Adjusted Reality

The first part of my vacation in Bonaire is HERE.  Let’s pick up Wednesday morning when I woke up, hoping my ears would be OK…

Wednesday

I woke up, and honestly, my ears didn’t feel that great.  They also did not feel any worse, so I figured the most terrible thing that could happen is I’d try to descend, my ears wouldn’t let me, and I’d have to snorkel the shallower stuff.  Life would go on.

Cereal and yogurt, my new official diving breakfast, went down the hatch, and we headed out to catch the boat and head up to the North side of the island.  The boat was just our dive friends by proximity (we saw them evvvverywhere) Dave and Ang, the crew, and us.  Good stuff.

It made for a GREAT morning diving Country Garden and Small Wall. One thing you don’t realize when you mostly do cruise ship diving or one day boat trips, is how awesome it is to not have 5 million other people around, scaring the fish, kicking you, getting in your way (it happens).

Our first divemaster kinda left us in the dust on the way back, but we were all big enough adults to handle it.

Small wall was pretty cool, as it’s the wall pictured on all the dive textbooks for the certification classes.  It was pretty amazing to see – though there wasn’t all that much fauna.

I rolled sans wetsuit again, and it worked out ok for me.  I did put my knee into some coral that stung (I actually had some rash from it for a few weeks), but that’s how you learn how to be careful, right?  After the dive, I went and scoped out some rash guards, but deemed them to be unnecessary and too expensive.

Instead of a huge lunch, we just snacked a bit to get some calories down, and went to the Cliff dive site at the Hamlet Dive Inn.  This was our most challenging entry yet.  You had to tank up at the top of some rocky stairs and walk everything down, and the entry itself was pretty rocky.  Balancing 60+ more lbs then you’re used to in the surge and slippery rocks… makes me really glad I’m not as heavy as I was in my mid-20s!

Another energy bar went down the hatch, and we decided to make it our first 4-dive day.  We hit up the house reef and went out with the intention to find the octopus we saw hiding in the tire, but instead found our turtle friend to play with.  This time, I had plenty of camera battery, so I got to play paparazzi and had a blast.

We saw our boat friends hanging out at the dive center, and when we all confirmed we were done diving for the day, we had a few beers together.  The coolest thing about diver friends is that they LOVE hearing about what you saw in the water, instead of their eyes glazing over when you talk about the specific type of nudibranch you saw at 35 feet down or whatever.  We chatted until they had to go for their fancy reservations and then got ready for a dinner of our own.

We just went to the bar/restaurant on the property, which also houses the resort’s pool.  It was very Bonaire.  We started with some delicious beef empanadas and fried plantains and some margs.  Over 3 hours of diving = you get to have guilt free fruity drinks.  I got them to combine two dishes for me because I am obnoxious but cajun veggie pasta with shrimp was EXACTLY what I was craving and it was amazing.

We spent the evening drinking a bottle of wine with all the windows open listening to a very LOUD concert happening up the street and checking out footage.  Vacation mode was definitely in full effect – the music made it just that much more awesome.

Thursday

I was out of yogurt, so I had an Oatmega bar and cereal as replacement dive breakfast.  Funny story about those bars – we encountered a gal in our work parking garage with boxes and boxes of them and commented that we liked them!  Apparently she was a promoter and had them packed up to give out at a race that weekend, so she sent us on our way with about 20 various bars.  We thought they’d be perfect for vacation.

Well, some of them were a little… stale.  And when Oatmega bars get stale, they get FISHY.  I was able to stomach some of them, but some I just took a bite and threw away.

The combo of beer/wine/margs and the late night of music thumping meant we were up a little later than expected, so we were UP a little later than expected, so we were the last ones on the boat.  Oh well.  They didn’t leave without us, and we had our gear set up quickly and didn’t mess up the schedule, so all was well.

It was a totally full boat, so not as nice as the day before, but still had two great dives at Monty’s Divi and Carl’s Hill back out at Klein Bonaire.  I feel like I’m usually pretty decent at scuba, but I did almost sit on one girl’s head underwater on accident.  *shrug* scuba is a little awkward.

Being underwater ~3 hours every day just started to feel natural.  I remember feeling such LOVE for it right then, and that my (scuba) life goal was to take pictures that were so beautiful, more people wanted to get over their fears and uncertainties (and, frankly, annoyances… dealing with scuba gear is not easy) and get certified and become divers.

