Bonaire on Land

While Bonaire is mainly known for its diving there is plenty to do above water too. We managed to fit in several days of exploring the island during breaks from diving and also while I had a minor ear infection and so had to stay out of the water for 5 days.

The far north of the island is the Washington Slagbaai National Park which I have already written about. Just South of that is a large lake called Gotomeer which is one of the flamingo nesting sites. Just inland from the East coast there are escarpments containing caves with Indian inscriptions. There are also the wind turbines for the island. The South of the island is mostly salt pans and is very flat and wet. Also on the East coast is Lac, a natural harbour bordered by mangroves and used mainly for windsurfing. Close to the airport and the capital, Kralendijk is the Donkey Sanctuary, where sick, orphaned and injured wild donkeys are taken in and cared for.

We made several trips into the National Park, for diving and non-diving. The highest peak on the island is Seru Branderis at 241m. It takes about two hours to get to the top and back from the car park. The first part is an easy walk through woods and scrubland and the higher part is a scramble up the volcanic rock of the island. The view from the top is spectacular. You can see the whole of Bonaire and on the day we went up we could see across to Curacao as well.

Unfortunately, since I arrived at Coral Cay in Tobago I haven't had time to finish this properly. But thought I would post it anyway. See facebook for some photos.

Final few weeks on Bonaire

We are leaving Bonaire for Tobago tomorrow so thought I should write a summary of what we've been up to in the last few weeks. Mostly we've been diving.

We have picked up a couple of dive buddies along the way. Lutz from Germany whose wife is a snorkeller and Eloy from Holland who is here alone. We dived with Lutz for about 2 weeks and explored various sites together. He was a pleasure to dive, drink and eat with!

A couple of weeks ago Hurricane Tomas passed by to the North and brought with it a lot of rain. The after effects changed the usual wind direction making the usually calm west coast dangerous to dive due to a lot of surge and unpredictable currents. The bigger waves also stirred up the sand making visibility much worse than usual, particularly in the shallows. However, the change in wind direction alos meant that the usually rough east coast was calm enough to dive. So we did several east coast dives. These dives had a very different underwater landscape and distribution of life than the west coast.

We saw many more eagle rays than on the west coast and also some Southern stingrays that we hadn't seen before. There were also large schools of grunts, goatfish, margate and chub which do not appear on the west coast. At Sorobon dive site many turtles live and we did 3 dives on which we lost count of the turtles we saw. Fantastic!

We also had the opportunity to dive the far north dive sites on the island, Candyland and Tailormade. This seems to be the only part of the island where the hard coral still grows right up to the coast (everywhere else storms have destroyed it) and there are huge towers of hard coral. We saw many barracuda here and also less common fish such as ocean and queen triggerfish.

Another interesting thing about Bonaire is that it is a cruise ship stop. Every few days the island's small population swells by several thousand when a cruise pulls into port. These ships can be seen from almost anywhere on the island and are far taller than any building!

In total I have done about 25 days diving on Bonaire and about 70 dives. We definitely haven't seen everything and would love to come back and do more diving here. Bonaire really is "diving freedom". Pick up some tanks, throw them in the truck, drive to a dive site and get in the water!

Driving on Bonaire

Being on Bonaire has put the fun back into driving.  We hired a pick up truck for a month so we could get about the island - most of the scuba diving is shore based and while plenty of people offered us lifts we wanted the freedom to dive whenever we wanted.

It took me a couple of days before I realised what was different - there are no traffic lights on Bonaire!  And only two roundabouts.  Traffic jams don't exist.  As for parking, I can just pull up at the side of the road anywhere there is space to fit the truck.  Its a far cry from driving in Enfield.

The main hazards to driving here, apart from it being almost mandatory to drive while using a mobile phone, are the wildlife.  Goats frequently bound across the road, donkeys step out in front of you and the lizards are everywhere.

Of course, the roads aren't up to UK standards.  The main roads in Kralendijk and Rincon (the one town and village) and along the coast, are tarmac and in pretty good shape.  Although these roads are generally narrow, there are fewer potholes than at home and it makes getting around the island fun.  There are plenty of dirt roads too, to get to the more remote parts of the coast and the many caves here.  These are fun to drive on, but you don't get much speed up!

We broke the truck too.  It had a faulty parking brake which locked one of the rear wheels when it got wet.  The first time it happened, I eventually freed it up by revving the engine until I could smell burning brakes, the second time we got stuck in the National Park for an hour until it eventually dried out.  We now have another truck while the hire company try (and fail) to fix the original.

EDIT: We just had one of those "adventures" that you're supposed to have while travelling.  Driving on the dirt roads was always going to be an error after the storm last night.  But we were keen to find the (locally) legendary Maiky Snack for a Bonairean lunch.  One wrong turn later onto one of the less well used dirt (now mud) roads and I got the truck well and truly stuck.  After much wheelspinning and trying to put bits of wood under the back wheels I gave up and set off to find help.  Fortunately, Maiky Snack was only five minutes of sloshing up the road and, despite being closed - "we weren't expecting any customers because of the bad weather" the owner came to my rescue, calling in a friend with a bigger pickup truck.  Back at the mud, the friend decided his truck would get stuck too, so went off to get shovels and a commercial jack.

We jacked up the truck and got rocks under all the tyres and some wooden planks to drive onto and, after an hour and a half of getting dirty we finally shifted the truck onto solid ground.  I think I'd better get it washed before I take it back to the rental shop!  The tyres have lost a lot of rubber, but they were pretty bald to start with.  We'll be going back to Maiky Snack tomorrow to buy lunch, and leave a very big tip :)