Hey there,
Well we’re out of here. We had a lot of fun while we were here tho’.
Willemstad – the main town /city is a lovely place. It has the typical Dutch type buildings that we haven’t seen since S.Africa. The town is very clean & there is no litter lying around, & there are heaps of garbage bins everywhere – a pleasant change from the other half of the Caribbean. There is one enormously high bridge over the waterway into the harbour area that we drove over – quite intimidating! Then there’s a foot-bridge over the same waterway that floats & is moved to one side to let boats in. While that happens free ferries operate from side to side for the pedestrians. At the market place the fishing boats park right behind the fruit & veg stalls, & there we we saw the one fishing boat that was at Barlovento while we were there. They must come here to sell their fish.
The people are very friendly & most speak Dutch, English & Spanish – apparently they learn them all at school. They are a good mixture of all the 3 and then some Chinese too.
Wally & Hennie from ‘Brandal 3’ very kindly lent us their car & we took a drive around the island. It is quite dry tho’ they’ve had a reasonable amount of rain quite recently. On the windward side they have a ‘Wind Farm’ with 12 huge wind generators. There are flat plains where the island looks like it was under the water & has now lifted. It looks very desert-like. We found some fossilised coral type things in the rocks.
There are pretty beaches & snorkelling around the protected side of the island. Also around there are salt flats where they used to collect salt in the days of the slaves! The kids got all excited when we saw some flamingos around there. Apparently they were blown away from Bonaire in a strong storm & landed up here. Des had a few nervous twitches driving on the wrong side of the road & I was sacked as navigator, but other than that we had a really good day.
OK, so where to from here? It should take us about a week to get to San Blas Islands (676miles from here).
We will take a couple of days break there & then head into Panama. So I’ll give you a shout from there!
Cheerio & hope all is well on your side of the world.
Des, Ally, Russ & the wandering monsters.

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