Just as I was in my euphoric state of bliss, Zliten’s pressure gauge started leaking.  He went from half a tank to a third of a tank REAL quick-like.  I was about to give him my extra air and go with him back to the boat, but when we asked the dive master to point the way back, he ended up taking Zliten himself.  That’s fine.  That’s why they’re there.  It was nice to be calm about the whole thing.

At Carl’s hill, right at the end, we saw this GIANT turtle!  I was nice and let all the other people get pictures of it first, and then I booked it out to him so I could get some good shots.  A lot of these people were just doing day trips and not diving all week, so I wanted to make sure they got their shot and I thought it was very nice and adult of me to show restraint.  But… GIANT TURTLE!  Only so much restraint possible.

By that point, I was 7 dives in without a rash guard or wetsuit and realized they DO actually have a point, even in 85 degree water.  I was getting really chafed on my shoulders from the BCD (buoyancy control device), so I relented and we got two Bonaire rashguards even though I was grumbly about the expense.

We ate up the rest of our lunchmeat with a sandwich, made a salad, and some snacks and rested a bit.

Because it was easy, we dove Bari again and saw TWO separate turtles.  One was new, it was bigger and he tried to play hide and seek with us in a bush (but he was too big to fit).  The second, we think, was our turtle, we found him in the same place as we did the day before.

We were out of a lot of stuff, so we went to the little store and picked up more bread, some tuna (which I still have in my pantry, oops), popcorn, fruit, and a bunch of crazy flavors of soda to try.  Cassis ended up being my favorite.  By the way – diet soda does not seem to exist in Bonaire.  I don’t drink it often, sometimes in mixed drinks, but it was weird – just NO diet coke, diet sprite, etc.  Probably for the best in the grand scheme of health.

We then went out for a night dive just as the sun was setting.  Let me tell you, I’m at about dive number 40 by this point, and I’m pretty comfortable with day diving in decent conditions.  This felt scary and exciting like Dive #2 or 3 of my life.  First of all, my primary light (the big one on my camera) wouldn’t stay on for more than 5 seconds.  That’s why you bring backup, but that made it a little awkward and I didn’t really get any pictures because of it.  My backlight also wasn’t working on my dive computer and I couldn’t see it.

Since you always proceed with caution, especially when things don’t go to plan, we kept it very shallow and short.  We checked out the very top of the reef at Bari and then navigated back and spent some time in ~10 feet of water.  We saw our first jellyfish and decided that was it, since we were just in our rashguards.  Oh well!  First official night dive in the logs.

We hit up a place called Pasa Bon Pizza for dinner, which advertises itself as located at Bonaire’s only stoplight (…and it’s a fake stoplight, there are actually none on the island).  It was open air and there were tons of people smoking in the restaurant and tons of incense blowing around which kicked up our congestion pretty quickly.  The pizza itself was pretty great, and we got our first taste of Amstel Bright and we wondered why we had been drinking anything else!  It was definitely your “relaxing on an island in the sun” type light-ish beer.

We cracked the vodka at home, but barely had any, and drifted off to sleep totally worn out – 4 dives a day x 2 days in a row = one killer workout!

Friday

Since it was vacation, even though it was our last day of diving, we decided to sleep in.  Not that 9:30 is suuuuper late, but it felt incredibly decadent after 7am wakeup calls.

We had coffee and ate up a bunch of random food around the house for breakfast (salad, cheese, etc) before we set out for our adventure day.  We went down to the dive shop, and asked for advice on what to do, and he set us up with two dive sites that would work for us.

Our first dive was the most south, at Salt Pier.  It’s actually a fairly famous site when you look up Bonaire diving.  Also, it’s a friggin’ pier that’s in use some days of the week transporting salt from the flats.

This was my favorite dive of the vacation.  First of all, in 5 feet of water, at minute ONE of the dive, we saw a turtle feeding and got super close and he was like “I don’t give a fuck, I’m eating, paparazzi all you want”.  Second, the backdrop of the pier made for amazing scenery and actually made the dive SUPER easy to navigate, and there were tons of nooks and crannies for fish to live.

We saw a bunch of eels, some huge tarpin, tons of shrimp, some of my favorite Angels…it was the best.  If it wasn’t the last day, I would have dragged us back there to dive again.

