Bonaire is the “B” in the ABC islands, along with Aruba and Curacao. It is a small island with a desert landscape of succulents, cactus and eroded coral cliffs, conquered by the Dutch in 1636. Bonaire is not for everyone, but it is for divers and snorkelers who want to immerse themselves in the vibrant world under the sea. The real beauty of the island is the coral reef that fringes it just a few feet from the shoreline, and is accessible to divers along the lee side of the island (facing west southwest, away from the Atlantic). The entire coastline, and the neighboring uninhabited very small island of Klein Bonaire, was designated a marine sanctuary in 1979, where conservation is taken very seriously in an effort to preserve and protect the delicate coral reef and the marine life that depends on it.
I arrived in the port city of Kralendijk with no particular plan. In lieu of a snorkeling adventure, I found an enterprising tour guide and, for a very fair price I found two other shipmates to share an island tour with me. So we loaded into a comfortable van, and set out with Maydeline, our local guide. While the island caters to tourism and is a port of call to more than fifteen cruise lines, it also has a thriving salt mining industry, presently operated by Cargill, as well as oil storage and shipment wholly owned by a Venezuelan oil company. We drove past giant pink opalescent salt processing ponds, next to towering white mountains of salt, washed and ready to be loaded on cargo ships for export.
Bonaire was once a plantation of the British West Indian Company, where African slaves were put to work cultivating maize and harvesting solar salt. Nearby to the salt ponds, are the remains of the tiny, austere huts lined along the beach that housed slaves, many to each dwelling, as a grim reminder of Bonaire’s regressive past.
The island is known for it’s roaming donkey population where they have donkey crossing road signs that should be especially heeded at dusk, just as for deer in the USA. Inland are lagoons and wetlands, the largest of which is Goto Lake, that provide an excellent habitat for a wide variety of shorebirds, including pink flamingoes.
Maydeline took us to her own hometown of Rincon in the northern center of the island, past small family farms enclosed with forbidding live cactus fencing, and along the treacherous northern Atlantic shoreline of weathered coral, with dangerous waves and strong tides.
Back in Kralendijk, I wandered the back streets, small city squares, the old Dutch Fort Oranje, a nearby city beach, then stopped for lunch at a waterfront cafe to leisurely watch the world go by, island style, through the frosty bottle of a cold local beer.
Nicely done! Cin, cin!!