In Curacao but not feeling blue.

Bamboozle
Jamie and Lucy Telfer
Sat 15 Aug 2009 21:41
12:04.688N 068:51.488W
 
Although we spent as much time as we could in, or mainly under, the water (we dived almost every day for over three weeks) we did also find time to explore some of the sights of Bonaire on land.  I decided to take Lucy on a scenic cycle tour in search of the islands famous flamingos. It turned into a bit more of a expedition than I had planned as it would seem that the maker of the local tourist map had either never visited Bonaire or had (to say the least) a bit of a problem with his scale.  Having embarked on what was marked as a 7 or 8km loop we soon figured out that the round trip was going to be a lot more like 35km.  Like mad dogs (and Englishmen) we had set off at midday in the blazing heat armed only with sandwiches and a couple of litres of water. It was only just enough, and if it was not for these supplies our sun-bleached bones might still be littering the windswept windward coast road.  
 
From Bonaire it was just a short 35 mile hop on to Curacao (the C of the ABC islands) where we are now anchored in Spanish Water, a wonderfully protected anchorage, with a large residential population of cruising boats.  It is a much bigger island and the capital city Willemstad is a colourful world heritage site that looks rather like Amsterdam has been repainted and moved to the tropics.  Sadly we are only making a brief stay here to collect a few spares and plan to head off in the next few days along the coast towards Cartagena in Colombia.  We have been working hard on our very iffy Spanish but do not even feel slightly ready for our first radio conversation with the Columbian Coastguard.
 
"Buenos dias. Me illamo Bamboozle!" 
 
 
Lucy smiling before she discovered how far we had to cycle
 
 
 
Pretending I am still enjoying myself  while suffering from heat exhaustion
and a sore bum!
 
 
Mountains of salt along our route.  The water in the pans turns a weird purple colour as
the salt concentration rises during the process
 
 
At last "Flamingos!" spotted on the port bow.
 
We joined Michael & Barbara from Astarte for the walking tour of historic Kralendijk......
We suspect we might be the first people ever to take this self guided tour which conveniently
coincided with happy hour in several of the bars along the route. What we discovered on
the tour is that not much historic has ever happened in Kralendijk but that it has some nice
pubs! 
 
 
Willemstad .....are we really still in the Caribbean?
 
 
The unique floating bridge that pivots open on these floats to allow shipping through into
the main harbour
 
 
A happy skipper servicing the generator.  I wasn't smiling quite so much 6 hours later while
still trying track down and fix a small saltwater leak on the cooling system!