Kitesurfing

We had a fun first full day! After breakfast this morning, Bill and I set up some of our activities for the rest of the week. Places are pretty booked for scuba so we may not get to do that, but there are plenty of other fun things to keep us busy. We rented a scooter and Bill is now driving us all over the island. We went downtown to see what was there and he took me to my kitesurfing lessons. He’s a very useful person. I would have been completely lost.

I tried kitesurfing this afternoon. As it turns out, I’m not a natural. It was really hard. I never even made it to trying out a board. My instructor started me out on land with a small kite so I could learn how to maneuver it and keep it in the air. I was pretty good at that part. Then we set up a much bigger kite to take out on the ocean. My instructor took the kite out with a board and had me swim out to the boat. I cracked my toe on a rock on the way out and it barely moves now. I had on really heavy equipment and barely managed to haul myself into the boat alone. With nothing to stand on, it takes some effort to pull yourself and kitesurfing equipment into a floating boat. It was not a smooth operation. Bill probably has video. Once we finally got out into the water, my instructor attached the kite to my harness and it almost immediately pulled me into the water. Before you get a board, you have to learn to control the kite while you are in the water, keep it in the air, and get it back up when it falls in. This is much tricker than it sounds. I lost a contact lens and swallowed a lot of ocean water. By the end of my 3 hour training session, I could keep the kite up and let it pull me among the top of the water for a while. Apparently that’s all most people do on the first lesson. It takes a lot of time in the water with the kite to master the process. My teacher said the first lessons is mostly an exercise in being drowned over and over. If you lose control, the kite just drags you through the water. I’m going to be sore in the morning. Kitesurfing is actually really dangerous if you don’t know what you are doing. There are lots of ways things can go wrong. The bigger kites can pull 800 lbs and really good kite surfers can do jumps 60 ft in the air. I’m glad I tried it even though it wasn’t as smooth as I’d hoped.

On the way to my kitesurfing lesson, we passed some of the salt flats where they produce salt from ocean water. That was neat. The process produces this fluffy white salt residue that flies around like bubbles. Bill had to wait for 3 hours on the beach while I did my kitesurfing lesson. It was very nice of him to give up the afternoon to wait during my lessons. Once we got back to the hotel, we did some snorkeling so we could try out our equipment and so Bill could have some time in the water. The water here is the bluest water I’ve ever seen and there are all kinds of colorful little fish just a few steps off our beach. We are planning to snorkel at Kline Bonaire, a small island marine refuge, in a few days where scuba and snorkeling are supposed to be even better. We are also thinking about doing a nighttime snorkel trip. I think they have bioluminescent sea animals here so that would be neat! We’ve also set up a 4-wheeler tour of a nature reserve and a bat cave and we are planning to do a mangrove kayak tour.

The food is good and there is plenty of it! The accommodations are also nice. Bonaire is not the most beautiful place I’ve been. It’s very arid, dry and scrubby, but the water is spectacular and I think some of the nature reserves will be nice. There’s also always a nice breeze that keeps things cooler than you would expect. This place is really about the water and there are lots of divers. All the equipment is rented out which is why we may not get to dive. There are lots of Dutch people here, which I guess is not surprising since it’s a Dutch island. Everybody speaks English though so it’s fine. I think the Island only has 18,000 residents and even though big cruise ships come in, its surprisingly uncrowned. We had the beach and the pool mostly to ourselves this afternoon, and driving around, there are mostly empty beaches everywhere. The island is doing a lot of building so maybe it will be more crowded in a few years. Right now, it’s fantastic. I was really concerned that it would be super crowded since it’s Christmas break for everyone, but that’s not the case at all.

There are Christmas decorations up here, but sunny, warm weather and beaches doesn’t make things seem like Christmas. Some of the palm trees have been decorated with lights and there are some Christmas trees here. They seem very out of place.

Bill is working on his update, but I’m out of energy writing mine. I’ll probably have more tomorrow!

Merry Christmas to everyone!