Dec 20 Bonaire

 Surprisingly, Bonaire means "flat" and not the "good air" you'd thing it would be. And our journey today would show just how flat it is.

 We dock after noon because it's a long way from Miami.

This is the Douane, or Customs House. Originally colonized by the Spanish, the island was taken over by Netherlands in 1636.  It is currently a special department of the Dutch.

Artistic view of gangway.

Some burros run wild on the island.

We took an excursion to some tourist sites.  First is Seru Largu, or large hill, with an elevation of 400 feet.  Compared to some other volcanic islands of the Caribbean, Bonaire is indeed flat.

Monument on the hill.

Here's a particularly hardy cactus used as a fence.  Unlike other cacti, the burros can't knock off the spines and push them over.

Church with Christmas lights

Roundabout Christmas tree

The southern end of island was prized for its salt flats.  Cargill continues to extract sea salt here.

The ship pulls up and is loaded with salt.

The parking lot was gravelled with coral.  At first I thought it was extruded concrete, but it's actually dead coral broken up and used as paving.

The salt was originally harvested by enslaved Africans.  When working the salt flats, they stayed in these slave huts.  For sizing, the openings you see are the doors, about 3 feet high.  As many as 7 slaves spent the night in one of them.

In olden days, before large cargo ships and huge conveyor belts, there ware four docks for ships to berth and load salt.  As ship would arrive, the terminal would raise a flag with one of four colors.  That would direct the ship to the corresponding dock marked by a colored pylon.

Flamingoes love the salt flats, or more specifically, the brine shrimp that live there.

About a mile away from where I stood there was a huge colony of flamingos which looks like a long pink beach.

Christmas display along the beach

Final stop, a tourist beach at Sorobon Beach.

Dec 17 Christmas Cruise from Miami

 Hi there.  Attempting to avoid potential  building repairs and just go somewhere, we joined our old friend Oceania's Insignia with a room right next to the one we occupied for 180 days going around the world.  

As is customary for Oceania, particularly in Miami, they royally fouled up the check-in.  The ship was 5 hours late arriving due to storms (we had tropical storm winds the night before).  Oceania helpfully sent out an email saying the ship was delayed, don't arrive until 2pm, which we received at 10:30am, after we had already arrived at the terminal for our 11:00 check-in.

Insignia arriving late, accompanied by two tugboats as it was still quite windy.

To continue to fu, once they were ready to board passengers they did nothing for crowd control.  There were boarding groups assigned by by number.  They were stanchions and ropes to create lanes for people to queue for the check-in people.  But when they called a group number, everyone just stormed the check in desk leaving the queues far behind.  And why you finished check-in, the swarm of people pushing to fill your spot made it near impossible to move away and get to the gangway.

Just a little coordination getting people into the queues would have worked wonders.  When I talked to the Executive Concierge, he blamed it all on the late arrival and refused to accept any responsibility for anything that followed.

But when we got on board things improved.  Lot of Christmas decorations.

The Miami skyline at dusk is always pretty.  They now have Ferris wheel, because every town needs one.

Two days of chugging through the ocean followed.  It's a surprisingly long trip to the ABCs off the coast of South America.  We've spent enough money with Oceania that we get invited to wine tasting events.  This one was French wines.  And cute little bites to go along with each one.  It's all wasted on me, but I enjoy the pomp and ceremony.

Something for everyone to aspire to.