Four days on Bonaire without diving

The gentlest introduction anywhere on the island: flat sand entry, toilets, and a reef a short swim out. It settles anyone who has not snorkelled recently.

Seven limestone steps down to a pocket of sand, no facilities at all, and better coral from about fifty metres out.

The wildcard: pilings covered in growth with tarpon schooling under them, but closed without notice whenever a salt freighter is loading and enterable only with permission from the Cargill security hut. Check on the way past; do not build the day around it.

Calm water, a reef eight to thirty metres out, and sand that only reads pink in low sun. Nothing to buy here, so bring the afternoon with you.

The boats leave from the pier beside the bar, not from the cruise pier. Be there for the first crossing and photograph the time of the last one when you board.

An uninhabited islet 800 metres offshore with reef starting fifty metres from the sand and visibility routinely over twenty metres: the best snorkelling within reach of anyone without a tank. No shade, no water, no facilities.

Back on the pier with salt in your hair, and two minutes up from it the Italian ice cream everyone ends up at. The right order is: boat, ice cream, boulevard.

The last hour of light, walked slowly with Klein Bonaire straight ahead of you — the island you spent the day on, from the other side.

Sixty-seven steps down, not a thousand, slippery when wet, with turtles grazing the shallows.

A gap in the cliff where the swell comes up through the rock. Five minutes, from the roadside — the edge is undercut and there is no railing.

The old plantation house above the coast, yellow against the dry hillside, with the aloe terraces still visible below it. The view back south is the one on the postcards.

Flamingos at road distance, which is as close as anyone legally gets: the minimum is 50 metres and it is enforced.

The oldest settlement on Bonaire, hidden inland from the sea, and the place the island's own history is told from rather than about.

The 1824 stone storehouse where enslaved and later free workers collected their rations, with reconstructed traditional homes around it. Weekdays only, guided tours on the hour, and worth reserving in high season.

Free entry, hammocks under old calabash trees, wild parrots overhead and tastings of the only cactus liqueur in the world. Closed on Sundays.

The island from 123 metres on the way back, which is where the shape of everything you have driven finally makes sense.

Juvenile fish and young turtles in half a metre of water, and the clearest explanation on the island of what the nursery does for the reef.

A metre deep for a long way out and warm, which is as gentle as Caribbean water gets, with the windsurfing to watch over lunch.

Centuries of harvested conch shells piled at the end of a rough track. Take nothing, not one shell, and do not climb the mounds — foot traffic destabilises them. On Sundays local families gather here with food and music.

Eight hundred donkeys, and you drive through with hay on the seat beside you. Last entry at 15:00.

Back in Kralendijk for the last of the light, on the waterfront where the week started.