Holland: Amsterdam
Bonaire: Kralendijk, Rincon
We are off to the Caribbean or so we thought, it was minus 10 to 12 degrees out so we hurried to the airport in light winterwear to save on luggage weight, only to find out the flight was cancelled due to mechanical difficulties. Now it is about minus 14 and we are on a bus to an airport hotel, as we did not want to drag our gear back in the cold weather and we thought it would be nice to see Amsterdam again as our flight left in the evening the next day.
We hoped it would be a bit warmer in Amsterdam but sadly it was a couple of degrees minus and a cold, biting wind, so we headed off to the Van Gogh museum and enjoyed a few hours with beautiful paintings and sculptures, it was also warm inside. We walked around a bit afterwards but found it cold with our clothes so we went from cafe to cafe and finally decided to see a movie before we headed back to the airport. Luckily we were upgraded to business class from Oslo to Amsterdam (yummy food), and economy plus with more legspace from Amsterdam to Bonaire.
Our fight left on time this time so after a long flight we arrived in Kralendijk, Bonaire. From my time working on a cruise ship I had been to Aruba and Curacao but had not been on Bonaire, the weather after landing was warm (27 degrees and windy and that's how it was most of the time) and dry, not tropical and there is very little rain fall on Bonaire and there was a draught so there was almost no rain this year. Bonaire is a small island so it only took us ten minutes to get to a hotel and a little bit longer to get to our room for some rest as we had not slept too well on the plane. We were staying at the Divi Flamingo Hotel , situated right on the waterfront, with good food, friendly service and OK rooms. Our room was in the back which was ok for us as it was nice and quiet, close enough to the bar and restaurant and not too far from the dive shop, I should probably also mention that they had a nice place to relax in the sun with a bar and a snorkelling area and friendly iguanas that join you in the sun.
Kralendijk is a very small city, a 10 minute walk from the hotel with small shops, cafes, bars and restaurants and not really much else to talk about. For us we found that there was a good variety of lunch places with friendly service and good food but what impressed us most was the quality and variety of dinner restaurants. Even if it wasn't cheap we found that we could go to different restaurant each night of our stay, we did not as we had a couple of favorites (Bamboo, Wil's and La Guernica). The hotel also had a lot happenings, even if we did not participate, pasta nights, taco buffet, free drinks with the manager, welcome drink and casino.
Video from diving in Bonaire:
After getting some much needed rest we spent the day on the beach snorkelling and working on our tans and just getting to know our surroundings as we would start diving the next day. After breakfast we went to the dive shop for our dive briefing that would tell us more about the marine park, as Bonaire and Bonaire Klein are both marine parks. You pay 25 dollars per year to dive, which goes to maintaining and protecting the marine park. All dive sites have buoys for boat dives and for those who drive to the different shore dive sites each dive site is well marked and easy to find).
We dived with EAN-Nitrox 32% even if the dives were not that long, our equipment was stored in lockers on the boat dock which made things easy and our gear dried really well. Our first dive was on the house reef so after getting our gear on we just walked down the steps into the water. The first thing you notice is that visibility is great with an average of 20 meters the whole time, you will find a lot of sponges in the Bonaire area (yes this is the home of Sponge Bob or so they say), some that are well over 2 meters tall purplish cylinders.
We decided to only do boat dives as we like to have someone around to find the marine life, driving around in a jeep sounded hot, stressful, not so social and they have some problem with break-ins. The diving on Bonaire is good as there is very little current and a good amount of creatures to see, sadly we did not have time to dive the wild side of Bonaire and Salt pier and Town pier were closed to divers but we did dive the following sites: Calabas reef (Divi house reef), Tori's reef, Four corners (Punt vierkant), Bachelor's beach, Jerry's reef , Keepsake, Rappel, Something special, Divi Tree (Kline), Hilma Hooker (wreck dive), Windsock, Bloodlet, and Small Wall. The diving is usually divided up into North, South and Klein Bonaire and there were lots of good dive site and we wish we had time for more as there was a lot to explore. Though the diving is good around Bonaire a lot of the area is recovering from the time there was spearfishing, at one time there were hundreds of divers here for the spearfishing competitions, thus the lack of large fish.
Things to see: Turtles, arrow crabs, banded shrimp, seahorses, great barracuda, octopus, sponges, sea snakes, lot's of honeycomb cowfish, moray eels, painted frogfish, jawfish, lot's of Flamingo tongue snail, baby mantis shrimp, large lobster, cleaner shrimps and lettuce nudibranch. Diving in Bonaire is great with good visibility, beautiful corals, and easy diving with little or no current and is probably one of the best places to dive in the Caribbean but there could be a few more fish.
Diving is not the only thing to do here as Bonaire has a interesting history and landscape, so we did some excursions on the days we weren't diving. Our first excursion was a short one and took us south where the salt was produced and where the slaves that once worked the salt flats lived. As we drove south we saw mountains of salt drying in the sun and watery areas where the salt is extracted by letting in sea water which evaporates, leaving water heavy in salt and at times foaming over as the water evaporates. Eventually there is only salt left, this was where the slaves came in as they were to gather in salt as salt was a very important item of trade in the old world. The slaves were housed not far away in small huts where 4 to 6 slaves would live (the location of the huts would be called fantastic now as they were on a beautiful beach area with different shades of blue to look at, but a nightmare for the slaves of the past).
