The photo is somewhat misleading to the title: Ladies Lunch. It was just the best photo I got all afternoon – Jack coming to pick me up at Bonaire’s town dock.

He’d been diving. He and the girls and Patrice had gone up north to the dive site called Oil Slick. No oil slick there, it turned out, but the place where they once considered having a fossil fuel depot. Hence the name Oil Slick.

Part of the attraction of Bonaire are the quirky names of the dive sites. Bonaire’s National Marine Park offers a whopping total of 89 of them. He and Delph dived south the other day in a dive site called Chez Hines. Each yellow dive buoy and yellow rock has a different name – and a different story to go with it. It’s true the dive sites in Bonaire are relatively similar physically with the drop-off fringing reef, but they are all slightly different too. A school of barracuda there, soft gorgonian corals here. Together they make a whole.

Anyhow, back to the lunch. It was a bit similar to the dive sites, in that it wasn’t so different to the one I went to two weeks ago, except possibly more boozy. Now Covid is once again seemingly under control on this little island, the cruiser ladies decided to meet again at La Terrazza; a lovely little Italian bistro in the centre of town. Lunch specials and wine specials and no men. I signed up almost immediately.

I had shrimp this week in a garlic sauce with potato wedges. Last time I had gnocchi. Last time I watched my friend Sue quaff down a beautiful limoncello sorbet for dessert. This week I had it. She had the local pastry with a marmalade sauce.

Last time, there were around twelve of us. Today we were almost eighteen. The ladies lunch has caught on. Two glasses of wine and a limoncello sorbet later. My dinghy ride back was perfect – and probably advisably driven for me. The next ladies lunch here, as long as Covid stays clear, is in two weeks time. I’m thinking it will probably be similar again, and a little different. Just like the diving.