For me it’s community. Which doesn’t make much sense since well, we are travelling. And we already have heaps of community at home. Our little village and town in Wales is a community hotspot. We have friends and family and our beloved dog, Fin there. So, why bother travelling – when what you enjoy the most is where you started from?

I do not have an answer to this question. If it were one of Lu’s maths equations, I would put a ton of question marks in it. Throw some stick people figures in too. Which is why she doesn’t trust me to go near any algebra. She’s a smart kid.

The family opposite us came out of quarantine yesterday. No more walking their dogs for them. In fact, the dogs took their own family for a walk! It was funny watching them pull Brandy and her four kids towards our usual route round the corner from the marina. To the grass. Then the one shady path in Bonaire. Down to the sea front. And back again.

‘You have to check out the smells!’ I imagine they were saying to their humans. I wonder if dogs think that we humans can smell as well as they can. Or they know we can’t and internally roll their eyes at us. Doofuses. With the crap noses.

I’m so happy to see this family off their boat.

Quarantine of course, is necessary if Bonaire deems it so – but this example was taking it to the extreme. Four children, three of whom are under ten and two, large dogs. No swimming, no getting off their vessel. At least for all of us who undergo it, we get a small taste of the physical and psychological effects of prison if we ever need to visit. I’m joking – I think.

The family opposite us were amazingly well-behaved, considering this was a boat-full of creatures staring out at the world for two whole weeks. They are from Tennessee. They have the most lilting, Southern accents.

‘I know our accent makes us sound dumb,’ Brandy said to me. We’ve been chatting a bit when exchanging the dogs over the pontoon and boat.

I giggled. ‘Not at all.’ And they are anything but dumb. They’re a medical couple, a doctor and nurse.

‘We come from a rural community,’ Brandy told me. I nodded. We have this in common. She said, ‘When we left, a lot of people shook their heads at us and said, “What are you running away from?” I said to them, “We’re not running away from anything. We just want to see the world..”

I watched her look out into the country she hadn’t seen. Yet.