Tuesday September 20

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After eating our own breakfasts in our rooms, we headed out for the Arikok National Park. Of course, on the way we saw the crazy airplane parked in someone’s backyard – in the center of the island. Supposed to eventually be a restaurant? It’s about 50’ off the ground, accessible by an open staircase.

We managed to avoid scraping the bottom of the car on all those crazy draining ditches across the road. The blues and turquoises were magnificent against the beige of the sand and the white of the surf. We hiked down to the Boca Prins waters. Actually there was significantly less surf still on this wild side of the island. We went into the further cave first – the “clean cave,” so called because there are 2 types of bats living in the cave – a fruit-eating bat and an insect-eating one. The latter keeps the cave clean of bugs. Bravo, Amy, who is none too fond of bats. Then we went back to the Fontein Cave, with only fruit-eating bats but with many ancient drawings of the indigenous people. The guide, who looked like one would imagine an Arawak Indian might look, said he had to go all the way in when he first joined the park service, and once again, and never had to do it again – too many narrow bits and creepy crawly things. At this place there was a banana plantation nearby, with natural springs or cisterns or something – water always there, which is amazing. So we also saw about 20 goats wending their way down to the greener areas. And Amy and I sat on the little bridge with our feet in the stream to have the little fish nibble on our toes – free pedicure!! It really tickled. And some of those fish were a good 5” long!! The guys couldn’t be bothered to take off socks and shoes.

We then continued on to Zee Rover for lunch, and the line wasn’t terribly long – 15 min wait? But they had already run out of whole red snapper. So, did we want mahi mahi steaks or amberjack (bit dry in my opinion), or red snapper tails. What?! Well, we’ll try them. Actually, it was about 4” of the back end, not including the tail fins, and the meat was great. AND we lucked out once again and got to sit out on the pier at one of the 3 picnic tables out there. Some other people out there started tossing food bits into the water and we saw a huge porcupine fish, and some sort of jack. At first we thought they were mahi mahi, but they lacked the dorsal fin, upon checking the fish book. Poor Michel is worked off his feet, as usual, but we were able to give him some hugs, introduce him to Tom and Amy, and give him his Mom’s gift of a large maple syrup, and a jar of apple butter for him.

We then stopped at Mangel Halto yet again – and it was smooth as glass again. So if our west coast doesn’t calm tomorrow, we’ll go off the M.H. Tom and Amy are happy to enjoy the turquoise shallows, and we’ll do the drift snorkel.

We had 3 hours until time to leave for the BonBini Festival at Fort Zoutman. Tom did some work; Amy tried the “big water” and got rolled too much in the waves so ended up in the pool (that is, she decided to get in the pool instead); we got into our snorkel gear and headed to Tres Trapi but were thwarted again! The seas are still very very high and no one was in the water there or at the “infinity pool” where we entered on Sunday. So we jumped into the pool - which we usually reserve for our very last day!

OK – what will the BonBini Festival be like? We found out that it’s the first time it’s started up again, and there was no food after all. But it was also free, so…. And it was amazing. A small band played some music. Very young dancers illustrated a variety of traditional dances. An emcee was very personable. History was interesting, including some photos projected up onto a wall, etc. The tinkee linkee music box of course. Audience participation. They ended with a festival band (6-8 drums, 2-3 trumpets, trombones) and 4 people dressed in the huge feathers and sequins. Really fun. We were starving by then, however, so just had some appetizers at the Island Grill on site.

(Correction to yesterday’s bird identification – it was an American kestrel, not a peregrine falcon.) AND PLEASE FORGIVE THE FACT that the photos may not be in order for the chronology. The internet was so slow in uploading and only did some, so I had to finish this morning. Have a good day!

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