Second, we went to Angel City just a bit north.  I ate an oatmega bar and we scoped out the entry.  It was a little rocky but we thought it was doable.  Sadly, I fell on my ass in about 2 feet of water, but I just let the surge do its thing and pulled myself a little deeper and… voila.  Dive time.

Right away, we saw the BIGGEST green eel I’ve ever seen.  He was longer than me and super fat.  We were at about 50-ish feet down and he was closer to 60, so we gave him his space.  My pictures didn’t come at all, but Zliten got an AWESOME video.  I think Angel City had the prettiest coral formations we’ve seen on any dive.  Otherwise, the dive was pretty standard (beautiful) in terms of fauna.

We swapped out tanks at the Port Bonaire Dive Friends location and had some tea and a snack, and tried to head to Bachelor Beach.  Upon inspection, we found that the tide was out so far, we would have had to do some crazy gymnastics to get off the platform to the water, so we decided to head north to Andrea I.  We almost got lost and decided to head back to our home reef instead for our last dive, but after giving up, we found it by accident.  Yay!

Andrea was a pretty solid dive, mostly more of the same stuff we’d been seeing, but we closed out the day with a new turtle friend!  When we got out, we were both sad to be done diving, but super hungry and ready to relax.

We rinsed and stored our gear for the last time (sad), and then sat outside at the shop and ate some snacks and drank some beers (caaaaaalories) and talked with people.  We planned to meet up with our boat friends for dinner, so we returned to Rum Runners.  I liked the fish tacos so much the first time, I got them again.  I had two fruity mango drinks and every time, they gave me turtle toppers and that made me happy, because turtles.  They’re sitting on my desk at work to remind me of Bonaire fun.

After that, we all grabbed our leftover bottles of liquor and sat by the ocean until about 3 in the morning looking at dive pictures and shooting the shit.  Vacations are fun. 🙂

Saturday

I was only able to sleep in until 9:30, so I got up and brewed coffee and had a snack and looked through the real estate guide  and dreamed a bit.  Of all the vacations I’ve taken lately, I really feel like this is somewhere I could end up someday.  I’d love to be like the 85 year old guy we met, who flew the same week as us for a winter of diving here (but hopefully a little earlier in my life).

Once Zliten got up, we got going – we hit up a place downtown Kralendijk on the water for lunch.  Justine’s served a lunch plate, a soda, and a dessert for 11 bucks which in Bonaire terms was a value meal.  I got this amazing mahi with pesto garlic, rice, and salad I will be dreaming about.  And the carrot cake was pretty dreamy too.  While eating, we watched a dude climb over a bar railing to get into his boat.  #bonairethings I guess.

Cool downtown street art.

After lunch, we headed out to tour the island.  And I really do mean the whole island.  Bonaire is about 24 miles long and 3-7 miles wide (111 square miles total), so we set out to see what we could see from the truck.  First, we headed north which turned into this long, tiny, one way road (but, still the main road of the island).  We passed the 1000 steps dive site – glad we decided to skip this one this time.  It’s a long way down hauling gear.

The one place we skipped was the far north of the island – the nature preserve.  It is probably a whole day trip on it’s own (next time, maybe).  We turned inland and stopped for some donkeys, and then hit the scenic spot to see Rincon before we headed into the valley and passed through it.  Tiny little town!

Then, we hit the east coast.  Only one company on the island dives there and they were all from a boat.  We could see why – it’s REALLY rough out there.  Very rocky, a lot of surge… but gorgeous.  We admired the seven seas monument and the ocean and I conquered a rock and then we moved on.

We decided to skip the donkey and iguana sanctuary because, time, drove past a cool lighthouse at the southern tip and then we made our way back into more familiar territory.

It’s an odd thing to say – but the Slave Huts are actually a big touristy thing to stop at, so we did and took pictures.  There were 4 different types of salt, and thus there were 4 different colors of huts and a tall monument of the same color by them, so boats knew where to pull in to get the type of salt they wanted.  We stopped at the orange ones because they were so striking against the coast and wanted to read some of the history (and scope out the associated dive site).  They were so tiny! We passed by the white ones a little bit up the coast, and I believe the other 2 no longer exist.

We stopped for a while at the Salt Pier to watch it do it’s thing.  I’m really glad we were able to dive it the day before, because when the boats are in, they don’t let you (for good reason).

