Werewolves, Dutch army, and vacations

Category: Serendipity | Posted: Wed Feb 18, 2015 7:53 pm

Have you ever hugged a werewolf? One February, while fleeing upstate New York's winter, we arrived in Bonaire just before Fat Tuesday (Mardi Gras) and got to enjoy the costumes, parades, and music. One gentleman (gosh, I do hope it was a gentleman) in a werewolf suit was hugging the ladies, and I got hugged!
That night, shortly after midnight, the sound of firecrackers woke us up. We decided some fool didn't know that Mardi Gras was over and was still shooting off fireworks. Being pragmatic tourists, we rolled over and went back to sleep. We were from upstate New York and were unfamiliar with the sound of automatic gunfire.
Next morning, we drove into town to have breakfast, and noticed there were soldiers in camouflage under the cement benches along the seafront, and they had automatic weapons. None of the locals seemed particularly worried, so we figured we shouldn't be either, and had a nice breakfast. Joanna the parrot, who was the restaurant's resident mascot, left our breakfast alone, but was very interested in another man's toast. He ended up huddling over his breakfast plate to guard it from marauding birdlife.
We had a nice seafront view, which included uniformed men running up and down the main street. Interesting, but again, none of the locals seemed upset, so why should we?
When we got back to the hotel, there was a nice note in our room, saying that the hotel regretted any inconvenience to its guests, and that Colonel somebody-or-other would be in the lobby all day explaining why the Dutch army, on maneuvers, had mistaken our hotel for the airport. It seems that the airport was their practice target, but since a favorite TV program was on that night, the airport personnel had closed down early and shut off all the lights. Therefore, when the Dutch army arrived by ship, the only place that had its lights on was our hotel! Imagine the surprise of the landing force when they encountered the seaside bar of Flamingo Beach rather than tarmac!
This was shortly after the attacks on the airports in Rome and Vienna, and a lot of tourists were pretty nervous when they found spent shell casings outside their rooms, and saw soldiers hanging about. We, of the other hand, decided to go snorkeling and let the colonel deal with the nervous types.
On our way to one of our out-of-the-way snorkeling sites, we passed several soldiers perched up in trees, trying to look military. They just looked terribly sunburned, their Nordic complexions didn't adapt well to Caribbean sun. We waved to the tree-perchers, and they waved back. Nice boys, and we hoped that someone had thought to pack sunscreen for them.
We visited Bonaire for several years, and always enjoyed the people, the weather, and especially the underwater life. We never encountered the Dutch army again, although they were a friendly bunch.

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