This area was also part of the wild preserve as flamingos are protected on Bonaire since this is a breeding ground for them. Flamingos get their pink colour from small, red shrimps that they eat. After we drove north along the rugged coast, we turned inland stopping for a beer in the city of Rincon, one of the first cities here, down the other side of the island and up
to a outlook where you can look out over Kralendijk, Klein Bonaire, the salt flats and the southern part of the island.
Video of a flamingo (it looks a bit drunk):
Our next outing would be to the mangroves on the other side of the island, we were picked up at the hotel for a short trip on a bumpy road to a building where we were told a bit about mangroves and their importance to the fish life and to the other wild life in the area. We hopped into our two man or women kayaks to explore the mangroves. At first we paddled through a narrow passage through the mangrove before we got into the open water, our guide would stop at various areas where he would tell us about the different mangroves (there are four types in this area) before moving on through the mangroves. This is a beautiful area with lots of mangroves and wildlife. As we moved closer to the ocean inlet we saw a long sand bank of white sand surrounded by blue, this type of mangrove likes to live in brackish water and this inlet helps by hindering too much salt water in and thus keeps a bit lower salinity.
We paddled a long time until we came to a shallow part where we got out for a bit of snorkelling, while snorkelling we got a closer look at the long roots of the mangroves, here we found lot's of small fish and even some coral growth on the roots. We stayed a while searching around the roots and the sea grass that also grows in the area, along with fish we found lot's of strange upside down jellyfish who for some reason that I do not remember like swimming upside down. We climbed back into our kayaks after snorkelling and started back again moving slowly through the mangroves with a carpet of sea grass under us and birds sitting in the trees, there was a beautiful peace with only sounds of nature and our paddles entering the water. Then we were back to reality, leaving our kayaks we made our way back to the hotel to plan another excursion.
Some day later we are on our way north to Washington national park, our first stop is at the ranger station to check in and to have a look around. The first thing we noticed was the large skeleton of a whale which had been hit by a cruiseship and carried along on the front of the ship until they were able to get it off but by then it was dead and the remains rest here (there are also some funny signs for the male and female toilet). The road was very bumpy so the going was slow but we made our next stop on the wild side of the island (they call it the wild side due to the fact that there are no people living there). This area had been hit by a tsunami a long time ago so it looked like you could be on another planet, with huge boulders scattered here and there and not much vegetation. The north west was much rougher with large wave and heavy seas, there were also small coves with sandy beaches and one place that looked like it had hot tubs in it when the water went out.
Washington national park has a interesting history as at one it was divided into three goat ranches, and the owners later gave their land to the national park, the problem was that the goats were destructive and were threatening the wild life in the area, so they got rid of the goats for the most part. It seems that each year they hunt the wild goats to get rid of them and then have a large BBQ each year for all the islanders, strange that they can not seem to get rid of the goats I think they just like their BBQ). Another interesting fact about Bonaire is that Bonaire is rising out of the sea while a lot of the islands in the world are sinking back into the sea, this you can see very clearly in some areas by the rock formations.
As we bounced along the road we saw lot's of cactus and some wild life, this was really rough, hot and unforgiving countryside, but after a while we sighted a large building in a bay with a white sandy beach. This had at one time been where they slaughtered the goats and sent them on by boat, now it had a small restaurant (yes they still serve goat stew and Jorunn tried it and said it was good) with a great view over the sandy beach and the very inviting blue water, no time for a swim). On the other side of the road was a small lake with flamingos. This was part of their breeding area and we got a closer look at the flamingos, we were not allowed to get close to the flamingos as this will scare them and they will not come back to breed. The area we drove through is very rocky, red soil with low shrubs and small trees that have adapted themselves to this type of climate, there is very little water around but still the catus towered above us and surrounded us at all time.
As we passed one of the old goat farms we see that they use cactus instead of wooded fences to keep animal in and out, as we travel on there are many more hills up and down and we see a few goats and even a large iguana hanging upside down sunning itself. After many hours of driving we arrive back at the park entrance and on our way back to the hotel after a fantastic day of adventure, now it was time to think about packing as was time to head for home to plan our next adventure.
The last funny situation before we leave had to do with the Mardi Gras, it was Mardi Gras time but could only go to the children's Mardi gras as we were leaving, so we asked at the front desk what time it would start, which was two. We arrived a little early to find a place in the shade to wait. We waited and waited and nothing happened, we had asked different people when it would start and got three different times so we waited and at four we asked one of the organizers and were told that it started some time after five, so we decided it wasn't really worth it to wait any longer.
This has been a beautiful trip to an island with many surprises from the dry desert like area to the clear blue water, their dramatic history, friendly people and the care they take with their land and ocean. We were also told the story about Klein Bonaire which was once privately owned and was to be sold to a company that wished to build a luxury hotel there even though turtles use the beaches to lay their eggs. In the end the people of Bonaire along with the Queen of Holland acquired enough money to purchase the island and it's now a marine park, the rest of the world has a lot to learn.
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