We rolled back into downtown Kralendijk, avoiding more donkeys and dremples (signs all over said Let Op! Dremples!  which means, Watch Out! Bumps!), and hit up Whatta Burger.  Texans will understand why this is funny.  However, in my opinion, superior because a) by the ocean, b) had hammocks, c) curry fries.

Sadly, it was time to get packed (nooooo) and then watch the sun set on our last day of vacation from Bari beach with our feet in the water chasing iguanas.

One place that was on our list was It Rains Fishes (because of the name, and their menu looked yummy), so we headed back downtown.  They started us with a delicious sushi taster and some bread, and finished with amazing shrimp, veggies, and a little pasta.  We had our last glass of wine at the condo, experiencing one more night with everything opened up and breezy, listening to the last concert… and fell asleep a little to late for our super early wake up call.

Sunday

Since this is already a novel, I will not belabor the details of another travel day, minus the fact that our diving suitcase wanted more vacation as it took an extra day to arrive.  Other than that, it was just a looooong morning (3:30am, home around 2pm our time) and we thoroughly enjoyed sinking into our couch and bed that evening.

Summary:

Things I’d do differently next time:

1. More snacks during the day, less meals.  A big breakfast, a big dinner, and then things I could eat after each dive (energy bar, pretzels, whatever) would mean less downtime and I’d be willing to adventure more.
2. I would actually plan the groceries and food a little beforehand.  I tried to totally type B this vacation, and it worked in the sense that I didn’t have a set schedule of “I have to eat this, this, this, and this at this time”, but we did waste a little food because we went to the grocery store without a plan and Zliten got a lot of “I don’t know…” when he asked me what I wanted to eat.
3. Bring my rashguard and maybe my cheapo running tights – in 85 degree water, there was no need to hassle with a wetsuit but some protection was nice.
4. I will definitely buy a BCD before I go on another dive vacation like this.  The rental fee would have been a good chunk of the price of the one we found on sale.  The regulator would be nice to have, but they cost a chunk to get serviced once a year so the cost of renting vs owning is probably negligible if we only do this like once a year.
5. We did 3 days of boat diving.  I might next time decide to do 2, or even 1.  I like being on the boat and being able to see normally inaccessible places, and it gave me a good excuse to get up and going early, but we really enjoyed the day where we went exploring by ourselves.
6. Change my camera lights before a night dive even if I think they are ok.  And maybe do one of those group UV night dives with the dive shop.  Those looked super fun.
7. Clothes – half of what I brought I didn’t wear, but I know better for next time.  Less real clothes, more swim suit cover ups and lounge wear.  I was legit in bringing 4 swim suits though!

FYI: if anyone is interested in food cost – we spent nearly 200 bucks on groceries (that included the beer and wine and vodka).  A cheapish meal for 2 (think burgers, sandwiches, lunch type places, chinese food) was around 20-30 bucks (we did this about 3-4 times).  A typical sit down, nice place with a drink or two was about 70 bucks for the two of us (I think we did this about 3-4 times).  You could probably be more frugal than us and eat most of your meals in the condo, but we wanted to see what was out there.

Also, if you’ve made it this far (congrats!) and are interested, there is an album here where I will put all my underwater photos (the good ones, that have been edited).  I’m through Day 1 + 2 right now, more to come as my lazy ass edits my pictures!

All in all – this is not the place if you just want to lie on the beach.  There’s not much beach.  However, if you like to be active on the water (boating, diving, snorkeling, fishing, kite surfing, etc), Bonaire is an awesome, kick ass, low pressure vacation.

…not really, but I can’t say the thought hasn’t crossed my mind.

Saturday:

…was just a really, really long travel day.  Up at 6am, got from door to gate in 40 minutes, and had a really chill day.  We had a 3 hour layover in Houston, which was nice because we got a chance to sit down and have lunch, but by the time we got there, it was 7pm – dark and late.

That evening, Bonaire consisted only of our stickshift truck that got a little lost on the way from the airport, our condo where the living room AC didn’t work but felt nice once we opened up the windows, one little trip to stick our feet in the ocean, and the Italian place (Sofia House) across the street which was the only thing in near walking distance open. It was fancy and served us glasses of red wine and lasagna the size of our heads, and salad the size of our fingernails.  After refueling, we crashed into our comfy bed and read and decided to roll sans alarm in the morning.

