By daylight the moorings turned out to be superb. It's just off the town so easy for shopping and exploring and you're aware of the sounds of life going on but there's nothing that will keep you awake at night. The reef drop off is literally a few feet behind the stern of the boat and a collection of striped Sergeant Major fish set up home under us straight away, along with a fair selection of others. When I swam they came right up to suss me out and followed me around for a while, in case I had a secret supply of food along. You know I said it was clear water? Well, we were in about 5 or 6 meters but this is what it looks like over the side:

You can just look over and watch the fishes passing...

Bonaire seems to have a bit of an identity crisis: it's a Dutch Island, but it's a Caribbean Island, but it's just off Venezuela. Even the language is confused: it's 'Bon dia" for good morning, like the Spanish of South America, but it's "Danki" for thank you, like the Dutch. The houses have gables like in Amsterdam but they are painted bright Caribbean colours and the hedges are made of cacti like in Venezuela.

All this means that the music has a great South American feel to it, the fruit and veg come over from Venezuela by boat daily, the supermarkets are stocked with Dutch liquorice, kids have their shoes filled with gifts on December the 6th and the cafe's have the Caribbean feeling of stepping out of the fast lane, into 'Island Time'. Sounds good to me!

So we're very happy on our new mooring, the only negative being that so close to shore the mosquitoes make the journey so the nights are punctuated by wild slapping in the dark coupled with groping for the Avon Skin-So-Soft. We're resisting deet for the moment  and favouring cool air flow versus mosquito netting. I wonder if cicada eat mosquito...