share his equipment, we ned 2-3 new harnesses, several sails and maybe 1 or 2 boards, hehe! And since we’ve all been practicing on carbon equipment here, well you do the math! But surfing does come at a bodily price – I ve looked like I’ve been beaten ands slashed up for 3 weeks.. You know, the fin is really sharp, so its a really bad idea to get p….. off and then shove hard at the board while you bend your knee up towards it… Just saying… But now wounds and bruises are starting to heal, and Jibe City is in the far distance – we will definitely return to the place! Tom, Patrick and all the other surfer guys help you with all the equipment and advise and the sweetest ladies in the reception are one of a kind! If you have the opportunity to go to Bonaire, and you like surfing; go to Jibe City, I promise you will have the ride of a lifetime!

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Lek lek kitchen was a really nice experience. A Dutch couple (a friend of the family we met and said goodbye to last week) are running a really nice thai style restaurant that is only open on Mondays, you need a reservation and you will get to know it only by hearsay! They make vegan, vegetarian or with meat to your liking, and I must say it was one of the most delicious Thai-meals I’ve ever had, does really get up there with thaifood we’ve had in Thailand! They actually had a real tiny baby Hummingbird living on the branches of a small tree in the restaurant (the eating area was outside). It sat so still that we could hardly believe it was real. We are all trying out vegetarian food and even Erik has tested out (and quite liked) yoga! So before you know it, this all-over-the-place-family will become the zen-family of Lyckligagatan! Who would have thought??? Joking aside, this is really good for us!

“På gjensyn” – Strangely enough there is no good English word for “see you again”, therefore the Norwegian expression will have to do! We will miss surfing, all the sweet people at Oasis guest house, Jibe and so on. The last week has been filled with different delicious home-made barbecues by Kim and Dithlef (Kim and Johns friend that is visiting) and meals out with Kim, John, the other guests living here; Andrej, Shana, Dithlef (all from Holland) and a few others that we did not quite have time to befriend because they just arrived. Yesterday we hung out with and said our goodbyes to our surf instructors D&P and had a nice time with them at Ocean oasis (a beach resort near the Guest house where you can rent sunbeds for the day and swim and snorkle in the sea). Mille and Noah played in the sea with their sweet little girl, who’s become Milles mini friend here in Bonaire, making Milles stay on the surf beach bearable, because she could play with her and have fun even as the rest of the family was surfing.

Ocean Oasis is a beautiful hip beach club/restaurant/hotel located right on the seafront. However, what is most intriguing is that right next to the fashionable beach club is a ghostlike unfinished huge residens with lots of (quite beautiful) graffiti. It now belongs to Ocean Oasis and word has it that they are going to build a hotel there, but years ago this residens was being built for Pablo Escobar! When you visit the beach club you can wander over there and into the residence. Mille, Noah and I found it extremely fascinating, and we walked through the whole place, dark corners and all. We found rooms with an irongate (could it have been Pablos private dungeon for imprisoning his enemies?), bathrooms that had been dismantled missing the sinks, bathtubs and mirrors, beautiful ceramic mosaic patterns of white, blue and red in the entrances and stairways – our imagination ran quite wild! Erik left after a short while but the other three of us could barely pull ourselves out of there…

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Thinking outside the box – during our stay here we’ve gotten around with a Toyota Hilux. It has made quite a lot of noise, but as I picked up Erik from his solo surfing one afternoon the sound rised to a roar and then there was a “clang”…. I stopped the car to find the muffler hanging down underneath it. Luckily the back hatch of the Hilux is defect so it was held together by a long belt. We crawled under the car and fastened the belt around the muffler and two the one side of the car, Erik got into the back and held on to the other belt end and we got the car and the muffler home. As we are on an island, getting new parts for a car isn’t the same as back home, but a Coca Cola can with top and bottom removed works perfectly, and now the car runs smoothly, just making a little sound when changing between 1st and 2nd gear! The Hilux is therefore now renamed “the Coca Cola car”!

“Bon bini na Bonaire” – means welcome to Bonaire in Papiamentu. This is an Aruban language spoken on the Dutch Caribbean islands of Aruba, Bonaire, Curacao and St.Eustatius. It contains elements of 5 languages; Spanish, English, French, Portuguese and Dutch. It was also influenced by Arawak Indian and African languages. (Papiamento in Aruba, Papiamentu in Bonaire and Curacao).

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Ayo, Bonaire, te aworo! – Goodbye Bonaire, see you later!

And of course special thanks to Kim, John, Kenzo(our running buddy beautiful dog) and Dushi (the sweetest sweetie dog, just as the name implies – Dushi=sweetie).

We are definitely returning…