Sunday:

While really motivated scuba divers would have been up and at ’em to be at the shop when they opened in the morning at 8, that was not us.  We slept ’til 9:30, headed down to orientation around 10:30, and then had a delicious lunch on the water at Breezes and Bites before even THINKING about packing up our gear and heading for our checkout dive.

We got there in the afternoon and I was awkward setting up all my gear since normally someone swoops in and does it for me, but after some dithering and help I was suited up and we jumped in the ocean to do our buoyancy checks.  We sank just fine, so they sent us on our way.

This was actually the first time we had gone diving with just us.  We’ve either had an instructor, a dive master, a group, or at least a boat waiting for us.  I mean, we’re certified to do this and more, but it felt like being allowed to walk to school by yourself for the first time.

I got to spend all the time I wanted looking at fishies and trying to get good pictures.  If we felt like turning around or going deeper or shallower or just being done, we could.  It was awesome, albeit a little scary because if something happened, we were indeed on our own.

We liked our dive at Something Special, just offshore from the Yellow Submarine Dive Friend’s shop location, we grabbed a second tank and went back.  I remembered vaguely our dives and experience in Bonaire two years ago on the short morning and early afternoon we were visiting from the cruise ship.  I knew we had to go back for longer, and that afternoon reminded me why.

First, the dives are BREATHTAKING.  Even on a rough or not-so-clear day, every dive is probably the best dive anywhere else of your life.  So many fish, so much to see, and 85 degree crystal clear turquoise water.

Second, the people.  At first, while I was transitioning from not-being-on-vacation Quix who was like, “hurry, hurry, efficiency, why haven’t you served me my food I ordered it 2 seconds ago, hurrrrrr”, it was a little annoying, but once I calmed my shit… I loved the relaxed attitude.  Everyone was pretty friendly, but it wasn’t that fake, customer service type friendly.  They seemed to just genuinely be happy to be doing what they were doing, living in paradise.

After two tanks, we called it for the day because we had one more errand to run before really sinking into vacation mode – hitting the grocery store.  This was an experience in and of itself.

Unlike the US, where there is a mega mart on every corner, there is ONE large supermarket, and it is primarily Dutch.  This is the place you go if you want to get what you want, rather than roll with whatever happens to be there.  The carts are locked together, and we actually couldn’t figure out how to deal, so we just grabbed a few carry baskets and looked ridiculous.

We picked up the essentials – breakfast (decaf coffee, cereal, milk, fruit, and yogurt for me, nutella on toast and stuff to make cheese quesidillas for Zliten), lunches (sandwich stuff, salad stuff, a weird chinese soup to try), snacks (chips, crackers, etc), beer and wine, and some european sweets that looked amazing.  If it sounds like we were shopping for teenage kids (minus the booze) – each hour down burns me almost 600 calories, and that’s not counting the setup and takedown.  We needed the fuel. 🙂

However, since it was our anniversary, we decided to leave the groceries at home and walk down to get food at Rum Runner’s, and got sat at a lovely table right on the ocean.  While we drank our margaritas (my margarita came with a turtle on it, which meant they knew me because they’re my favorites) and waited for our food, giant tarpin played in the water below us.  I ordered the fish fajitas and Zliten ordered the shrimp in this magic anise honey chili magic love sauce, and we split both.  It was perfect.

We sat on the couch and went through dive pictures and photos, and split a bottle of wine and floated off to bed soon after.

Monday:

Set the alarm for 10 but didn’t need it.  We woke up and brewed some coffee and lazed about that morning.  Our goal was to hit up all the 5 dive shops and dive from those locations over the trip (since it was the most convenient) and today’s targets were Dive Inn, and our house reef, Bari.  Let me tell you – I miss having a “house reef” where I could walk out my door, gear up, grab a tank 10 feet from the water, and go.  But, I digress.

First we hit up Town Pier and dove there.  There was rumor of a turtle, but I got a little confused underwater, and I told Zliten to turn us around before we got there.  Here’s the weird part about diving and communication – it’s a game of charades where you can’t cheat even if you want to.  You have to communicate to your partner what is going on or what your intentions are (or what the problem is) without the use of voice.

