We headed for the first restaurant that we saw was open last night which happened to be The Blue Bead advertised as French cuisine and pizzas.  We were greeted warmly and placed in a table that nearly had Bob falling backwards down the entrance steps.  We moved the table and chairs combination further in for safety.  The menu, when presented, appeared to be more American in style but we just wanted food to feed us.  The owner pounced on us, wafting blasts of freshly groomed poodle (I know this, Granny had a poodle) and carefully mincing in order to keep his toupee from slipping.  Stupidly I fell for his ply of ordering the “ever so special, it’s really delicious” (has to be said in camp American accent) snapper which I didn’t notice was priced at $30, yes really, $30.  Extortionate!  The food came, it was okay but my snapper overcooked, my salad (grated browning carrot, grated red cabbage rather stiff with a couple of onion rings), Bob’s burger greasy and the portions of gargantuan American size.  The beers were fine and the lovely woman serving an absolute delight with a larger than life real Southern chuckle and roll of the eyes.  I was curious to know how everyone seemed to operate in English despite the island being Dutch.  She explained how most of the people were from all over the world, mostly English speaking, and how the government had only just finished an experiment where they had made all schoolchildren learn in Dutch with disastrous effects.   She then couldn’t resist telling her story about when Prince Harry had come to dine at the Blue Bead last year and they weren’t really sure whether it was him or not.  Apparently when asked by the poodle man how he had enjoyed his meal he had said “okay”.  We concurred with Prince Harry.

What is the life span of a fly?  The stowaways were still pestering this morning.  This was particularly irritating as we hadn’t had a wink of sleep because of the incessant bucking bronco antics of Windy in the surge.  It just doesn’t let up.  Bob had resorted to sleeping on deck to get away from the creaks, groans and clunks (Windy not me) which helped me because I could centre myself in the bunk on the pivotal point thus reducing the angles of roll.  This morning, as a result, Bob was as optimistic as Eeyore and I counteracted by squeaking enthusiastically about everything under the sun like Piglet until being told gloomily that I “wasn’t helping”.  After our usual breakfast, cereal and banana, (although a roll would have been more appropriate)we packed our trunk and with intrepidation played the game of boarding the dinghy.  My glasses promptly fell off my face in the affray plopping into the heaving sea, it was them or me, and these are my special glasses which according to the optician are far too delicate to be strung with granny danglers.  Harrumph.  Bob very kindly reboarded and retrieved my spares from my handbag.  Thank heavens I have them.

Our trip was great fun.  We eventually made our way to the Botanical Gardens  along narrow concrete roads of varying deterioration, you most certainly could not speed, including a particularly bad bump which nearly took out the sump where the concrete had run out for a bit.  Signposting was minimal and the map not entirely accurate.  Fortunately we found a nice man to confirm where we were on the map and he told as we were by the Big Stone, which wasn’t as bit as anticipated being a major landmark and on the map was called the Big Rock.  We finally made our way to the Botanical Gardens which turned out to be more of nature project aimed at children.  It is in its very early days of development and the poor folks are battling a pernicious weed, one of those ones introduced as being so pretty but turned out to be a menace.  It was pleasant enough and we walked the bird trail, hearing quite a few, seeing a hummingbird, two butterflies and a few little lizards rustling about.  We left and as promised, carefully closed the gates behind us having seen an inordinate number of goats and a fair few cows (without EU ear tags so must be feral) on our way.  We returned via town, we had to, all roads leave to Oranjestad, and Bob popped into Customs and Immigration to check out.  We then headed to the other end of the island through the agricultural plain that runs between the old and new volcanoes, and headed for the beach where the turtles lay their eggs.  We had our picnic lunch overlooking a deserted beach (except for more cows) which I thoroughly enjoyed and Bob sat very still with gritted teeth being very, very careful not to get sand in his beer.  We walked along the remarkably squishily soft beach seeking turtle trails but only found Man and Child Friday’s (and their dog). Bob peeled off when he saw the car but I continued on.  It was lovely.

We are back on Windy, another really scary boarding and chilling before getting ready for our gala dinner this evening.  Its going to be fun getting on and off boats in my maxi dress and the chance of Bob’s longs staying dry is negligible.