We all slept in until after 8am!  Yeah!  How silly is it that we think that was sleeping in?  But it was.  We are usually up at dawn (545a-6a) so the extra few hours were very much appreciated.  We enjoyed a lazy morning, made breakfast, cleaned up the boat after the crossing and made a game plan for the day.

The first thing we noticed when we crawled out of bed was a giant cruise ship, which meant that the town would be crawling with tourists.   That’s ok, we can work around them.  We started off by heading to Immigration to finish our clearing in process.  They were very pleasant and informed us that we could stay for 91 days and if we wanted to stay longer we could apply for an extension.  Seemed simple enough, but we will have to circle back to that when our 91 days are up.  They did say that if we were to leave for 3 months the clock will be reset but that would not really work for us.  However, our time in Aruba and Curacao will not count as part of our 91 days.  We thought it might as they are all part of the Lesser Antilles, but they don’t – so that is good.  After we cleared in, we walked through the local market with lots of different vendors including clothing, glass jewelry, and the standard tourist items.  We then continued through town to find a small grocery store, laundry, Digicel (or Telbo), liquor store, and tour place.  Trying to get the lay of the land basically. It was a really lovely foot tour all along the coast.  We did find each of the stores we were looking for, but we did not find the large grocery store, cash and carry store (like Divico and Prime in St. Marten), the huge self-serve laundry facility, or really good liquor stores.  Tomorrow is another day, we shall keep searching.

It was pretty darn hot and around lunch time, so we decided to stop in for a cold one.  The place we chose was called “Watta burger” – can you believe it?  Not the same, WhataBurger, as in Texas, but pretty darn funny.  They had big hanging hammock chairs, great breeze, tasty snack foods and super-fast wifi!  Next, we headed to a dive shop to obtain our snorkeling permits.  Since the entire island is a National Park, you have to get a permit to do anything (fishing, snorkeling, diving).  We picked up 3 permits for $10 each and inquired about the diving permits.  Evidently, we will have to take a refresher course in order to get a diving permit (probably a good idea as it has been 12 years since my last dive).  We are going to have think on that one.  After that we decided to schedule an island tour for Wednesday and headed back to the boat to drop our boat paperwork off and then we hopped in the dinghy, found the Harbor Village Marina office and paid for our mooring.  They maintain the 40 moorings which are the only place you can be on the island.  Then we took Sweet N Low for a beach tour to find a cool beach bar.  We ended up at CoCo Beach Bar which had a really nice shady breezy area, cold beers, and good wifi.  (You notice a theme?)  We have not been able to find wifi for the boat so we are visiting a lot of places that offer it for their customers.

CoCo Beach bar provided ample shade and cool beverages.

Just takes your breath away

Stunning view – so blessed!

It had been a long day and we walked a fair distance, so we headed back to the boat.  Matt made his famous pork chop dinner and we enjoyed a quiet night on Sugar Shack.