You find ways to get by.  Fish get their specific hand signals.  Tapping on the tank to make noise means attention.  At first, you want to give the thumbs up when you want to say that you’re ok, but since that means go to the surface, you learn to use THIS instead.  There’s a symbol for squeezes (when you have trouble equalizing).  There’s a symbol for “how much air do you have left” but I usually just grab Zliten’s if I’m curious or tell him mine first.  Pointing in certain directions or at certain things seems obvious.

But when the weird stuff comes up, you definitely feel awkward and trying to communicate “hey, I think that we’re not supposed to go past the pier and I think this is past the pier” and he’s trying to say “but wait, I think this is where they saw the turtle up ahead” without using the turtle symbol as to make me unnecessarily excited is advanced level charades shit.  Diving dictates that you always go conservative, so if one person says turn back, you turn back.

Needless to say, we didn’t see a turtle, and I was kicking myself, but hey, we had many days left and we didn’t get run over by boats.

After some lunch from our fridge (a turkey sandwich and a salad and some chips and probably a sweet or two was like HEAVEN), we headed out our door to Bari.  People had said good things, and I think we would have gone even if it wasn’t home base, but I’m so glad it was.

It was magical.  The reef starts at about 20 feet down (so, almost snorkeling depth), and just the sheer AMOUNT of fish around the area was… amazing.  We took one tank and went one way, and took a second tank and went the other.  The highlight of the day was seeing a great barracuda as long as me just hang out with us. It was a little scary at first, but as I said earlier, it was more interested in friends, not food.

After cleaning up, we decided to try a place up the road… it was a sketchy looking bar but said it also had food so we moseyed in and found that it was actually a chinese restaurant with an extensive menu, so we ordered eggrolls, egg soup, and I got chicken chow mein.  The eggrolls were amazing (or I was just hungry), the egg drop soup was WAY better than the traditional, and my chicken chow mein was great.  The only bummer was the use of dark meat chicken in everything, which I don’t love, but I’m pretty sure I’m in the minority there.

Even though it was a bar, we saved the drinks until we got home and drank these little tiny Polar beers (Venezulan beer that’s made in Miami?) and headed to bed early.

Tuesday:

We had to catch a boat at 8:30, so I was up early enough to eat cereal, fruit, and yogurt and use the potty (sounds a lot like race morning?), and then we were off to board the Carlotta and head out to Klein Bonaire.

Pre-boat dive.

Post boat dive (oh the hair-manity!)

We dove Sampler and Country Garden.  They were beautiful dives, but at this point in my memory, everything is running together.  The only real memory that stood out was being cranky with my gear.  My wetsuit was causing me STRIFE.  Being that I’m a little heavy right now, it takes a little effort to get on and off.  Pairing that with all the gear hauling, I had so much abrasion and chafing going on I just hated the above water parts of diving so much right then.

For lunch, we hit up a local sandwich shop called Between Two Buns, and when we both noticed a burger and fries, that was it.  And honestly… it was the shit.  The meat was so flavorful and it was super huge and filling and all I wanted and needed out of life right then.  We took a walk around the property and chased around the leezards and soaked up a little sun.

And then… we went back to the condo and I crashed for a 90 minute nap.  I kinda hated wasting precious diving hours, but diving is SERIOUS BUSINESS, y’all.  You do this incredibly peaceful thing, but then you come out of the water and all of a sudden you realize that a) your body is WORKED and b) you either need to eat or sleep or both.  I guess I needed both that day.

As soon as I got up, we did a dive that ended at sunset at Bari and decided to ditch the wetsuit.  I was a little nervous because of all the ouchy coral around, but it made me be more careful and that’s probably a good thing.  At the end of the dive, in just a few feet of water, we finally spotted our first TURTLE!  I was cursing myself so hard because my camera was dead and I didn’t get a great shot of him, but hey… TURTLE!

I’m cheating and subbing in a turtle picture from another day, so, *spoilers*, it was not the last sighting.

We were tempted to try doing a night dive, but my ears were giving me trouble, and I wanted to make sure I was good for the boat in the morning.  We ate food in the condo (I enjoyed a grilled cheese and tomato chinese soup, and some other random snacks), and just melted into the couch and then the bed.

…and on that note, we’ll call it here.  Part 2 coming shortly HERE!, including equipment malfunctions, giant eels, a long swim under a (not-so) short pier, road donkeys, and much much more.