On Friday, we again slept in a bit, then got in our truck and headed out to find a dive site highly recommended–“Something Special,” just south of us. We didn’t find it, and just continued south to explore further. It was a day when we did dive–eventually hitting “The Lake” dive site–but also just got out of the resort and started to get a sense of the broader island.

We drove south, past the salt mining center (will post pix of salt pond, salt piles, and the pier which loads ships with salt), the southern tip of the island (lighthouse), and up the eastern side. The waters are considerably more rough on the windward side, the east, and it’s easy to see why there really aren’t any dive sites indicated on the map’s eastern shore.

We passed an area just past the southern tip which was filled with kite surfers, and a host of folks teaching kite surfing. We see kite surfers in Surf City, and there’s something quite beautiful about watching these big, beautifully colored kites propelling surfers along the water’s surface.

A bit further along was a little resort area on the eastern coast, and that little resort is in an isolated bay where their focus is wind surfing. We stopped in there on our drive post-dive just to get some water. And seeing the shore filled with sun-bathers and those learning and practicing wind-surfing was just another flavor of the island. This resort, judging by the language predominant in the bar area, is almost entirely Dutch.

We kept driving as the road now turned west, crossing the island back towards the main city of Kralendijk, then north to our spot at Buddy Dive Resort. Most of the ride was pretty desolate, but everywhere there is evidence of building projects in process. Most of those projects seem to have stalled, but it’s hard to know, to be honest, as there is equipment on these sites, just not active at the moment.

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I’m going to spend a bit of time this morning downloading images from the GoPro, and I hope things came out well enough to share here…so I’ll get to that now.