Every week here in Bonaire we go through pretty much the same routine. Work and play around the boat Monday through Thursday, then rent a truck, get groceries, dive, windsurf, and explore all weekend. It’s not always bad to be repetitious.

The mooring field has filled up. We’re now at the point where cruisers stuck in the marina are going boat to boat asking when people are leaving, in order to try and secure a spot.

Klein Bonaire sits less than a mile away.

Ouest and Lowe ran off to look for treasures on the beach, and soon came back loaded with garbage.

Beachcombing. Ba dum bum.

Visiting everyone’s favorite donkey.

If I ever have a dirt house (not sure what else to call them), it’s gonna have a bocce court.

Diving Salt Pier. It’s always kind of fun to dive around man-made structures like a pier. Fish love to congregate underneath, and there’s usually some pretty unique coral formations.

The dive shop has made a special effort to always have smaller tanks available for the kids, even hiding some in the back room for us, but today they were out. It’s kind of funny to see how huge that thing is hanging on Lowe’s back.

We’ve seen quite a few of these big green moray eels here in Bonaire. I love watching these unique creatures move through the water.

This was the first time we’d seen other divers in the water at the same time as us. Bonaire just opened up flights from the U.S. again, and it is amazing how quickly the place filled up. A week earlier we could drive along and maybe one out of five dive spots would have a pickup parked in front of it, while now there are two or three trucks at each one.

This is the windward side of the island. The plastic bottles float in on the ocean and get blown up and across the barren landscape until that’s all you can see.

Ouest took this picture while looking for a geocache. Ali and I had parked in the shade while the kids ran off to find the geocache. If you don’t know, a geocache is just a small container hidden somewhere that you go find using a GPS (phone), then write your name in the logbook and exchange little trinkets. Anyway, they ran off then came back shortly afterwards complaining that there were bats flying around in the cave and they thought they’d seen a snake trail. I told them there are no snakes on Bonaire, and that bats aren’t going to hurt them, and then sent them off again.

We sat there for quite a while, and finally started to wonder why they hadn’t come back yet. I knew they should be within a couple hundred feet of us, so I called out to them. No reply. I walked a bit, found the cave and called some more. Nothing. I called as loud as I could. Nothing. I went into the cave and realized quickly how deep it actually was. Fifty yards in and it was too dark to see anything. I kept calling. No reply.

It’s been a long time since I’ve felt it, but I got one of those shivers you get as a parent, when you know everything is fine, but there is a niggling doubt. Surely I didn’t “bat shame” them into disappearing deep into a cave? Why weren’t they answering me? This cave couldn’t be so deep they couldn’t hear me yelling, could it?

Finally, Ali called in to me that she could hear them. They had gone off climbing, thinking the geocache might be on top of the caves, or some such thing. Instead of being fifty yards away from us, they had been a couple hundred, after turning themselves in circles and getting trapped by an area of solid cactus. They heard me calling, and had called back, but the trade winds must have carried them away.

I’m not easily fazed. I sometimes wonder if my body even produces adrenaline. But for one minute those damn kids sure got it pumping again.