It’s been nine years. We had been busy with our lives, and we just hadn’t been back.

Nine years.

Work, grandchildren, kids, family, other vacations, friends, theater and life itself filled up that time.

We’ve been planning this return now for about a year. Actually, Mary is the one who did all the planning. She would simply show me the car rental or the apartment that she was thinking of and ask for my opinion. (That’s how all our vacations are done. She scours the internet looking for wonderful places and the best accommodations at reasonable prices. Then she shows the results to me, and I say, “Yup.” If it were up to me, we’d never leave home.)

Bonaire is a tiny, crescent-shaped island, 21 miles long and 7 miles wide with 14,000 permanent residents.

It is just short of a seven-hour plane trip to get here from CT. Yesterday morning, we awoke at 2:30 a.m., caught a Delta flight out of Bradley International Airport in Windsor Locks, CT at 5:55 a.m. Arrived in Atlanta, GA at 8:45 a.m.. We then boarded another Delta jet to Bonaire at 9:40 a.m., and landed in Bonaire at 2 p.m. our time, 3 p.m. Bonairean time.

Bonaire is part of the Netherlands Antilles islands, which consists of a number of islands, including  Aruba, Bonaire, Saba and Curacao. It is situated in the southern Caribbean Sea, about fifty miles off Venezuela

During the rainy season, it may rain for about fifteen minutes a day. Then the skies clear out and the trade winds start up again, and the rest of the day is spectacular.

This is my twelfth trip to the island and Mary Ellen’s eighteenth. To us, it is heaven on earth.

We first started coming to Bonaire twenty years ago. Much has changed in Bonaire during that time. The studio apartment we used to rent on Kaya Kachi that overlooked the water changed owners and is no longer available. There is A LOT more traffic.Kentucky Fried Chicken is here. Too bad. ‘Nuff said.

Much construction is taking place. Condos and second homes for the affluent European folks, whose euro is worth twice as much as the American dollar, are building and buying them up in droves.

If you do not dive, then there is not much to do on the island.  The place is a scuba diving Mecca. There is only one movie theater, with two screens,  and only one, small casino.

There are a couple of places for windsurfing and kite surfing.

There are no beaches. The shores of Bonaire are covered with coral and lava rocks.

There are also some fantastic restaurants. (Our favorite is Richard’s Restaurant. There,  you eat under the stars with The Caribbean Sea lapping at your feet, meet the owner, and have the BEST seafood in the world and the best beef that Venezuela has to offer. But more on Richard’s in another post.)

Right now, Mary is preparing for our first dive.

I must confess, I am a bit nervous. So is she. We will dive off Kaya Kachi, pretty much right out in front of our apartment here. The purpose is to simply get acclimated with the diving experience once again, check our neutral buoyancy techniques, and get over the fears that always grab me just before the first dive of each vacation.

Above is the view from our balcony, overlooking the pool and the Caribbean Sea

That's me on the balcony, busily typing a new blog post for later publication.